06.20.07
When It Is Time To Go, It Is Time To Go
Shirley Neeley out at as Education Commissioner, Texas’ education commissioner to resign.
State Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley will resign July 1, telling her staff and friends in a letter that the decision for her to leave was Gov. Rick Perry’s.
“I can compare my situation to that of a superintendent when a school board decides to take no action or not to extend their contract,” Neeley said in her letter. “Any way you look at it, the message is clear: when it is time to go, it is time to go.”
It appears that “TAKS cheating” will be the reason.
Cheating has become a dominant issue at the agency and, to a lesser degree, in the state’s 8,000 schools. The agency hired a private company to look for irregular answers on tests, such as large numbers of erasures, and turned up 700 schools where more investigation was needed. The agency’s investigation concluded that there was cheating at three of those schools, but the investigation itself largely took schools at their word when cheating was suspected.
SOS, Chief of Staff, Education Commissioner. That’s three.