The State Board of Education corrected a mistake Wednesday by hiring Alexa Posny as Kansas education commissioner. The board’s previous conservative majority had passed over Posny, who was deputy education commissioner, when it hired Bob Corkins — a terrible decision, given Posny’s experience in education and Corkins’ lack of it. Posny later left the state to direct the Office of Special Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Now that the new moderate majority is back in control, it was fortunate to be able to bring Posny back.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- BlueJay on Let immigrants run
- Monkeyhawk on Let immigrants run
- Chrisfrommactown on Let immigrants run
- BlueJay on Let immigrants run
- Monkeyhawk on Too many exemptions
- JWink on Too many exemptions
- LonnythePlumber on Jail consultants straining patience
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
- Regular on Open thread 11/22
13 Comments
Information on Posny:
Spring 2006ON NCLBAlexa Posny, Director, OSEP
The purpose of both IDEA and NCLB is to ensure accountability for all students. NCLB says that all children can achieve to high standards; all schools are accountable for all students; and the accountability system must apply to all schools and all children. At the same time, the OSEP data collection has changed from collecting, entering, reporting, and analyzing data to using data for decisionmaking, accountability, and program improvement.
OSEP’s vision is to make the data managers’ jobs easier, help states implement changes in the law,and help states to build capacity. In turn, the data managers’ mission is to provide accurate baseline data and to provide complete, consistent, and well-documented data.
Challenges facing data managers include the migration to EDEN and EDFacts, changes to the data collection forms, alignment of IDEA data and NCLB data reporting, changes to the race/ethnicity categories, the demand for public reporting, and breaks in the trend data.
The Associated Press – Rural PovertyThe Rural Blog Jan 2005″Alexa Posny, an assistant state commissioner of education told him, “Poverty is by far the greatest factor in students entering school not knowing letters, words or even numbers,”
http://www.aapd-dc.org/News/education/070116edw.htm
Special Education Advisory Committeehttp://weblogs.hopkins.k12.mn.us/specialservices/
Alexny Posny Speaks on IDEA – April 12 and 13 at Pacer CenterApril 10th, 2007
Alexa Posny knows IDEA and how to explain it. The director of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education, Posny is the nation’s foremost speaker on special education. She oversees many programs affecting the education-and lives-of nearly 7 million children with disabilities across the nation.
Posny’s understanding of IDEA comes first-hand. She’s been a teacher of students with emotional and learning disabilities; a special education director in Kansas, Wisconsin, and Illinois; and a deputy commissioner of the Kansas State Department of Education. Posny has accrued a wealth of knowledge and shares it willingly and simply.
Good to see a professional back at the helm. It was a long, bleak time that, I hope, stays in the past.
I don’t blame Corkins! The man didn’t have a clue, about what, or how , he was supposed to accomplish anything.
But, He sure took the money and ran, when he was booted out of office.
Where is the foul cry from the press about the way this was handled? They would not release the names of the people being interviewed to the public. What were they hiding?
The above comment is not about who they hired. She may be fine. It should have been done in view of the public.
Thank goodness it’s all getting better now.
Ah, the poor christian crazies. No longer will ‘evolution’ be a dirty word in Kansas school education. No longer will the view of the bible of the minority, be the standard of Kansas education. Those who would only beieve that THEIR version of the bible is right are no longer in power. Good. Kansas will be better because of it.
Now we need to have a public discussion of what the Kansas Board of Education actually does.
Does it have a mission? Does it have too little authority or too much? What is the education level of the members and the new director? Is the KBOE actually needed?
The KBOE is the result of one of the dumber acts of the Legislature when it supported making the KBOE an independent body-constitutional change, as I recall.
What it means is the Legislature doesn’t have any control (and it can be a good or bad thing) over the KBOE.
As weak and wacky as Legislative oversight can be, I prefer it over the way it is. Pretty silly thing we did.
Dennis, et al: Because you apparently have some knowledge of the KBOE, how much authority over the local school boards does it actually have?
