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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Fulfilling the hopes of many, the Board of Education named Alexa Posny to be the Commissioner of Education. Dr. Posny will replace Bob Corkins, the woefully unqualified commish installed by the previous Board. This undoes the last of the major damage done by the previous Board.
Bob Corkins is the classic lame duck. Since August, he knew that the first action the new Board would take in January was to can him and start looking for a replacement. He has only been on the job for a year, and has managed to get most school administrators and teachers against him.
Apparently Bob Corkins gave away $32,000 to whoever asked for it. The money came from federal funds for charter schools.
The New York Times and Paul Decelles point out that wingnut Kansas Board of Ed.
Would it be uncool to accept a resignation "with delight"?
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.
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.
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.
From out in right field, larry writes:
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...
Amazing! In these two short sentences
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...