Katie Henke, a Republican candidate for House District 71, announced today she is siding with Oklahoma school superintendents on the issue of “grading” local schools.
Many superintendents have been expressing concerns over the grading system developed by State Schools Superintendent Janet Barresi. Henke said today she is sensitive to those concerns and believes Superintendent Barresi needs to address them before moving ahead with her grading system.
“I was disappointed to learn that Superintendent Barresi had not worked closely with our local school superintendents to develop this system,” said Henke. “I would think that anything as significant as this would be done in collaboration with the local school superintendents who know their schools the best. I believe the Board of Education made the right decision in delaying the grading announcement in order to work on addressing the concerns of local superintendents.”
Henke said she hopes Superintendent Barresi will work to address all of the current concerns, but also hopes Ms. Barresi will work more closely with education officials in the future to prevent situations like this from occurring.
“I don’t know Janet Barresi personally, so I’m not questioning her motives, but this situation clearly could have been avoided by working closely with local superintendents to get their input from the beginning of the process,” said Henke. “I hope in the future she will form a better working relationship with these individuals, because they are such an important part of our public education system.”
I find it funny that the education establishment can do a poor job of educating our children and then be offended when anyone wants to question their performance. We can supposedly test for virtually anything but teacher and system competence. We have the most overpaid and under worked education system on the plant and the results are abysmal.