Maureen Downey: Farewell to Kathy Cox

I couldn’t say that about her predecessor and current state prison inmate Linda Schrenko, who would have rented a crane, strapped on a harness and started chiseling if it weren’t easier for her just to steal the money directly from the education budget to underwrite her face lift and doomed bid for governor.

In 2002, Cox, a high school teacher and state representative at the time, ran for school superintendent because she wanted to do the job. Unlike many elected officials, she didn’t run to sell more insurance back in Peachtree City or because her granddaddy once held the seat or because it was a good stepping stone to the Governor’s Mansion. She genuinely believed she could improve education in Georgia.

And she has. While it’s unclear what our exact graduation rate is because of our shaky head counts, there’s no doubt that it rose during her tenure. Has she improved education to the point that we can all sit back, kick off our shoes and proclaim, “Well done. Pour the champagne”?

No. But I think Cox took a moribund DOE, brought it back to life, set it on the right path and led Georgia into the age of tougher standards, greater accountability and higher expectations. I don’t think everyone was ready to go down the path, including superintendents, principals and teachers used to closing the door and running their own universes.

I continue to be impressed with Cox’s deputies at the DOE, including Martha Reichrath and Elizabeth Webb. These are smart women. They are not unaware of the problems facing education today. They are not ignoring the complaints about math or the concerns about vo-tech education. They know there’s too much testing. Like Cox, they’ve been in the classroom. They are not sealed off from the real world and the real challenges.

Cox’s final day was Wednesday, and she was feted at a simple cake-and-lemonade gathering. The party opened with a performance by students from the Georgia Pick and Bow Traditional Music Program.

Their first selection was “I’ll Fly Away,” a perfect soundtrack for someone leaving Georgia to lead a think tank in Washington. Cox had her whole family at her party, including her husband, two sons, her mother, her sister, her niece and a slew of in-laws.

There was a slide show, including a great cartoon that simultaneously spoofed Cox’s many hairstyles and her unfortunate comment in 2004 that the word “evolution” was omitted from the science curriculum because it was controversial, a decision that she came to regret and that she wisely undid. (In the cartoon, as Homo erectus advanced on the evolutionary scale, so did his hairstyles.)

What I liked best about her farewell was how much of it was spent talking about education. In her final moments as Georgia school superintendent, Cox talked about the performance standards, the efforts to get more teens to graduate and her pride in the improved conditions at the state schools for students who are deaf and blind.

And that is the another reason I find her likeable. She is passionate about education.

At times, I wish Cox had showed more of that passion with her fellow GOP leaders, such as when Gov. Sonny Perdue responded to the gas crisis in 2005 by shutting down schools and idling school buses. That delivered the exact wrong message about the value of education and Cox should have called him on it publicly.

Cox was more progressive than her party on education or at least than the leadership, and I think that was beginning to wear on her. This year, she became a bit more outspoken about what the proposed cuts would do to schools.

She leaves DOE to become CEO of the U.S. Education Delivery Institute, which will advise states on reform strategies. I assume that she will not have any political muzzles in her new job, and I will be eager to hear her views on education in Georgia in the next few months.

The two Republicans seeking her post want to reduce the federal role in Georgia, and even the federal monies, which pay for special education and for targeted aid to Georgia’s low-income schools. I have to imagine that Cox might have a few words to say about that.

I wish her well. She worked hard for Georgia schools. She was honest, focused and passionate.

And she is smarter than a fifth-grader, which isn’t all that easy, having two of them myself.