교육감 선출제도의 대안별 적실성에 관한 연구

Problems associated with the recent superintendent election provided an opportunity to reinstate discussions on the current election policy. However, suggestions for improvement made by different parties brought about a varieyt of opinions with their own pros and cons which made if difficult to reach a concrete agreement on which would be the most appropriate one in the Korean context. Related to this issue the Constitutional court has, in the past, provided three consitutional values — democracy, local self-government, and educational autonomy — as a yardstick to evaluate the local educational autonomy. Based on these values the aforementioned suggestions can be divided into three categories depending on the degree of party interference and the availability of local direct election. This paper argues that the current local direct election is relatively limited to achieve democracy; on the other hand, alternatives such as the running mate policy, which requires direct election, bring about concerns because it may be viewed as violating political impartiality of the constitutional provision. Therefore, it is suggested here that the current local direct election should be maintained on the grounds that a light level of party intervention is allowed — which allows a political liaison between candidates or co-registering system - in order to solve the representativeness problem of superintendent candidates that have been raised in the past.