Back in spring, John Kasich replaced Ohio’s schools superintendent with a veteran administrator with ties to Northeast Ohio. Stan Heffner’s résumé includes a 15-year stint as the boss at Madison Local Schools in Lake County. Since 2004, he’s been an associate superintendent for the state Board of Education, in charge of how public schools measure their success.
Given his expertise, it was no surprise that Heffner’s testimony in a May Senate hearing on Ohio’s budget bill featured a new twist: support for a proposal that all teachers in failing schools be required to retake their certification tests. He was all for it.
What wasn’t so widely noticed was that Heffner had already made plans to move on after his interim position. His next stop: Senior executive for Educational Testing Service, Ohio’s one-stop-shop for standardized testing.
This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2011.
