Superintendent Fox Scolded By Old School Conservative Constituency And Some Colleagues Want More Of The Promises That Swept Her Into Office

For three years Anne Fox tried to fight the good fight, stay true to her principles and keep the back-to-basics, conservative promises she made to the people who elected her state schools superintendent.

It has not been enough.

Her positions have been considered sufficiently radical or half-baked to anger the Idaho Education Association and frustrate state Board of Education members, Department of Education employees and even fellow Republican Gov. Phil Batt.

But Fox has been far too moderate to satisfy her 1994 base of support - community activists who oppose outcome-based education, school-to-work programs and the “whole language” approach to reading instruction.

“Shortly after Anne took office, we realized she was not on the same page as the people who put her into office. She was distancing herself from her platform,” said Kathy Thomsen of Twin Falls, a mother of four elementary school children who publishes a conservative newsletter on education issues.

Fox insists she has “put forward and supported conservative viewpoints.” Amid the criticism, she has been leaning further to the right in an effort to regain the favor of the constituency she most needs to hold off at least two GOP opponents in the May primary election.

In her October issue of The OBE Predictor, Thomsen criticized Fox for giving little more than lip service to phonics in reading education, a key element of the conservative school reform agenda.

“Dr. Fox wrapped herself in pro-phonics rhetoric and citizens, longing for real reform, propelled her to a landslide victory,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, Dr. Fox has proved herself unworthy of her grass-roots support.”

Thomsen, the daughter of former right-wing state Rep. Donna Scott, will support state Rep. Ron Black of Twin Falls in the Republican primary, convinced he will be able to accomplish what Fox has not.

Dani Hansen of Idaho Falls, state chairwoman of Idaho Citizens for Quality Education, does not expect to endorse any candidate in the primary. However, that alone amounts to a renunciation of Fox, for whom Hansen organized support in every corner of the state in 1994.

For Hansen, the question is not whether Fox is conservative enough. She believes her good friend has done her best to live up to the mandate of the right. Fox just lacks the tools, Hansen said.

“She is an arbitrator and a consensus person, and I think that a lot of the people who elected her were hoping for a fighter,” Hansen said. “They hoped and wanted to elect a real tough cookie. She’s not a tough cookie. She is a very kind and sensitive and caring person.”

Hansen reluctantly agrees with Thomsen and Black, a former House Education Committee chairman, that Fox has not been as effective or forceful as her supporters had hoped in confronting the Board of Education on such public school issues as accepting federal Goals 2000 reform funding.

“You can’t ask somebody to do something they don’t have the ability to do,” Hansen said.

Thomsen is convinced, however, that Fox only mouthed the words her supporters wanted to hear without any real commitment to fundamental change. The first clues came in her reaction to criticism of her early Education Department firings, questionable hiring decisions and other missteps.

“The press was very hard on her,” Thomsen said. “She began to buckle immediately and wasn’t able to handle the heat. We could see it was a tug of war she wasn’t going to win.”

Black said the problem is that Fox has not stood her ground on issues that mattered to the people who swept her into office. He said that lack of leadership has given the Board of Education license to meddle in the minutiae of public school policy in a way it never would have presumed to do under previous Republican Superintendent Jerry Evans.

“I get the impression she came in saying the things that people told her to say. I don’t think there was a strong sense of what she really believed in,” Black said. “If you keep changing what you believe in, it’s very hard for people to believe you after a while.”

Idaho GOP Chairman Ron McMurray rejects the premise that Fox has lost the trust or support of most Republicans or that she has failed to live up to her campaign promises.

“She may not be doing them as fast as some people wanted, but I think she’s doing what she said she would do,” McMurray said.

In recent months Fox has been pressing anew for some of her early causes. She won grudging approval from the Board of Education to seek another $500,000 next year for phonics-based reading programs. And she has proposed legislation requiring teachers to take phonics classes and provide daily phonics instruction to kindergarteners and first-graders who do not recognize the sounds of written letters.

But since Fox also acknowledges the usefulness of whole-language, “see-say” techniques in reading instruction, Thomsen considers her position a perfect example of soft-peddling what should be a hard line.

“She’s stuck in the middle, which is garbage to everyone,” Thomsen said. “She really hasn’t won the support of any one group at all because she’s tried to please everyone.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: STATE OF EDUCATION State schools Superintendent Anne Fox will deliver a state of education address Friday, Jan. 9, at the Coeur d’Alene Inn. The dinner, which starts at 7 p.m., is sponsored by the Kootenai County Republican Women. The cost is $11.50.