North Dakota's school superintendent runs an unfocused agency that reacts to events rather than taking a lead role in shaping education policy, says a Grand Forks teacher who wants to replace him.

Max Laird, who is opposing incumbent Wayne Sanstead, said Thursday the Department of Public Instruction needed to be revamped from a "regulatory and reactive" agency into a "proactive, problem-solving" department.

Recent major education initiatives, such as Gov. John Hoeven's Commission on Education Improvement, have been founded and run outside the DPI, Laird said.

"I don't know what the focus of the Department of Public Instruction is. I really don't," Laird said. "That is one of the reasons I'm running for this office, is because I've been a bit frustrated about - what is the plan? What's the future?"

Sanstead said he and his agency do substantial work on education policy. Sanstead himself is a member of the Commission on Education Improvement.

"He forgets that there are a lot of people who talk to each other inside the system," Sanstead said. "Because it's not a public grandstand situation, he needs to know that there are people working very hard at school improvement across the spectrum."

Laird and Sanstead will oppose each other in the November election for the superintendent's job, which is listed on the state's nonpartisan ballot. Both men are Democrats. North Dakota Republicans did not field a candidate.

Sanstead, a former Minot school teacher, legislator and lieutenant governor, is running for his seventh four-year term. He was first elected as North Dakota's superintendent of public instruction in 1984.

In 2004, North Dakota Democratic convention delegates gave the party's letter of support to Laird, who is a former president of the North Dakota Education Association. But Laird ran third in the June 2004 primary, behind Sanstead and Republican Keith Jacobson, and did not qualify for the general election.

Laird held news conferences in Fargo and Bismarck on Thursday to discuss his agenda for his fall campaign.

He said he intends to discuss ways of providing a quality education to each student regardless of where he or she lives, emphasize teacher recruitment and retention, and attempt to change how the DPI handles requirements imposed by a federal law, called No Child Left Behind, that is meant to ensure students perform well academically.

Teacher recruitment is particularly important because of North Dakota's low national ranking in teacher pay, Laird said.