헌법원리에 비추어 본 교육감 직선제의 문제점과 제(諸)대안의 적실성 검토

Abstract

The current electoral system of superintendent of education based on the direct election system has merits of realizing the constitutional principles of local autonomy system of representative nature of local residents. However, it has also many defects such as extreme election apathy, corruption implicating excessive campaign expenses, ideological confrontation between the local government heads and the superintendents of school, the damage of political impartiality due to political parties, teachers groups, etc. Such being the case, many improvement plans and alternatives have been discussed in recent years. Alternatives mentioned for the direct election of superintendent of education are the system of appointment by the local government heads, restrictive direct election system, running mate system, direct election system with co-registration, etc. By the way, the fact that constitutional principles and grounds of logic of the respective alternatives are similar means that any of the alternatives could be compatible not only with the constitutional principles of independence, professionalism and political impartiality of education, but also with side effects and solution of problems of the direct election system. If it is so, what the best alternative to the direct election of superintendent of education is judged by the efficacy and workability of the alternatives. In this respect, the direct election system with co-registration has reason enough to choose owing to its many strong points for the time being, however, we need to change our electoral system to running mate system in the long run.