Will this fix 'dysfunctional' schools?

Gov. Bev Perdue has announced plans to change the way the state's public schools are governed, including the resignation of longtime State Board of Education Chairman Howard Lee and the naming of Cumberland County Schools Superintendent Bill Harrison to the State Board of Education. She wants the board to name Harrison chairman of the board as well as to create the job of Chief Executive Officer of the state's public schools system.
She also said she has asked Lee to serve as Executive Director of the N.C. Education Cabinet, a newly created job she hopes will reinvigorate the work of the cabinet, which includes the heads of the N.C. Community College System, the University of North Carolina system and the N.C. Independent Colleges and Universities. Perdue also announced she has asked N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson -- who is elected statewide -- to lead a Blue Ribbon Task Force on Career Development and Workforce Issues.
Perdue's announcement was made in front of a group that included Lee, Atkinson and Scott Ralls, president of the community college system, Erskine Bowles, president of the UNC system, and Hope Williams, president of the Independent Colleges and Universities, as a show of support for the changes.
The timing is interesting. On Tuesday, a new report from the General Assembly's Program Evaluation Division will recommend changes in public schools governance because the current system is "dysfunctional, confusing and in need of change."
The state Constitution creates the elected post of Superintendent of Public Instruction, but also gives the job of running schools to the State Board of Education -- and in practice the board lately has pretty much ignored the superintendent and gone its own way.
"The current hybrid situation does not work," the legislature's report concludes. This two-headed system -- with policy and operations accountability spread here and there -- has caused all sorts of problems, but legislators have not found a way to resolve it.
Perdue's may not resolve it either, although she believes her method will resolve lines of authority and make it clear that, as she put it, “The buck stops with me.” That's one reason she had a number of education leaders present to lend their support for the new arrangement. The point was that these education leaders are on record as supporting the new arrangement.
I don’t think this announcement will halt the questions about how our system of governance works, but Perdue is right about this: The legislature hasn’t acted. I don’t know if the legislature can act, given its difficulty coming to grips with what clearly has been a problem for the last quarter-century. Perdue said it would take 18 months or two years for the legislature to amend the Constitution and set up a statewide referendum, and she wanted to move quickly and fix the problem. “It’s up to the General Assembly and others to deal with the Constitutional question,” said. She added that for herself, the changes she proposes answer the question about lines of responsibility for schools.