Friday, December 01, 2017

Vandeven out, Greitens poised to make charter supporter Commissioner of Education

The Missouri Board of Education, by a 5-4 vote fired Commissioner of Education Margie Vnndeven today, providing Gov Eric Greitens with the ability to appoint someone to lead the state down the path to unlimited charter schools and a deemphasizing of traditional public schools.

The deciding vote came from someone appointed by Gteitens today after another board member resigned Thursday night, citing problems with the way the governor was trying to get rid of Vandeven.

From the Springfield News-Leader article:

That resignation, of Claudia Onate Greim, came late Thursday. The same day, Greitens nominated Eric Teeman, who was sworn in early Friday.

"As I have made clear throughout my two-month service, when and how change in leadership at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should occur require(s) thoughtful and independent study," Greim wrote in a letter to Greitens. "I regret that I cannot get comfortable with the current process taking place."


Gteitens gloated about his victory in a news release issued momenta ago:

"Today, kids, teachers, and families won. The State Board of Education voted for new leadership for our school system. That's a major step in the right direction as we work to improve public education in Missouri.

We need to: raise teacher pay, support public schools, and help students succeed. We need to make sure that the money Missourians spend on schools gets out of the bureaucracy—and into the classroom.

Our teachers need a raise. If they just got paid at the national average, they'd make nearly $10,000 more a year. Meanwhile, we've got more administrators than most of the country, and their pay is rising more than twice as fast as teacher pay. Some make big bucks—more than $250,000 a year—while too many teachers struggle to get by.

And from 2009 to 2015, Missouri fell from 18th to 28th in fourth-grade reading and from 23rd to 32nd in eighth-grade math. According to ACT testing, three out of every four kids who graduate from Missouri high schools aren't ready for college.

These problems have gone on too long. We're demanding better. Because our teachers deserve it. Because our students deserve it.

I support public education. We added $64,000,000 in the budget for public schools. More money than ever before is being spent on education. We fully funded the system for the first time in years.

The bureaucrats took your money. Teachers didn't get a raise. Juniors in high school had the ACT cut.

The bureaucrats had their chance. They failed our kids.

Defenders of the status quo have been nasty. They harass, call names, and intimidate. Many of them have big salaries that they don't want to lose, and records they don't want to be held accountable for.

Well, today things have changed: Kids come first."

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank You Governor Greitens! There has to be a better way!

Anonymous said...

Yet he still doesn’t say how ousting the commissioner is going to change anything. Missouri is a local control state which means local school boards make most decisions. DESE provides guidance, but elected local boards make decisions. If you’re upset about local superintendent pay increasing at a faster rate than local teacher pay, elect new board members. This move doesn’t make sense at the local level. What’s the real reason he wants someone else in that position?

Anonymous said...

Randy, can you help with my memory of what happened when Jay Nixon became governor after Matt Blunt? I think Jay waited until July of his first year to appoint Chris Nicastro to be the Commissioner of Education. Greitens waited until December. Should he have done it sooner and that would have made everyone happy? People are saying this is a non-political position but politics aside, shouldn't the leader of our state and the leader of our education philosophically be on the same page? If Vandeven is as good as so many are claiming, she will land on her feet and probably be better off. Who was it that said "If you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting?"

Anonymous said...

School administration is bloated and overpaid in comparison to teachers. The good old boy system is alive and well at your local school. Administrators tend to be former coaches and are surrounded by others just like them. Administrators think teachers are a dime a dozen but sacred cows such as fellow administrators are irreplaceable and can't be paid enough. There's not an original idea among most and they all copy whatever everyone else is doing. They cover each others rear end and run over any teacher that they feel intimidated by. Curriculum directors are nothing more then a job for a buddy who helped you get your job or just another reason to deny any reasonable pay increase to teachers. The governor may not have the right answer, but what has been going on for many years is not the answer either. Let's see if the change brings about any change and make a decision after we see the results.

Anonymous said...

7:38: that is the most ignorant thing I have heard today and believe me I have heard plenty. You obviously have no respect for leadership and you just assume institutions such as schools just run themselves. I can't even spend any more time on such an ill-informed, asinine comment.
As to Greitens and charter schools; It's in the data. Look at the DATA and what it says not only nationwide but in Missouri. State APR scores were just released and charter schools were out performed easily by public schools. Nearly 1/3 of all charter schools in Missouri are unaccredited or provisionally accredited according to reports released this month? Why has this happened? Where is the outcry for charter schools? You know what? There isn't any. Only a few people here and there are blindly following this push for charter schools. It is incredible to me that people are too lazy to research charters and see they are NOT the answer to any educational problem. Allowing taxpayer money to fund a charter school that the taxpayer has NO OVERSIGHT on is ludicrous. I feel I am in the twilight zone with this so called governor. This Democrat turned Republican, never held office, no knowledge of education whatsoever, in over his head incompetent dirty snake of a governor. And yes, I am saying all of this as a Republican. The kind of Republican that knows how to call out unethical behavior when I see it.

Anonymous said...

I'll just leave these little things called FACTS here for you pro charter folks:

http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article187224808.html

https://www.missourinet.com/2017/11/20/nearly-one-third-of-missouris-charter-schools-score-in-unaccredited-or-provisionally-accredited-zone/

Anonymous said...

Change has to happen at the local level. You aren’t going to see any change until you replace Board members with people who don’t allow administrators to hire their own friends and relatives and propose their own salary increases. It seems like a corrupt system when the superintendent goes to the board and says there isn’t money for teacher raises but then in the same breath proposes administrator raises higher than the state average. The local board has the power to tell the superintendent no, but they often don’t. The state department of education has nothing to do with local decisions about pay despite the governor’s claim that this will stop the problem. Local school boards make local decisions.

Anonymous said...

It was a 5-3 vote, not 5-4.