Ohio State Board of Education
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Ohio State Board of Education, which has eleven elected members and eight appointed members, oversees primary and secondary education in the State of Ohio and the Ohio Department of Education.
The state is divided into eleven districts by combining three contiguous Ohio State Senate districts, each of which elects one representative. The governor of Ohio appoints the remaining eight members. All serve four year terms. The elected members' terms are staggered so that half of the board is elected in each even-numbered year. Vacancies in the elected membership are filled by appointment by the governor. The chairman of the Ohio House of Representatives Education Committee and his or her counterpart in the Ohio State Senate are ex officio members. The board employs a Superintendent of Public Instruction, who runs the Ohio Department of Education.
In 2002, the board, which is largely unknown in the state, was frequently in the news over how the state's model science curriculum should treat the issues of evolution, intelligent design, and creationism. The majority of the board's membership being popularly elected has been greatly criticized by some education advocates over the years, who cite a lack of widespread public interest in, or knowledge of, the sometimes highly technical nature of the educational issues often addressed by the board, and cite as evidence of the public apathy the large number of voters, as demonstrated by voting results, who vote in other races but skip over the race for the board in their district entirely.
The board has no control over the state's public colleges and universities, which are overseen by their individual boards of trustees and the Ohio Board of Regents.
