Old CW: Newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas will be a complete disaster.
New CW: No big deal, don't worry about it.
After the jump...
Diane Douglas ran her campaign, what there was of it, purely on opposition to Common Core standards. On paper, she can't single handedly repeal Common Core. This is despite her claim that she's got a mandate to do so.
The vehemence that some in the media had in opposition to Douglas before she was elected is now matched by ho-humming editorials about how little power she'll actually have. This leaves me worried about how much attention they will pay to her if her handlers keep her from spouting Ev Mecham-style diatribes.
She's already got a crew in the legislature that will be willing to go along with her proposals, what ever those may be. So, whatever constitutional authority she's got really doesn't matter as much as the fact that she's been given a bully pulpit.
More importantly, her election sends a signal: as much as Arizona voters and business organizations claim to care about public education, there is really no consequence to not supporting our schools.
Let's say you are newly elected Doug Ducey and you are faced with having to battle the legislature over the court order to make up the $317 million that the state is in arrears to our public schools. Does you go into a knock down drag out with the legislature like Brewer did on Medicaid?
It's unlikely that he would have been inclined to do so in the first place. Plus, he just beat a guy whose platform was almost exclusively support for public education. Throw that in with the fact that we just elected this moron as our top education official. What pressure is there on him to put his butt on the line?
Elections have consequences. Yes, even for offices with little constitutional power. People in charge read the results. What do you think it means when a superbly qualified candidate gets beaten by a woman who got ousted from her local school board and couldn't be bothered to actually campaign?
We just told the state's political establishment that all our talk about public schools is really just lip service. I just hope we don't have the nerve to scratch our heads and ask "why" when we continue to go down the tubes.