Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Crist sweeps out problems

One of the quickest ways Gov. Charlie Crist can help classroom teachers is to remake the state bureaucracy that routinely shows contempt for them. His decision to withdraw two Board of Education appointments, and the subsequent departure of Education Commissioner John Winn, suggest the governor is equal to the task.

The bureaucrats matter, in this case, because they have widened the gulf between state policymakers and the teachers, principals and superintendents whose job is to help children learn. Teachers are paralyzed enough by a set of laws that reduces their work product each year to the results of one standardized test. But Winn and the Board of Education have added insult to injury, so indifferent to the pleas of educators that they tend to view widespread opposition as validation.

The debacle over teacher performance pay is a perfect example. Lawmakers want to give more pay to teachers who work harder. That's easier said than done, but Winn has managed to turn a collaborative challenge into a war of wills.

In February, Winn and the board ignored the advice of every organized education group and adopted a rule that forced schools to pay teacher bonuses based almost solely on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. That plan was so shallow the Legislature killed it in the spring, asking Winn to work with districts to consider more factors. But so far, the agency formally has approved pay plans for only four of the 67 school districts.

"In a perfect world," Winn's K-12 chancellor Cheri Yecke told a skeptical Senate committee Wednesday, "we would have had more time."

Really? The department originally sought a June 2006 deadline, and Winn and board member T. Willard Fair were openly dismissive of educators who pleaded then for delay. Said Winn: "We shouldn't adjust our timeline." Said Fair: "I think for me the time is right."

Crist will find that such attitudes are pervasive in the Department of Education. He also will find that Winn, and commissioner Jim Horne before him, chased off many of the seasoned professionals who once worked in the Turlington Building in Tallahassee. In their places are people such as Yecke, who ran for Congress in Minnesota and once derided her academic critics as following "the hate-America agenda."

DOE has become a revolving door for ideological opportunists, and one result has been a series of embarrassing management blunders. Legislative and administrative audits have sharply criticized the agency for its persistent lack of controls over school vouchers. It had to ask the Legislature for $7.6-million after buying a computer system on the mistaken belief a federal grant would cover the cost. It handed out $1.1-million to students of a private online school who were clearly ineligible under state law. It allowed a Gainesville man with a history of racketeering arrests to oversee voucher tax money, with police then accusing him of stealing $268,000.

DOE needs a housecleaning, and Gov. Crist has begun the task. On Wednesday, he pulled back the appointments of Fair and Phil Handy, the two board members most responsible for the culture of contempt. On Friday, Winn abruptly "retired."

The humility and collaboration Crist says he wants to bring to the governor's office is needed even more desperately in the Turlington Building. Real education reform need not always brand teachers as the enemy. Most of them are more than equal to the challenge, and they deserve a seat at the table.

[Last modified January 14, 2007, 20:27:21]