OH: New Education Czar Does Not Impress

One of the more baldfaced power grabs of 2023 was the Ohio GOP's decision to strip power from the department of education and cut the elected state board or education off at the knees, shoving all the power into the new Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and its governor-appointed director, who is already showing less-than-stellar abilities.

Look, sometimes democracy is a pain because people won't just fall in line. But there are ways around it, and this power grab was one example. In this approach, you just keep taking power away from any part of the government that might not do as you wish. In Ohio's case, that has meant commandeering the Department of Education and putting it directly under the governor's control. The old state board of education included 11 elected members (the governor got to appoint 8), and that's just too much democracy for Governor DeWine.

To run this new fiefdom, DeWine tapped Steve Dackin. What a choice.

Dackin has been a district-level school administrator. In 2015 he was put on the board of KnowledgeWorks, a big Gates-funded reformy monstrosity ("I had the opportunity of working with EDWorks and KnowledgeWorks at a local level, and am looking forward to sharing those experiences as a member of the board of directors.") He's not there now.

But his most infamous activity comes from his time on the state board of education. He was vice-president and in charge of developing a job search for the next state superintendent. After he had determined what the best candidate should look like, he resigned from the board and applied for the job. Then he got the job. Then a large number of Ohioans raised their eyebrows so hard that Lake Erie's water level rose ten inches. So after about eleven days on the job, Dackin resigned, citing that "concerns have been raised" and he didn't want questions about "revolving doors" to distract "from the important work ahead for schools, educators, and especially children." Setting aside the prediction of children having important work ahead, the resignation seemed pretty clear cut.

Now Dackin is head of the new department, and "state superintendent" is a guy who answers to him. See, the trick is in applying for a job where just one guy does the hiring. Revolving door, indeed.

The new department has been up and running for three months. Dackin just talked to Karen Kasler at Statehouse News Bureau about how things are going, and the results are uninspiring.

The write-up is brief, but Dackin packs it with one howler after another.

Department of Education and Workforce director Steve Dackin said he likes the priorities of the new cabinet-level agency, which "happened to be the priorities of the governor. And so that's a good match and that's a good alignment. And that's one of the reasons I chose to pursue this opportunity."

Yes, it's some sort of serendipitous fluke that the group created and staffed by the governor reflects the governor's priorities. It's almost as if the governor forced the bodies dealing with education policy to come under his control so that he could force them to implement his chosen ideas. Maybe Dackin is trying to pretend that that's not what happened and that Ohio's GOP didn't turn state-level education control into a political patronage job. But he knows why he's there, who hired him, and what that person expects. This is like walking into a bar, sitting down and observing, "Man, lucky for me I walked into a place that serves beer!"

Here's an even better one

"It is critical for us to have protocols in place where we get the kind of feedback that we need to hear directly from parents and other constituents. So we we're required by law to have a public meeting at least once every two months," Dackin said. 

You know a good way to get feedback from parents and other constituents? Hold elections. What use is feedback to a department that is there to implement the governor's policy choices?

It is barely noticeable that Dackin does not include actual teachers and school staff on the list of people he wants feedback from. No surprise there. 

It fits in with his big priority, which is the "implementation of the Science of Reading program." First, there's no such thing as a particular singular Science of Reading program. And while we could get side tracked on the many reasons to greet SOR with distrust and disbelief, I'm going to skip that, because there is no instructional or pedagogical program that I believe in so much that I would like to see a state mandate it.

State mandates for particular instruction are doomed. First, politicians do not get their information from experts in education, but from experts in lobbying and advocacy. Second, the face of education is constantly changing and the program that you are so certain of today will inevitably become the washed-up thing that needs to be jettisoned a few years from now. Reading in particular is an area marked by only one instructional piece of advice that is always being given-- whatever you're doing now, you should do less of that and more of that other thing.

SoR advocacy is more tied up with politics and culture then some of the earlier pendulum swings, but one thing remains the same-- the best teaching for this complicated and complex human activity will always be a teacher who has a vast array of tools in her instructional toolbox. 

You know who probably won't be required to implement Science of Reading? The many private schools collecting taxpayer-funded vouchers. Public schools in Ohio still haven't seen fair funding goals met, but expanding Ohio's vouchers toward the universal, so now wealthy families that already have their kids in private schools can get a sweet rebate from other taxpayers via the state, while public schools watch mountains of money head out the door. 

Dackin thinks that's just swell. 

"The expansion of scholarship programs and availability of educational options to parents is something that I embrace and something that the agency will continue to embrace and build on," Dackin said.

So low-income taxpayers get the chance to fund private school for the wealthy while their own schools lose resources. 

If you're in Ohio and you are not impressed by the sorts of things Dackin wants to embrace and build on you can--well, not much, actually. He works for the governor, not you.