The feud between Gov. Nathan Deal and state schools superintendent John Barge has been a long time coming.
So long, a previous governor foresaw it before either Deal or Barge took office.
OK, so maybe that previous governor, Sonny Perdue, didn’t anticipate Barge openly talking about challenging an incumbent governor from his own party. But Perdue’s 2010 proposal to change the superintendent and three other elected officers (the agriculture, insurance and labor commissioners) to appointed jobs was based on the idea politics too often enters into what should be administrative, policy-focused jobs.
That appears to be what’s going on between Barge and Deal.
Both were elected in 2010. As is typical, they didn’t campaign as a team or as part of a slate, beyond both being GOP nominees in the November election.
They ran for office pitching their own visions for education in Georgia. For better or worse, our governors share in the credit for schools’ successes and the blame for their failures, and their campaigns reflect that reality. They don’t cede the issue to the candidates for schools superintendent.
So when Deal and Barge took office in January 2011, there was little, if any, foundation laid for joint work toward mutual policy goals. They had given scant indication they even hewed to the same basic beliefs about public education.
The ride hasn’t been smooth. The two have clashed about job appointments and the budget within the Education Department and, most publicly, about last year’s charter schools amendment.
Barge explained his potential gubernatorial bid to the AJC’s Greg Bluestein as a next step, having already accomplished his goals for his time in office. More likely, Barge meant he has done all he is going to do as long as he’s at loggerheads with the governor.
“Part of the frustration is that for us to be able to accomplish what we need to be able to accomplish, we need more support,” Barge said the AJC. “I’m convinced things can be done differently.”
Of course, even if Barge were to beat the long odds and unseat Deal, he could also wind up with a successor as superintendent who was no more inclined than Deal to go along with the different way Barge wants to do things.
Governors and superintendents have fought publicly before. Roy Barnes and Linda Schrenko come to mind, and Schrenko eschewed a possible third term in office to run for governor.
But at least Barnes was a Democrat and Schrenko a Republican. If ostensible political allies can’t get along any better than this, should we consider a change after all? Should Georgia’s legislators and voters take a cue from Perdue and amend the constitution to make the schools superintendent an appointed position?
Georgia is in the minority nationally: Just 13 states have elected schools superintendents, with the rest chosen by appointment. Those 13 states tend to perform slightly below the national average in rankings compiled by the likes of Education Week, Students First and Kids Count, which look at performance as well as states’ educational systems.
Perdue’s plan came at a particularly populist point in time. Tea partyers and Democrats alike found the plan distasteful, and they’re unlikely to feel any different now. That doesn’t mean they’re right.
One thing we know is Georgia legislators and governors will dabble in education policy and claim — plausibly — it’s because voters expect them to do so. Are the pols leading the voters on this, or vice versa? Who knows?
What we have now is a situation where three centers of power — the governor, the superintendent and the Legislature — can lay credible claim to an electoral mandate to improve public education. This may be a case in which less would be more.
The Legislature, which would have to approve any constitutional amendment, would do well to study the issue and come back with one of two recommendations: Either push for an amendment to let the governor appoint (at least) the superintendent, or have legislators and the governor take a step back from setting schools policy.
