Kentucky Board of Education: Better homework next time

This from the News-Enterprise.

Whew.

That was close.

Too close.

Kentucky just missed having an education commissioner whose resume, background and professional experiences indicated she probably was not the right person for the $220,000-a-year job, although the state board of education approved hiring her by a unanimous 10-0 vote.

Barbara Erwin, the superintendent of a St. Charles, Ill., school district selected in May on the recommendation of an Iowa-based search firm, decided Friday, on the eve of the Monday she was to begin as the state’s new commissioner of education, that she would retire instead.So today, what should be very red-faced members of the state board of education, who appointed Erwin despite serious questions about her resume, for the second time in less than a year are looking for a new commissioner.

The hunt began in November to replace former commissioner Gene Wilhoit when he stepped down.Since that mission crashed, this time around we have some suggestions for the board members that, if nothing else, will cost a whole lot less than the $50,000 in taxpayers’ money they paid to the head hunters in Iowa.

First, don’t rely so heavily on the recommendations of a search team. They tend to peddle lists of candidates from job opportunity to job opportunity. Taxpayers whose hard-earned money was wasted in this flawed search have nothing to show now for the fee paid to the search firm.

Board member Keith Travis conceded, “We relied heavily on a search firm to provide us information, and probably relied too much.”

He’s right.

In fact, the board should try to retrieve the tax funds paid out in fees. The state was ill-served. Manufacturers provide full refunds for flawed products. Why not search companies?

Second, as every other employer knows, the state board of education should check out everything stated on a resume. If an applicant lists an award or awards received, check it out. If an applicant lists a presentation made to a professional society, check it out.

Third, listen. Listen to educators, to families, to students and graduates where the applicant last worked.

Finally, don’t seek the refuge of those caught in a blunder by seconding Erwin’s excuse that she declined to assume the Kentucky position because she was a victim of the media. “However, I must be realistic,” she said. “The continued noise by the media is and will detract us from our mission of ensuring all children reach proficiency by our 2014 date.”

Listen to that noise. Don’t ignore it, or dismiss it. Consider it. Investigate it.

The “noise” Erwin referred to was just the media doing what the state school board should have been doing in the first place — vetting every claim made in the candidate’s application, investigating past performance and talking to people not listed as references. And the noise didn’t all come from the media, anyway.

A lot of it came from the Bowling Green-based Bluegrass Institute think tank.The institute’s education policy analyst, Dick Innes, was quoted as saying the board seemed “too quickly to dismiss the value of public input and dismiss the value of public counsel. We warned them going in, ‘if you do this, you buy this on your own.’”

If just some of the members of the state board of education had listened before making their bad decision silently behind closed doors, they wouldn’t be in the embarrassing mess they are experiencing today.

At least at the beginning of this search, the board seems to have learned a valuable lesson and is headed in the right direction. Members favor looking for candidates within the ranks of Kentucky educators.

Maybe this time they will do it right and pay attention to the public.

Maybe this time they will listen to the “noise.”