Can KBOE do any of the following?
1) Direct a local school board to add or delete courses?
2) Hire or fire a local BOE school superintendent? Staff person? Teacher?
3) Open or close a school?
4) Keep records on individual students as Mr. Corkins proposed to do?
5) Operate a high school under its own authority in any area normally covered by a local board of education? And hire principals and teachers to run the school?
6) Establish a curriculum and require the curriculum to be followed by local school boards?
7) Ignore the Kansas Legislature? And Kansas Governor?
I’m just asking these questions to find out how much power the Kansas Board of Education actually has? And do the citizens of Kansas approve of this power arrangement?
JWink, to respond to certain queries you raise above. The KBOE was created constitutionally in the 1960s. This was the result of the first school funding crisis which IIRC, resulted in a political compromise being reached. In exchange for the state providing some funding to the local school districts, which, although I was in elementary school at the time and have no direct personal knowledge, were totally financed by local property taxes, there would be an elected body to oversee the schools. BTW, as a result of the “crisis”, there was forced consolidation of many school districts.
It has been judicially determined that the KBOE is a “self executing” agency. It is my understanding that this means the KBOE operates at least somewhat independently of the legislature and the governor’s office.
The power of the State BOE to close a school lies within the “punitive” provisions of NCLB. Same with hiring/firing staff, etc. It is one of the extreme “remedial” provisions of NCLB where a certain district/school does not meet AYP, etc.
As a part of the provisions of NCLB, there are certain individualized records of a limited nature on students maintained at the state level. The acronymn for this is KIDS, a way of tracking students in state accredited schools (public or private) and their progress, even if the students move from district to district or school to school within a district.
I do not believe the KBOE has the power to required addition/deletion of courses, or to impose a curriculum. There are statutes which encompass certain required courses to be offered in order to grant a high school diploma. The power of the KBOE insofar as curriculum is concerned is the accrediting process. Some of this is governed by statute on QPA (quality performance accreditation), a part of the school finance law enacted in the early 1990s, which I believe is still operable. It has, again to my understanding, been replaced de facto by the AYP requirements of NCLB.
The above are from memory, and my understanding of the various laws (Federal and State) applicable to schools. No warranties, express or implied. Those who see incorrect statements, incomplete statements, etc., please do not hesitate to correct, provide additional information, etc.
As I read more about the hiring of Alexa Posny, I am questioning whether her background of education and experience is appropriate for the position of Kansas Education Commissioner.
About the only qualifications I have seen is that 1) she was previous deputy director to the Kansas Education Commissioner and 2) she worked for federal government in Washington DC in an office that had something to do with “special education.”
It seems to me that more appropriate experience would be communicating with the perhaps hundred or so local school boards on how to close the learning gap in Kansas and how to deal with the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
I think we need more information disseminated through our newspapers.
Vaughn Tolle: Thank you for shining some light on the background and powers of the Kansas Board of Education. As a citizen, I attend some meetings of Wichita’s USD 259 Board of Education meeting so I have a good idea of what they do. Its a tough schedule of long hours for no pay so local school board members should be congratulated.
However, in the case of the Kansas Board of Education, its not clear whether they play a needed role in our government. It seems to me, former KBOE director, Bob Corkins, was trying to establish a bureaucracy, a kind of super school board, to provide himself and a chosen few jobs for the forseeable future. He wanted to open some so-called “charter” schools directly under the KBOE and also establish a huge record keeping function whereby records of every Kansas school child would have been in KBOE files in Topeka. Needless to say, there was no call for this by Kansas citizens so luckily Corkins is history.
But I wonder if a Kansas Board of Education is really needed to establish policy? Or is the 165 member Kansas legislature the better choice to establish state-wide school policy?
As I recall the Eagle was highly critical when Bob Corkins was paid $140,000 (a little less than his predecessor made). Please correct me if my memory is wrong. I am anxiously awaiting the editorial criticizing the $165,000/year his successor will be making.