The State Board of Education is likely to vote this week on a new education commissioner, hoping to bring some stability to an agency that has been roiled by missteps and controversy.
Board members will hold interviews Tuesday with the three finalists for the job: Tony Bennett, Indiana superintendent of public instruction; Murray State University President Randy Dunn; and Charles Hokanson, a consultant and former president of the Alliance for School Choice.
While there have been no clear indications of a front-runner for the position, Bennett was mentioned as a potential choice for the spot in 2011 and is seen as something of a rising star in the school-choice movement. He didn't apply for the job last year, which went to Gerard Robinson.
Robinson stepped down at the end of July in the wake of a series of public-relations miscues and grading mistakes surrounding Florida's high-stakes testing and accountability regime.
Since then, the Department of Education has continued to take hits from the press and policy-makers over a strategic plan that some said appeared to set lower goals for African-American and Hispanic students than for white children and the rollout of teacher performance numbers that had to be corrected.
In his resume, Bennett boasts of spearheading "the most comprehensive education reform in 25 years," including a voucher program and an initiative to limit collective bargaining to pay and benefits. He also points to an increase of more than 4 percentage points in the state's graduation rate and his decision to change the state's school grading scale to a system using letter grades.
Dunn has been president of Murray State since December 2006; before that, he served for almost two years as superintendent of education in Indiana. Dunn has written dozens of papers, articles and book chapters on education policy.
In addition to about a year and a half with the Alliance for School Choice and Advocates for School Choice, two related nonprofits, Hokanson worked for four years at the U.S. Department of Education under President George W. Bush. Hokanson wrote that he "gained a strong reputation both for developing and coordinating savvy and thorough legal, policy and political analyses of the toughest problems facing the secretary and for building consensus on solutions."
The board is expected to vote on the candidates Wednesday.
