Education Week - March 20,2019 - 16

Meet the Latest Class
Of State Schools Chiefs
By Daarel Burnette II
Being a state schools chief is a high-profile,
high-pressure job, subject to political uncertainties as well as policy challenges. That's reflected in the turnover rate: The average tenure of a state chief today is below two years.
The most recent class of state superintendents-10 in all, not including those named
on an interim basis-was ushered in after
last-year's midterm elections, most of them
appointed by newly elected governors. All except for Florida's once worked as a teacher in a
school district, marking a break away from an
era in which many governors hired business
leaders and politicians to take charge of state
departments of education. And this latest crop
is ethnically diverse-Illinois and Wisconsin
both hired their first women of color to take
charge of their school systems.

ARIZONA | KATHY HOFFMAN
* Salary: $85,000
* Experience: Special education
teacher
* Elected
For the last four years, Arizona's since-departed state schools chief, Republican Diane Douglas, was at odds with Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and his appointed
state board of education over who's in charge,
who works for whom, and state standards.
Since being inaugurated, Hoffman has
pushed to repair the department's relationship
with the political leaders. And she has pushed
for more funding for schools, reminding the
public that, though Ducey promised teachers a
20 percent raise by 2020, other staff members
at schools, including custodians, paraprofessionals, secretaries, and special education
teachers, also deserve a raise.
"I'm acutely aware of the diminished resources and the shortages," the former special
education teacher said about the shortage of
special education teachers. "There's also a retention problem because they're burning out
and leaving the field."

CALIFORNIA | TONY THURMOND
* Salary: $165,126
* Experience: State assemblyman, school board member
* Elected
California's state superintendent race, in which Thurmond was backed by
the state's teachers union, was the most expensive in the country. Thurmond defeated opponent
Marshall Tuck, who was backed by the state's
charter sector, by fewer than 100,000 votes.
Thurmond takes office at a volatile time
for education politics in California, as state
leaders wrestle with the local role in policy,
how to spend a rapidly growing pot of state
funds, and how to hold district officials accountable for lagging academic results. This
school year, teachers in Los Angeles and
Oakland staged strikes to protest their pay,
class size and oversight of charter schools. In
response, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom, a
Democrat, signed legislation for more charter
transparency rules and he has promised the
department will study charter schools' impact
on district funding.
Newsom, a Democrat, appointed as the
chairwoman of the state's board of education

Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford scholar
who has a similar stance as her predecessor
and next door neighbor, Michael Kirst.

FLORIDA | RICHARD CORCORAN
* Salary: $276,000
* Experience: Attorney, former
speaker
of the Florida House of
Representatives
* Appointed by state board
The state's board was strongly urged by recently elected Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to appoint Corcoran, who served on his
transition committee. Many in the state, including the state's teachers' union and many
civil rights advocates, felt the state's board of
education should conduct a national search for
a new commissioner. But board members said
Corcoran "checked all the boxes."
Corcoran faces some big challenges, including juggling both state and federal school accountability systems, and overseeing a slew
of new state laws that deal with school choice
and school spending.
While the state's academic outcomes have
ticked upward in recent years, many districts
face teacher shortages, and advocates have
long complained about offerings for Englishlanguage learners. In addition, the new governor says he wants to rid Florida of the last
vestiges of the Common Core State Standards,
an announcement that forced the state education department to delay adoption of new instructional materials and confused districts
and vendors alike.

ILLINOIS | CARMEN AYALA
* Salary: To be determined by
state board of education
at March meeting
* Experience: Teacher,
assistant superintendent,
superintendent
* Appointed by state board
Ayala is the first woman of color to take over
the state's education department and was endorsed by recently elected Gov. J.B. Pritzker,
a Democrat. She previously served as superintendent of Berwyn North School District,
and has been a teacher, director of bilingual
services, assistant superintendent, and superintendent at various times in her career.
She takes over the state department at a
pivotal time. The department recently streamlined its teacher licensing process, scrapped
the PARCC exam for a shorter state exam,
expanded its offering of ACT and SAT tests,
and two years ago rolled out a new funding
formula.

ers. That includes, for a brief period, LePage
himself after he got frustrated with the state
chief's nomination process in 2016.
When Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, was
elected last year, Makin, then assistant superintendent of Brunswick schools, wrote to
Mills about what she'd like to see changed at
the state's department of education. Among
her suggestions: more freedom for administrators to decide how to run their schools, less red
tape, and more trust between state and local
officials. A few weeks later, Mills nominated
Makin to be the state chief.
The mostly rural state has lost thousands
of students in recent years, resulting in major
budget cuts for some districts. As state chief,
Makin says she wants to push for more investment in pre-K and career tech programs.

