Pendulum of education has swung

To the editor:
The pendulum of education policy has surely met the end of its swing. The grand scheme comprised in 2012 is now being fully realized.
What was immediately feared on election night in 2012 and again in 2014 is coming to fruition. On Thursday, the House Education Committee voted 8-3 (eight Republicans, three Democrats) to allow the Governor-appointed State Board of Education to elect its own chairperson. For 100 years the Superintendent of Public Instruction has been the chairperson of the SBOE.
Voters in Jay and Randolph counties voted for Glenda Ritz, our Superintendent of Public Instruction, by more than 17 percent, ousting the incumbent and assumedly his policies on education.
But voters were not speaking the same language in the ballot box in 2012 as the members of the House Education Committee were on this day. To be sure, the bill sunsets in 2016, when Ritz’s term ends — you know, just in case you forget to turn out again, and/or are comfortable with the way public education is being stripped, democracy lost, and/or vote for someone more in tune with corporate education.
Interestingly, another bill, HB 1486, puts more emphasis of student test scores on teachers’ evaluations, which strips local schools the authority to draft their own evaluation models and how much student test scores count toward a teacher’s evaluation. A contradictory move by the party who decries political overreach by Washington D.C. yet makes an exception when it comes to the only Democrat elected to Statewide office in the past two years.
Shon Byrum
Winchester