States

Governors Leave Education Legacies

By Jessica L. Sandham — September 16, 1998 6 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

During his first campaign for Georgia’s highest office in 1990, Zell Miller outlined his vision for a new state lottery program that would keep Georgians from crossing state lines to play the revenue-generating games of chance and benefit education to boot.

Eight years later, it’s that vision rather than Mr. Miller’s name that will appear on the Georgia ballot. For while Mr. Miller is winding up his second and, by law, final term as governor, Georgia voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution to seal the link between the lottery and education that the outgoing governor forged.

Regardless of the constitutional vote, however, Mr. Miller’s educational legacy is air-tight.

Mr. Miller is one of 11 governors leaving office next January, many of whom led high-profile efforts for students and schools that have collectively helped secure education as one of the nation’s foremost political concerns.

Whether their successors will keep the educational torch burning as brightly depends largely on their ability to establish agendas early and stay the course, national education observers say. With 36 gubernatorial races this November, education is a prime topic on many campaign trails.

“The big question is, can we end up with another group of long-term performers?” said Frank Newman, the president of the Denver-based Education Commission of the States. “Can we translate campaign interest in education into long-term interest?”

The Long View

In Georgia, widespread support for the Democratic governor’s lottery-supported HOPE Scholarship and prekindergarten programs practically guarantees their continued existence for years to come, said Mark D. Musick, the president of the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board.

“The South has had some pretty substantial education governors, but you’d be hard-pressed to say any were more so than Zell Miller,” Mr. Musick said. “He is a governor who has made a difference.”

For the next class of governors, turning political promises into an educational legacy could become increasingly difficult in an era of legislative term limits and turnover that favors “shorter-term, more politically oriented actions,” Mr. Newman said. “If there’s one thing that’s clear about education reform, it’s that it takes a long, long time.”

Rounding out his 16th year in office, outgoing Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad appears to know a thing or two about the long haul.

Even in a recent unsuccessful tug of war as a lame-duck governor, Mr. Branstad can be credited for the sheer perseverance he showed this summer in trying to coax state lawmakers into a special session on his proposal to strengthen merit pay for teachers, said Jolene Franken, the president of the Iowa State Education Association.

While he failed to rally sufficient support for a special session, the four-term governor--who has chosen not to seek re-election--ensured that the issue of teacher standards and compensation would live past his tenure by establishing a commission to analyze the topic and make recommendations to the 1999 legislature.

Still, the Republican chief executive’s greatest contribution to Iowa schools remains the 1996 establishment of a five-year, $150 million technology program that provided a “real shot in the arm for our school districts,” Ms. Franken said.

Nationally, too, the governor ushered in a new focus on educational technology, beginning in the late 1980s, through his support for an interactive, fiber-optic computer network that now links government buildings, state colleges and universities, and most of the state’s 375 school districts.

“For its time, [the Iowa Communications Network] was a real leap forward technologically,” said Chris Dede, a professor of education and information technology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “It was a model of what was possible that a lot of states have chosen to follow.”

Bully Pulpit

One lesson that can be gleaned from the records of this year’s class of outgoing governors, education experts say, is that one of the best ways to seal up an educational legacy is to foster popular support at every turn.

“What these people understood was that you have to build public support for what you want to accomplish,” Mr. Newman of the ECS said.

With his regular appearances at town meetings, and a propensity for using visual aids to explain educational concepts, retiring Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, for example, successfully drummed up strong, and early, support for a statewide system of standards and assessments in 1993.

“We used to have a joke about Governor Romer that he wouldn’t be able to function without an easel,” Mr. Newman said. “But Romer was key to the standards movement because it was very early on. Today it would be much easier to argue for standards.”

Some analysts are also quick to credit Mr. Romer, as a past chairman of the National Education Goals Panel, with helping to bring to other states an awareness of the value of uniform standards and assessments.

The departure of Mr. Romer, a Democrat who is barred from seeking another term as governor, marks an “extraordinary loss” for the state, said James Souby, the executive director of the Western Governors Association.

