The US Department of Education was created by President Carter in the 70s. Every year since then someone in Congress, in the education community or in some political capacity (including pundits) has called for the elimination of the DOE. Once again there are those today, 35 plus years later, calling for the elimination of the US DOE. While most observers believe that under SOE DeVos there may be a reduction in DOE programs, scope and staff. She has not spoken out yet on the elimination of the USDOE. We shall see how that plays out in coming months.
Same is true on the Michigan Department of Education. I have been involved in state and local education issues for over 35 years. I heard the calls for MDOE elimination when I worked in the Michigan Senate, when I worked for the Grand Rapids Public Schools and when I was working on education public policy issues in Lansing and Washington over the last few decades.
I continued like everyone else to hear the class for MDOE eliminator or reform/reorganization as President of Northern Michigan University and as a faculty member.
Same is true for the debate on appointment or election of SBE members. One observation is if Michigan were to go to Gubernatorial appointment of SBE members then there ought to be a statutory/constitutional requirement of more transparency on the appointments and appointees background. There ought to be a requirement that the Senate in its advice and consent obligations must be required to hold public hearings for each appointee so the public can hear and see more about each nominee. Often in past years when the Governor's office and the Senate is of the same party there are not hearings held for the nominees. That is true today in this process.
The above ought to be true of the appointment of Gubernatorial appointees to public university boards. It is greatly needed. More on that later.
GVSU President Haas and the other members of this commission have done an admirable job in laying out a set of recommendations. State Representative Kelly has layer out his concerns over those recommendations and I am sure more in the legislature and in the educational community will weigh in now. What is important now is the this report and the recommendations get broad debate across the state and the legislature utilizes it public hearing process to dig more into these recommendations and find a way for us all to come together on how we want to govern education, who should do it, how to make it transparent and measurable. We should all get about this now.