There could be a lot of reasons why the Mississippi Senate rejected the nomination of Dr. Robert Taylor for state superintendent of education.
Members of the Black Caucus, including Greenwood Sen. David Jordan, suggested it was because of race and an interview the Black appointee gave a couple of years ago that painted his home state in an unfavorable light.
Had Taylor known in 2020 that two years later he would be a candidate for the state’s highest-paying job in the public sector, and that his hire would have to be approved by a majority-white Senate, he probably would have been more diplomatic in his answer that described Mississippi of his college years in the late 1980s as “the most racist state in the Union.”
It would be wrong to assume, however, that race was the only factor, or even a pivotal one for the rejection of Taylor.
There was also plenty of indignation in the Senate about the secret process the state Board of Education used in choosing Taylor for the job. One of the members of the Senate Education Committee, which initially held up Taylor’s nomination before passing it out, went so far as to describe the selection process as “disgusting.”
Several lawmakers and plenty of the public they represent are getting fed up with these hush-hush, closed-door searches that Mississippi is using to fill its top education jobs.
Mississippi’s College Board started down this road of shutting out the public with its selection of college presidents. The board that oversees the state’s K-12 schools has done the same with at least its last two choices of a state superintendent.
Back in 2013, when the state Board of Education selected Dr. Carey Wright for the job, it was also done through a secret search. The public was never told who the other four finalists were.
Some will say, “Yes, but look how well that turned out.” Wright held onto the job for nine years before retiring last summer, which is longer than the norm these days in such a high-pressure, hard-to-keep-everyone-pleased position. During her tenure, the state saw some notable gains on a national assessment test of reading and mathematics, and it raised the high-school graduation rate above the national average. (On that latter “achievement,” though, the state got there in large part by watering down its graduation standards, at Wright’s suggestion.)
As for the track record from the College Board’s secret searches, it has been decidely mixed. The debacles at Jackson State University and several acknowledged failures at other campuses strongly suggest that filling these jobs behind closed doors has not produced better results than when they were conducted more openly.
It particularly soured the reception to Taylor’s selection as state superintendent that the Board of Education went against its own consultant’s recommendation to conduct an open search that would release the names of all the finalists before the board settled on its choice.
The argument that’s always made for the secrecy is that some of the best potential candidates won’t apply for the jobs if they know their names could get out. They fear, so we’re told, that if they don’t get hired, word that they might be looking elsewhere could jeopardize their position with their current employer.
There may be some validity to that argument, but not much. As a legislative watchdog group noted in looking into the selection of Taylor, both Alabama and Louisiana within the past five years used relatively open processes in selecting their state superintendents of education, with little apparent problem.
The candidates themselves don’t seem to be all that deterred by openness either. In the year before Carey Wright was hired by Mississippi, she applied to lead major metropolitan school districts in Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska. In both cases, her name was released as one of the finalists, and these communities, not just their boards that made the ultimate hiring decision, got a chance to vet her and provide some feedback.
Mississippi pays its state superintendent of education around $300,000 a year. Not only is that the highest salary of any public employee in the state, it’s one of the highest salaries in the nation for such a job. One would think at that kind of salary, Mississippi could dictate to the potential candidates that it will conduct the job search on its terms, not theirs.
When state education boards fill their top jobs in secret, the public has to take on faith that the best candidate was the one who was hired. It shouldn’t have to.
It’s unfortunate that Taylor, through no fault of his, got caught up on the wrong side of transparency. It was time, though, for someone to send the message that the secrecy has to stop.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
