Jere Hochman, superintendent of the Bedford Central School District in New York, has some excellent ideas for President Obama. Ten of them, to be exact.
He believes in putting first things first, in thinking clearly about what the federal role is and doing that role well. He believes in career professionals. He believes that the corporate types who think they know how to run the schools need a reminder that the factory model of the 1950s doesn’t work for them and doesn’t work for schools either.
Read and enjoy some good sense and good advice for the President.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I love that “teach for awhilers” phrase.
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What makes anyone think that Obama is interested in such ideas?
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If we had any doubts before, after his State of the Union (SOTU) speech, we should all be thoroughly convinced that Obama really does not care about the common man.
You have to wade through some finely crafted, obtuse demagoguery to get at the truth, but look carefully and you can see that Obama’s plans call for public-private “partnerships” throughout, i.e., privatization and low-paid non-union jobs that benefit corporations most, such as for expanding unproven P-TECH type six year high school-college programs, instead of bringing back Vocational Education options for students wanting to learn trades in 4 year high school programs, and his “Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital” for rebuilding our infrastructure etc., instead of an FDR type Public Works program.
See Privatizing Roads, Bridges, Schools and Energy Grids? Corporatism Pervades SOTU: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/privatizing-roads-bridges-schools-and-energy-grids-corporatism-pervades-sotu
And don’t even get me started on “entitlement reform,” i.e., throwing our most vulnerable populations under the bus, seniors, children, the disabled and poor (including Social Security when economists & even Reagan said that SS has nothing to do with the federal deficit) in exchange for “tax reform” for the wealthy. At bottom, Obama is no different from the GOP Congress that FL Rep. Alan Grayson called out for wanting people to “not get sick” and “die quickly.”
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Hochman’s ideas sound good. I think the president and a few others should be required to read Callahan’s classic book “Education and the Cult of Efficiency” before they create any more “new” and “innovative” ideas.
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Like the ten requests…question about number 9 though…aren’t public schools essentially still in the 1950s factory model paradigm?
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Most of my 1950s classrooms had desks that were bolted to the floor and when desks weren’t screwed down, such as in new schools, many teachers arranged them in rows anyways, rarely capitalizing on the opportunity to try something different like cooperative learning. I think teachers are more flexible today and willing to differentiate instruction.
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Yes, we are. I teach math in a classroom used also by English teachers. The English teachers wanted groups of five desks, so I adapted what I did last year (groups of two desks) and have the kids work together in groups of four or five. The kids learn from each other in the groups.
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