Randy Dorn has won the closest state schools chief race in two decades.
Incumbent Terry Bergeson conceded defeat Thursday afternoon. She was trailing Dorn by about 3 percentage points three days into the ballot count.
“I’ve been watching the numbers and having people track for me and they’ve been getting worse as the hours have gone by,” Bergeson said Thursday. “I saw the 3 o’clock numbers and they were down again. I called Randy Dorn and congratulated him.”
Dorn didn’t pick up, so she left the union leader a message on his cell phone.
Bergeson, 66, has led Washington’s public schools for 12 years and had planned to step down after serving one more term as state superintendent of public instruction.
“It’s a great feeling,” Dorn said Thursday evening. “We saw the numbers on Tuesday night and felt good about those numbers and they’ve been moving our way. … But in politics it’s never over till it’s over. She conceded and it’s over.”
Dorn and Bergeson eventually spoke on Thursday and Dorn said they agreed to begin the transition quickly. He plans to work closely with her staff, starting next week.
The position pays $121,618 a year.
Throughout his campaign, Dorn criticized the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a statewide exam Bergeson developed and backed during her tenure. As a legislator, Dorn supported the creation of the WASL, but he thinks Bergeson went astray and developed a test that is unfair and doesn’t accurately measure student knowledge.
He won the election by convincing voters to associate Bergeson with the test, said Cathy Allen, president and chief executive of The Connections Group consulting firm in Seattle. The company did not work on either candidate’s campaign.
Bergeson led five other candidates in the primary, but she didn’t want to speculate on what went wrong in the general election.
“There’s a whole bunch of things people think, and I have no idea,” she said. “I’m going to let people who analyze these things analyze that for me. I just know the voters have decided.”
Bergeson, a former teacher, counselor and administrator, is unsure what she’ll do next year. She said she’ll help Dorn get going in his new position over the next two and a half months, and then she hopes to stay involved in education.
Dorn, 55, is the executive director of the state union for classified school workers, including custodians, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
A former teacher and principal, Dorn received a major boost in his campaign when the state teachers union endorsed him. Bergeson ran the union in the late ’80s, but she lost favor with many teachers over her support for the WASL.
Dorn said he plans to begin reshaping the test as soon as he takes office. He plans to shorten the high school WASL by a third to a half by spring 2010 and reduce the amount of writing required on the math portion of the test.
As schools chief, he can make some changes to the test, but in order to get rid of it, the Legislature would need to act. Passing the WASL, or another standardized test, will still be required for graduation, he said.
Though Bergeson has shortened the test in recent months, she has also defended it as a good way to prepare students for college or work. Many state business leaders support her and want to keep the test.
Bergeson acknowledges that Dorn could change the test but said much of the work she’s done over the last 12 years will live on.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with the system overall, but I just accept the fact that the strong, good stuff will be sustained,” she said.
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
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