Time to dump the State Board of Education from the ballot

Now that we've put another election behind us, the biennial debate over the Michigan ballot carries on.
Critics have long maintained that in our state we elect way too many people to far too many government positions.
The number of posts that are subject to election is well beyond the volume in many other states. 
The argument is made every election year that voters know nearly nothing about many of the candidates on the lower third of the ballot.
(It used to be worse -- county coroners at one time faced voter scrutiny. I guess the electorate was expected to dissect the way in which autopsies were performed.)

The elective posts most often singled out are the judicial offices, particularly down at the circuit court and district court level, and the education boards. 
Some reformers believe the public would be better served by removing the politics associated with these offices and making them appointees of the governor. Just as presidents are closely scrutinized based on their nominees for Supreme Court justice, these various gubernatorial appointees would become part of a governor's resume.
The offices that are most frequently targeted for removal from the balloting process are the education boards. Why is it that the governor appoints members to the boards of 12 state universities, but the voters choose the boards at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University?

Does that make any sense, especially when the voters are thoroughly uninformed about these candidates and, frankly, may have little interest in the internal issues on a college campus, other than those related to their alma mater?
Next we have the eight-member State Board of Education, which serves in obscurity to tackle a mission that's ill-defined. 
In a column written for The Detroit News, Dennis Lennox argues that the state school board is "politically irrelevant." A columnist for our sister paper, The (Mount Pleasant) Morning Sun, Lennox points out that the state Constitution says that the members provide "leadership and general supervision ... general planning and coordinating ... for all public education, including higher education."
Who knew?
Does anyone associate the state's many education issues with the State Board of Ed, other than the panel's periodic appointment of a state school superintendent?

Here's Lennox's take on the board's existence:
"While it possesses significant constitutional authority — a legacy of the Jacksonian democracy-infused 1850 state constitution, which did away with appointed state officeholders outside of the governor in favor of electing just about every office, no matter how great or small — the political reality has long been that the governor and
Legislature control K-12 public education. As one senior GOP grandee with an extensive background in issues related to public education said, “No one considers them (the members) worth the effort.”

"What practical say the State Board of Education does have in Lansing is voiced through the superintendent, who the members hire to serve as the day-to-day head of public education.

"This makes the superintendent accountable to neither (Gov.) Snyder nor legislators, despite the fact they are the ones who take the public’s criticism.

"This creates a significant constitutional quagmire as evident in the past with the Legislature’s debates over Common Core, which were actually adopted by the State Board of Education long before most legislators ever heard mention of the national standards."