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Cheri Yecke brings impressive academic and professional credentials to the job of K-12 school chancellor in Florida, but the Department of Education already suffers from an excess of her other notable trait. She is relentlessly partisan.
Yecke lost her job as Minnesota education commissioner last year when the Senate Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party there decided to rebuke the Republican governor who appointed her, but she seems to point the finger of blame everywhere but in the mirror. As commissioner, her push for more standardized testing and accountability was remarkably high-handed. She derisively blamed the "education establishment" and labeled criticism of her social-studies plan as a "hate-America agenda." (Later, as a think-tank associate, she even tried to connect childhood obesity to "liberal sentencing laws and revolving-door justice" and the "nanny-state tendencies of our liberal friends.")
Yecke indeed got caught up in some ugly, unfortunate partisan politics in the Minnesota Legislature. But Wendy Swanson-Choi, a Republican parent who worked to elect Gov. Tim Pawlenty and served on an advisory committee for Yecke, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune there was another side. "She did herself in," Swanson-Choi said. "From the time I met her and saw her interacting with people, I thought, "You know what? We're set up for a problem here.' She didn't listen to anyone. It was just, "We're doing it my way. I'm right.' "
Gov. Jeb Bush and his Department of Education have operated in much the same fashion in Florida, demonizing critics instead of listening to their concerns. The political paranoia has diminished the professionalism at DOE and hurt Bush even with those in his own party.
Yecke, who dropped her campaign for Congress in Minnesota to take the chancellor's job, doesn't need to follow in those footsteps. She has experience and ideas to offer. She has written extensively about the need to connect testing results with the classroom teachers who can use them to help students improve, for example. She also has called on the federal government to provide more flexibility. As deputy education secretary in Virginia, she told a congressional committee she believes smaller class sizes are critical in the early grades: "We would prefer that students in the earliest grades have the benefits of a smaller class taught by a qualified teacher, and we are striving to make this happen."
Her ideas are welcome, but DOE already has enough politicos.