Superintendent of Public Instruction

Incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson is running against challenger Randy Dorn, head of the Classified school workers union and former state legislator.

Superintendent (Doctor) Bergeson was a teacher and school administrator, head of the state teachers union, ran the state committee that created the WASL, and has been Superintendent of Public Instruction since 1997.

(Former) Representative Dorn is a former teacher and principal, former state representative (for 7 years) who chaired the State House Committee on K-12 Education, and currently runs the second largest school workers union in the state.

Superintendent Bergeson took a plurality of the six-way August Primary with nearly 40% of the vote. Representative Dorn received just over 5% less of the vote in the Primary.

While Superintendent Bergeson was initially the darling of the state teachers union there is now no love-loss between either of the public school employees unions and the current Superintendent.

Representative Dorn has made the WASL the primary issue of this election. While I personally support an objective, standardized testing program as part of earning a High School Diploma, the WASL is just horrible. Teaching to a good test leads to good fundamentals. Teaching to the WASL (a subjective test) that absolutely does not teach the basics. (Watch this well-done video to see an example).

Its time for the sad state of affairs in actual graduation numbers to be addressed. The incumbent is ensconced in defending a bad standards test that she developed and is deaf to calls for looking at actual rates of graduation instead of using cooked numbers.

I may not be a fan of the state teachers union agenda for schools, but their candidate is better than the status quo.

I am voting for Randy Dorn for Superintendent of Public Instruction.