“He knows how to use the bully pulpit,” Mr. Souby said. “He knows how to keep the education issue alive.”

Era of Competition

In addition to holding office during a time when the academic-standards movement gained steam nationally, many of the retiring governors helped usher in competition in public schooling with charter schools and other forms of school choice.

At the initiative of the state legislature, Minnesota became the first state to green-light charter schools in 1991. Since that time, outgoing Gov. Arne Carlson has strongly supported charter schools and promoted legislation that enabled their expansion.

In 1997, the two-term Republican governor also pushed through a measure that provides families earning an annual income of $33,500 or below an income-tax credit of up to $2,000, which they can apply toward educational services and materials including tutoring, academic camps, and textbooks. The tax credits were a product of political compromise, passed after Mr. Carlson vetoed an education finance bill that did not include broader tax credits he supported that would have helped cover the costs of private school tuition.

Mr. Carlson, who has chosen not to seek a third term, will ultimately be remembered for his significant role in creating a competing “non-district sector within public education,” said Ted Kolderie, a charter school proponent based in St. Paul.

In an interview last week, Mr. Carlson said he hopes he will be remembered for “the creation of the most comprehensive school choice program in America.”

“The name of the game is not to destroy public education,” Mr. Carlson said. “The name of the game is how you improve it. What will make public education good will be competition.”

But teachers’ union leaders say they will remember Mr. Carlson for “demoralizing” public schools in promoting private school initiatives. His tenure, they maintained, took its toll on teachers and public school employees.

“His role has been to bash, bash, bash the public schools,” said Sandra Peterson, a co-president of Education Minnesota, a teachers’ union recently formed by Minnesota’s American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association affiliates. “We’re looking forward to a change.”

Related Tags:

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

States What's on the K-12 Agenda for States This Year? 4 Takeaways
Reading instruction, private school choice, and teacher pay are among the issues leading governors' K-12 education agendas.
6 min read
Gov. Brad Little provides his vision for the 2024 Idaho Legislative session during his State of the State address on Jan. 8, 2024, at the Statehouse in Boise.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little outlines his priorities during his State of the State address before lawmakers on Jan. 8, 2024, at the capitol in Boise.
Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman via AP
States Q&A How Districts Can Navigate Tricky Questions Raised by Parents' Rights Laws
Where does a parent's authority stop and a school's authority begin? A constitutional law scholar weighs in.
6 min read
Illustration of dice with arrows and court/law building icons: conceptual idea of laws and authority.
Andrii Yalanskyi/iStock/Getty
States What 2024 Will Bring for K-12 Policy: 5 Issues to Watch
School choice, teacher pay, and AI will likely dominate education policy debates.
7 min read
The U.S. Capitol is seen in Washington, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. President Joe Biden on Tuesday night will stand before a joint session of Congress for the first time since voters in the midterm elections handed control of the House to Republicans.
The rising role of artificial intelligence in education and other sectors will likely be a hot topic in 2024 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, as well as in state legislatures across the country.
Mariam Zuhaib/AP
States How a Parents' Rights Law Halted a Child Abuse Prevention Program
State laws that have passed as part of the parents' rights movement have caused confusion and uncertainty over what schools can teach.
7 min read
People hold signs during a protest at the state house in Trenton, N.J., Monday, Jan. 13, 2020. New Jersey lawmakers are set to vote Monday on legislation to eliminate most religious exemptions for vaccines for schoolchildren, as opponents crowd the statehouse grounds with flags and banners, including some reading "My Child, My Choice."
People hold signs during a protest at the state house in Trenton, N.J., on Jan. 13, 2020, opposing legislation to eliminate most religious exemptions for vaccines for schoolchildren. In North Carolina, a bill passed to protect parents' rights in schools caused uncertainty that led two districts to pause a child sex abuse prevention program out of fear it would violate the new law.
Seth Wenig/AP