We don’t elect local school superintendents.
At the local level, we elect school board members, who then hire our superintendents. That helps ensure that school board members do not, for any length of time, have to work with a superintendent if they disagree on significant issues.
But we do elect our state superintendent of schools, and that has created the kind of feuding our system for local schools aims to avoid.
For the past 18 months, efforts to improve education in Indiana have taken a back seat to squabbling between Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, a Democrat, and the Indiana State Board of Education, appointed by Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican.
Hoosiers can take their pick of who deserves the most blame for the mess in Indianapolis. The point is to make sure it can’t happen again.
The Indiana General Assembly should give the governor the power to appoint future superintendents of public instruction, so everyone will pull in the same direction.
We do not say this from a partisan point of view. Indiana has had Democratic governors as recently as 2004.
The late Democratic Gov. Frank O’Bannon and Republican Superintendent Suellen Reed managed to cooperate in the early days of this century. But a 2001 article in the magazine Education Week warned that harmony is a matter of luck under Indiana’s system.
“Currently the state governor and superintendent get along well and have been able to accomplish a lot,” said Dane Linn, director of the education policy studies division of the National Governors Association, in 2001. “That’s not sustainable over time.”
Linn’s prediction came true last year, when Ritz and Pence became Indiana’s next mismatch of a governor and superintendent of opposite parties.
Experts on the subject say the governor appoints the top education official in 37 of the 50 states.
In Indiana, “The system we have now doesn’t make sense. The Legislature decided long ago that our governor leads on education policy. The governor appoints 10 of the 11 members of the State Board of Education,” said a recent article by David Harris, CEO of The Mind Trust, a not-for-profit focused on K-12 education reform in Indianapolis.
The Indiana Constitution does not require choosing a state superintendent by election. As amended in 1972, it reads, “There shall be a State Superintendent of Public Instruction, whose method of selection, tenure, duties and compensation shall be prescribed by law.”
Indiana’s 1969 Constitutional Revision Commission changed language that once required electing the state superintendent. The commission did not decide that the position should be appointed by the governor, but it offered some thoughts on the topic:
“There are several reasons why the General Assembly might wish to provide for a method of selection of the Superintendent of Public Instruction other than by statewide election,” the commission wrote.
“The first of these is that the office involves specialized functions and knowledge and is best filled by a person of experience and ability in the areas of education and administration. A person fitting this definition does not always choose to enter the political arena and may not be widely known, except to persons in the educational field,” the commission said.
It concluded, “Should the General Assembly choose to change the method of selection of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, it seems likely that the change would be from state-wide election to appointment, either by an elected state board of education created by the General Assembly, or by the Governor. Such a change would serve to insure (sic) that the head of our State’s educational system would be a person qualified in the areas of education and administration.”
None of this discussion excuses the circus we are seeing in Indianapolis involving the state superintendent and the state board. Everyone involved needs to cooperate for the next two years for the sake of Indiana’s students.
During that time, the Indiana Legislature should get busy making sure this is the last time the governor and the state superintendent are rivals instead of teammates.