The Kentucky state legislature is considering a bill that would allow voters to elect members of the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE). As a former member of KBE, the time has come to make the board, and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) and Commissioner of Education that it oversees, more directly accountable to the people.
Traditionally, Kentucky law provided that the governor would appoint members of KBE, who served four-year, overlapping terms. This meant that a governor’s appointees would not make up a majority of the board until at least two years into his first term.
The KBE hired and evaluated the state’s Commissioner of Education. All of this was meant to shield the work of KBE and KDE from the more brutal winds of partisan politics. Board members did not answer to the governor once elected, and the commissioner reported to an independent board.
This model worked well from the time of its adoption in the 1990s until 2018, although arguably the Kentucky Board of Education through much of that period was largely an institution that defended the education status quo and reflected the interests of superintendents and local boards of education.
All of this began to change during my own term on the Kentucky Board of Education, which lasted from 2016 to 2019. When Gov. Matt Bevin, who appointed me and five other members of the 11-member board in 2016, had the opportunity in 2018 to appoint members to the remaining six positions, KBE promptly fired sitting Commissioner Stephen Pruitt.
This was an ill-advised and ill-timed move that I voted against. To be clear, KBE was fully within its authority to make this change, and I believe my fellow board members were sincere in their desire to accelerate student achievement, but as I predicted, the decision was widely seen as a power play on the part of the governor to manipulate the direction of education in the state.
The next year, Andy Beshear made promises to oust the sitting board on his first day of office as a centerpiece of his campaign for governor. Beshear delivered on the promise, firing me and the remaining KBE members in a move we subsequently, and unsuccessfully, challenged in court as a violation of state law.
Beshear’s new board then forced the resignation of Commissioner Wayne Lewis and appointed the highly controversial Jason Glass, who – following the ideology of Beshear and Kentucky Democratic Party – pursued a relentlessly far-left education agenda utterly out of step with average Kentuckians and most superintendents and local boards of education until he was finally pressured to resign last year.
The Kentucky legislature has tried to bring back some accountability to KBE and KDE, first by changing the law to prohibit the governor from ever “reorganizing” the board in such a fashion and establishing that board members must represent both political parties. Then last year the law was changed again to make the appointment of the commissioner subject to confirmation by the Kentucky Senate.
However, even with these new measures the Kentucky Board of Education remains remote and disconnected from the ordinary Kentuckians it is meant to represent. Senate Bill 8, sponsored by Sen. Mike Wilson (R-Bowling Green), will create direct accountability to voters by making members of KBE elected officials representing each of Kentucky’s seven Supreme Court districts. Kentucky would join eight other states, plus the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories, which elect some or all the members of their state boards of education.
Some will argue that SB 8 will make Kentucky’s education system even more political. But the truth is that politics has always been a part of KBE’s work. Education is a values-laden enterprise, and politics is how we reflect our values in public policy. The political nature of KBE in the past just went unnoticed by the public and reflected the education status quo. The events of recent years have simply exposed the ideological differences that reflect our complex, competing views of education.
Rather than allow Kentucky education to continue to be the political football of the governor and state legislature, Senate Bill 8 will make the state’s education leadership directly accountability to voters. Making education more democratic should be a priority worth bipartisan support.
Gary Houchens, Ph.D., is a professor of education administration at Western Kentucky University. He served on the Kentucky Board of Education from 2016-2019. This commentary first appeared at Kentucky Today.