EDITORIAL: Posny Will Help Kansas Schools
By The Kansas City Star, Mo.
May 11–Kansas schools can expect exceptional leadership with the choice of Alexa Posny as state education commissioner.
Posny is an experienced administrator whose extensive background shows that she cares about public education. She has made a career of working to improve schools.
Most recently she has been director of the federal special education office. Before that, she was a deputy commissioner at the Kansas Education Department. In Topeka she worked on meeting requirements for the federal No Child Left Behind law.
She also directed special education for the Shawnee Mission School District.
Posny follows Bob Corkins, an unfortunate choice who lobbied against adequate funding for public schools and who lacked administrative experience.
Her selection to lead the state Department of Education was another step by the state school board elected last year to repair the damage done by the previous board.
In February, the board overturned science standards that had downplayed the teaching of evolution in public schools. The old standards drew criticism and mockery from around the country.
This week the new board revised sex education standards that had put young people at risk of not getting complete information in their health classes.
The new guidelines continue to stress abstinence before marriage as the best policy, but they recommend that teachers provide information about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. They also leave it up to local school districts to decide whether parents need to sign permission slips for their children to take sex education classes. The local level is where that decision belongs.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Kansas City Star, Mo.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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