In turning his back on any semblance of reason and coherence, South Carolina Superintendent of Education, Mick Zais continues to issue incredibly thoughtless, uninformed and politically-driven education Fatwas that are going to trigger public school reversals that will take decades to recoup.
It is instructive to compare the Zais educational CV with that of his predecessor, Dr. Jim Rex. To their credit, both men have Masters and Ph.D advanced degrees. The Rex Masters is in Education Administration; his Ph.D – Curriculum and Instruction. As for Zais, he has an MS in Organization Behavior and an MA in Military History. Zais had a distinguished military career retiring as a Brigadier General (one star, 0-7 pay grade) after 31 years of service in Vietnam, Korea and Kosovo. He was a Professor at West Point before going on to the presidency of a small church school, Newberry College, for a decade.
Rex has an administrative college background as a Dean of Education at two Universities and a presidency of Columbia College. The huge gap between the two men is Rex’s academic credentials in education and his classroom experience as a high school English teacher. Zais came into office totally devoid of any knowledge of or experience in any public school classroom setting.
And it shows.
His reasoning in rejecting a possible education grant for the state is painfully and woefully political. He doesn’t believe in taking orders from Washington. In his intractable position not to accept anywhere from $10 - $50 million in grants from the Federal ‘Race to the Top’ program, Zais, in contradicting the overwhelming support for the grant from the South Carolina Board of Education, cites the need for less federal intrusion to succeed. Federal instrusion? Free money? Our own taxpayer money coming back to the state? Millions of dollars so desperately needed that schools are proposing bond issues to keep the school doors open. If you don’t like some of the fed demands leave them off the application. Problem solved.
Remember, Rex persuaded the legislature to pass legislation forcing former Governor, Mark Sanford’s refusal to accept American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, into the state supreme court. The court, in countering Sanford’s rejection, essentially cited the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article 6, Clause 2) as the driver of the decision.
The resulting money ultimately saved well over 5,000 teacher’s jobs.
You can read the entirety of the case and the courts decision here… http://m.sccourts.org/whatsnew/supportingDocuments/BriefInSupportOfDeclaratoryandEquitableRelief.pdf
In purporting to hate fed money, Zais conveniently ignores the fact that he has been a willing benefactor of that very same money for decades. Over his military career, he most likely earned a whole lot more than a million federal dollars in salary and benefits. His retirement will eclipse that figure as well over time. Then there are modestly-taxed food and housing allowances, health care and countless other perks. All generously laid on the Zais doorstep by (gasp) the feds!
Zais contradicts himself in saying that a possible grant of $12.5 million per year would simply be an insignificant amount per student (not worth the bother), then in the next sentence he expresses the fear that the feds would force the state to continue to fund ‘Race to the Top’ after the 4-year program period. What is it? Is it insignificant or is it too expensive for a state that magically unearthed $100 million in additional education dollars in a (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) “reserve fund” when it became politically expedient to do so?
Proposing to bypass Zais altogether, as SC voters should have done, Molly Spearman, Executive Director of the State Association of School Administrators has declared that the administrators and other like-minded groups are going after a portion of the third round $500 million ‘Race to the Top’ funds earmarked for preschools. The incomprehensible Zais response? He doubts the lasting benefits of early childhood programs.
He should be fired tomorrow for just that one statement. There have literally been hundreds of studies over the years verifying the ‘benefits’ of such programs. And all of the credible research has concluded that these benefits invariably extend to a lifetime… fewer high school dropouts, increased college attendance, better and higher paying jobs, much greater lifetime earnings, fewer people on the welfare doles and less crime committed by preschool-trained youngsters in adulthood. And that’s just for openers. The findings are consistent and dramatic.
My recommendation - if we can’t figure out a way to get Zais fired, then follow the lead of Molly Spearman and the School Administrators; ignore this clueless ideologue.
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