In September, Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut spoke to the Brentwood Republican Committee. I don’t hang out there, but Frank had just announced his non-candidacy for Governor, and a neighbor and fellow Grokster was aching to understand the skullduggery behind the move and offered me a ride to the event.
Frank gave a talk, not on himself or his aborted campaign but on education in New Hampshire. Before the talk, he told us he had not discussed pulling out with the Republican hierarchy, as they are not supposed to take a position in primaries. He did not talk about low name recognition and low odds against the Morse and Ayotte fundraising machines, but these are common knowledge.
Frank described demographic and cultural trends in New Hampshire. He called them “headwinds,” and I call them excuses. He said that government schools have been delivering poor results for decades, with more than half of students measured as not proficient. He said it started to trend worse in 2012, then drastically worse with the Covid outbreak. I asked him what happened in 2012, and he instantly said, “Common Core,”–though he added that people he views as credible have studied it and found no reason the federal curriculum standard would worsen outcomes. (Not directly, but mightn’t the imposition of federal mandates tend to drive bright and innovative people out of the field? And you don’t need Washington to mandate math and reading; if DC mandates other things, doesn’t teaching these take time away from teaching the fundamentals?)
We want to thank Spike for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
Turning to policy recommendations, Frank espoused thinking outside the box. He questioned the assumptions that we need buildings, rigid daily schedules, and children sitting at desks filling out forms. He described numerous experiments presented to the Board of Education for programs involving a small group of kids with shared interests, such as robotics–teaching kids what you want to teach them as offshoots of a project they want to build. Sometimes, teachers and parents want these options badly enough to consider leaving government schools. Sometimes local school committees agree with the plan. But repeatedly, “the bargaining unit wouldn’t go along with it.”
(Now, thinking way outside the box, the education industry probably doesn’t need a subsidized government option as the dominant provider, a single State Board, and a State Commissioner who talks about matching “my students” to “my schools.”)
But Frank was more engaging and more authentic than I expect Morse and Ayotte ever to be. Morse’s recent, content-free campaign revolved around “603 Values,” only I have my own values and they aren’t based on my phone number. Ayotte’s last content-free campaign had the slogan, “Listening, Learning, and Then Leading.” That’s right; I’ll know what I believe just after I chat with you. No sale.
In stating his non-candidacy, Frank wrote that he preferred to finish his current job rather than seek a new one. Of course, his content-free boss famously took him to the woodshed for communicating with “the silly fringe,” that is, us.
I disagree with Frank’s decision based on my interpretation of the facts as he presented them. He has been in the job for six and a half years, supervising a system that has always failed most of its kids and is now failing badly. He has an understanding of the current situation as an executive who studies things and incorporates what he learns. He knows exactly what needs to be done–and, for institutional reasons, the Education Commissioner can’t make it happen and won’t be able to for the foreseeable future.
School Town Meeting is locked down by those receiving, benefitting from, or massaging the loot, and these “bargaining units” hardly bargain; they dictate. Frank is ready for a new challenge–and we are ready for a candidate for Governor who is not the state’s Backslapper Emeritus, nor the latest NHGOP Year of the Woman gimmick who let NBC wedge her away from her party’s own President a full four years before loudly splitting from Trump became a fad. (Meanwhile, the Democrat candidates are less interested in education than in barring a conservative like Dennis Prager from offering even educational materials that they concede are not conservative.) Thinking outside the box suggests that Frank Edelblut could do more for New Hampshire and even more for education in a new role.
