KY lucky to have Education Commissioner Jason Glass but too dumb to keep him | Opinion
I’m sure the brain trusts at the Craft and Cameron headquarters are chortling and clapping their tiny hands at the news that Education Commissioner Jason Glass is a finalist for the Baltimore County, Md. school superintendent job.
Glass has been target number one in the clown car culture war campaigns that both candidates have been running against our schools. As he pointed out recently, he could easily find another job, and maybe already has.
That’s a shame. Glass is one of the smartest, toughest and best public education advocates that Kentucky has ever had. He was a formidable foe for the people trying to bring down our schools with nonsense like Critical Race Theory and transgender phobia. Sadly, one of the only ones, too.
Glass was too much for them because he’s smart, principled and never lost sight of the main problem: that Republicans have a long game to destroy public education and they’re closer than ever to doing it. It’s been happening for a long time: Kentucky passed the best education funding and curriculum reform in the country in 1990, and the GOP has been in a 30-year battle to undo it.
Education is the only way Kentucky can move forward and our elected leaders keep undermining it one step at a time. Instead of talking about real, solid policy, like the teacher shortage, our candidates and elected officials rant on about chimeras that simply don’t exist.
Running Glass out of the state is the ultimate self-own, a cutting off your nose to spite your face of titanic proportions.
As KDE officials said Friday morning: “Dr. Glass has enjoyed working with everyone at the Kentucky Department of Education and is appreciative of the work that he has done with the General Assembly to prioritize reading instruction, career/technical education, and provide greater flexibility for Kentucky’s schools. Nevertheless, it has been clear to Dr. Glass that the education priorities of the legislature are focused on culture war issues and dismantling the state’s public schools. Commissioner Glass does not share these values and hopes Kentucky can find a way to recommit to supporting its public schools and to creating meaningful learning experiences for all students.”
As Kentucky continues its slide backward, we will keep losing. We will lose good leaders like Glass, we will lose good graduates who don’t like discrimination, we will lose good doctors who can’t practice medicine the ways they were trained, we will lose good scientists and economists and tech entrepreneurs and creatives, the people who can move entire states forward. The serious people will leave. All that will be left is desiccated old politicians who will keep squawking about non-existent threats, and the shrinking, gerrymandered voter pools that still listen to them.
Kentucky can’t have nice things because we’re too stupid to keep them.
