Good riddance

Posted by Josh Rosenau on November 26, 2006
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Right before the long Thanksgiving weekend, incompetent, unqualified hack:

Education Commissioner Bob Corkins resigned Wednesday, ending a short and stormy tenure as Kansas? education chief before a new Board of Education could do it for him.

In a 7-3 vote, the board accepted the resignation ?with regret? and agreed to provide Corkins with a severance package that includes 30 days? pay and benefits.

Janet Waugh voted not to accept the resignation “with regret,” since she has none. Personally, I only regret that this story will get buried in the Turkey Day newspaper, which is why I’m running it now.

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Comments

  1. #1 Zeno
    November 26, 2006

    Would it be uncool to accept a resignation “with delight”?

  2. #2 Larry Fafarman
    November 26, 2006

    So what’s the big deal about the lack of experience in education? The Los Angeles Unified School District is now headed by a retired Navy vice-admiral.

    This reminds me of Al Campanis’s remark that blacks “may not have some of the necessities” to be baseball managers.

    And if Corkins did not have experience in education when he started, he sure has it now.

  3. #3 Josh
    November 26, 2006

    Larry, I fail to see the analogy to someone’s racism.

    Bob Corkins may or may not have experience with education now, but education has experienced him and doesn’t like what it’s found. He as been asked not to visit school districts in Wichita again, has wasted money on grants to people with no experience in the areas they are supposed to address and with no connection to Kansas education, and has built his career advocating the dismemberment of the public school system.

    A naval officer at least has administrative experience. Corkins has no managerial experience either, and high rates of staff turnover suggest that his inexperience has hurt the state education department.

    I certainly accept his resignation with delight.

  4. #4 CSA
    November 27, 2006

    Larry, it’s true that some folks are capable of leading outside their area of expertise.

    However, when that wannabe leader has *actively attacked* the area he’s now supposed to lead . . . and when the hiring body changed the rules of hiring to enable hiring their ideological buddy instead of more experienced, better-qualified candidates . . . the KSBE set him up for failure in their blind rush of authoritarianism.

    Hiring Corkins was like asking Colonel Sanders to guard the chickenhouse, or asking Connie Morris to chair an NSF review committee.

  5. #5 Albatrossity
    November 27, 2006

    From out in right field, larry writes:

    So what’s the big deal about the lack of experience in education?

    As others have pointed out, Corkins’ lack of experience, coupled with his active antagonism toward many of the basic tenets of public education, should be enough to make any sentient person happy about his “resignation.” In fact, those characteristics should have been enough to deny him the job in the first place.

    But if an obvious lack of qualifications was enough to keep folks out of a job, we’d have a different POTUS as well…

  6. #6 Albatrossity
    November 28, 2006

    Amazing! In these two short sentences

    This is why many theists are concerned…some of them would like to retire from the fight, but you insure that they are inspired to continue. Because they know you will try to come after them…if you can, and, as some of you have suggested, with legal action.

    Grady manages to squeeze in at least 5 unsupported (and unsupportable) notions! It sure makes it hard to keep up with this sort of pace.

    But I’d like to hear him support at least one of those. Grady, which “theists” are concerned that someone will “go after” them if they quit? Is it really the fear of non-believers that is driving them past retirement age, and if so, how can you prove that it is not something else (e.g. fear of hell, fear of losing all the perks of being a spokespiece for God, etc.).

    If indeed there are “many” of these, surely you can provide us with some names…