* Salary: Not available as of
press time
* Experience: Assistant
superintendent, recent state
principal of the year
* Appointed by governor
Under former Republican Gov. Paul LePage's two terms, Maine had five commission-

16 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 20, 2019 | www.edweek.org

TENNESSEE | PENNY SCHWINN
* Salary: $200,000

MINNESOTA | MARY CATHRYN RICKER
* Salary:
$150,002
* Experience: Teacher,
AFT vice president
* Appointed by governor
Gov. Tim Walz's pick of Ricker, the executive
vice president of the American Federation of
Teachers, as state chief made national headlines and firmly situated a team of educators in charge of the state. The governor is a
former teacher, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is
a former Minneapolis school board member,
and the state teachers' union heavily backed
Walz's campaign.
Ricker, who previously had served as the
president of St. Paul's teachers' union, replaces the long-serving Brenda Casselius in
overseeing a state school system that is among
the nation's highest-performing, but where a
growing number of poor, rural, black, immigrant, and Latino students have not excelled
academically. Many districts have also operated in the red, and the state faces a growing
teacher shortage in rural areas.

MISSOURI | MARGIE VANDEVEN
* Salary:
$192,000
* Experience: High school
English teacher, Missouri
deputy superintendent of
learning services
* Appointed by state board
Vandeven, who was fired by the state's board
of education last year, was rehired in a unanimous vote late last year by a board with several newly appointed members. She'd clashed
with former Republican Gov. Eric Greitens,
who'd appointed a majority of the previous
board, over expansion of charter schools.
Among her challenges, the state education
department recently rolled out a new testing
system, its fourth in the last five years as the
state's legislature changed its standards.

NEW MEXICO | KAREN TRUJILLO
* Salary: $128,000

MAINE | PENDER MAKIN

and teacher-evaluation systems, crafted
under the previous administration, upset
most of the state's teachers and the Democratic party, which recently took back the
capitol, has promised to replace both systems wholesale.
Trujillo is a long-time New Mexico educator who recently has been serving as associate
dean for research at New Mexico State University's College of Education. Grisham also
picked Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at the Graduate School of Education &
Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, to serve as the governor's
own education advisor.

* Experience: Math teacher,
principal, college
administrator
* Appointed by governor
New Mexico will undergo some of the biggest school accountability changes this year
as the state makes the transition from former
Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, to Gov.
Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The state's letter-grade accountability

* Experience: Teacher, charter
school founder, Texas Education
Agency deputy
* Appointed by governor
Schwinn will be stepping into a difficult
job. The Tennessee department of education has been under attack by teachers and
district administrators for its administering
of the state's botched standardized test. The
state had to scrap its entire letter-grade accountability system, which determines some
students' grades, teachers' evaluations, and
whether several schools should be shuttered
or taken over by the state.
In addition, the state's Achievement School
District, tasked with taking over academically struggling schools and handing them
over to charter providers, has failed to improve many of the schools it took over in several impoverished Memphis neighborhoods
five years ago. Several charter operators
have pulled out of the ambitious experiment.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has pledged to
expand the state's charter sector and to push
for the expansion of vouchers, a proposal
that has had a difficult time politically in
recent years.
Prior to her service in Texas, Schwinn
founded a charter school in Sacramento. She
worked as a TFA teacher in Baltimore and Los
Angeles at the beginning of her career and
comes from a family of educators.

WISCONSIN | CAROLYN STANFORD TAYLOR
* Salary: Not available as of
press time
* Experience: Teacher, principal,
union leader, assistant state
superintendent of the division of
learning support
* Appointed by governor
Stanford Taylor is the state's first black
superintendent of public instruction and for
the last 17 years has served as the state's assistant state superintendent of the division of
learning support. She was appointed by Gov.
Tony Evers, a Democrat, who was himself the
state chief prior to his upset victory in last
year's gubernatorial election.
As state chief, Stanford Taylor will be in
charge of implementing a new accountability
system that the legislature has denounced as
ineffective, and working with Evers to figure
out a way to pump millions more dollars into
the state's public school system, which has lost
thousands of students in recent years. Evers
has also discussed attempting to halt growth
of the state's voucher system and limiting the
charter school expansion.
"He's going to reach across the aisle," Stanford Taylor told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about relations between the governor and
the GOP-controlled legislature.

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