Nicastro ill-equipped to handle Education Department

Missouri Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro has primarily served as a yes-woman to whatever the so-called educational reformers have wanted.

She has cheered on Common Core Standards and jumped wholeheartedly into the idea that Missouri's public schools should serve as a training ground for businesses rather than giving children the intellectual capacity to be productive citizens.

It is hard to find anything original that Ms. Nicastro has done during her tenure and an article posted on Missourinet today indicates she does not plan on changing.

One of the biggest issues that faces Missouri education now is the idea that "failing" school districts should have to pay for students to attend other school districts. It is right out of the playbook of the reformers and basic logic should have indicated that it would be fraught with problems.

How will failing school districts improve if they are having to pay millions to other school districts? If everyone is fleeing these failing school districts to go to better ones, how are these "better" school districts going to have room to handle the overflow? Why is it that all of these failing school districts are in areas where poverty and crime are at the highest level? Why isn't anyone addressing those problems?

This is what Ms. Nicastro has to offer:

Executive Director Roger Kurtz of the Missouri Association of School Administrators says superintendents from twenty districts are proposing a system of early intervention to bring failing schools within districts up to snuff before the entire district loses accreditation.  He says the superintendents believe transferring students to accredited districts will not be in the best interests of all students and will not lead to the improvement of the unaccredited districts.  He  says forcing the unaccredited district to pay the costs of the transportation is not fiscally or academically sustainable.                                      

State Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro says she’s pleased to see that group and others looking for better approaches but has offered no other reaction to the superintendents’ suggestions.

That, sadly, is the kind of intellectual firepower Jay Nixon has placed in charge of Missouri elementary and secondary education.