In a shocking development few saw coming, Education Achievement Authority Chancellor John Covington quit his job this morning to take a new position at a university somewhere in Illinois.
Some EAA staffers have suspected Covington was interviewing for other jobs over the past few weeks.
“He’s never around the office anymore,” said one EAA office staffer. “And he’s been out of town most Fridays and Mondays.”
Covington has been under intense scrutiny and criticism for failing to produce the level of academic achievement he promised would happen and, in fact, claimed was happening. After recent MEAP testing results revealed that a significant number of students actually showed WORSE results from year to year rather than Covington’s claim that most EAA students had advanced a year and a half in just the first year of the education experiment, even some of Covington’s most ardent supporters began to question his truthiness.
This is not the first time that Covington has quit unexpectedly. He left Kansas City Schools just as abruptly to take the job with the EAA in Detroit. That school district lost its accreditation shortly after his departure.
Here in Michigan, Covington appears to have had enough of his detractors and decided it wasn’t worth his six-figure salary. Here is his brief statement this morning to reporters:
