Comments on: Senator Bennet (D-School Reform)

By: Meg Groome

Meg Groome — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:17:43 +0000

My question is do we need more good senators or more good school chiefs? It seems a shame to lose Duncan and now Bennet (and associated staff) all at once.

A lot of New Yorkers have been clamoring for Obama (or someone) to come and take Joel Klein away, maybe Paterson should consider appointing him.

By: Celia Sims

Celia Sims — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:06:13 +0000

After doing a quick search through the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, I believe you are correct that Thurmond was the last U.S. Senator to serve who had a prior career as a school superintendent. In my search, I was interested to learn that there have been a number of U.S. Senators (though prior to the end of Thurmond’s tenure in the Senate) who served as school superintendents. I think this is a complete list of U.S. Senators who were either local or state superintendents of education:

James Harlan, U.S. Senator (R-IA) 1855-1865, 1867-1873; superintendent of public instruction

Henry Pease, U.S. Senator (R-MS) 1874-1875; superintendent of education for LA and MS

George Shoup, U.S. Senator (R-ID) 1890-1901; superintendent of Lemhi Co. Schools

William Deboe, U.S. Senator (R-KY) 1897-1903; superintendent of Crittenden Co. Schools

Thomas Sterling, U.S. Senator (R-SD) 1913-1925; superintendent of Bement, IL schools

Cyrus Locher, U.S. Senator (D-OH) 1928-1928; superintendent of schools Woodsfield, OH

John Thomas, U.S. Senator (R-ID) 1928-1933, 1940-1945; superintendent of Phillips Co. Schools in Kansas

Joseph Rosier, U.S. Senator (D-WV) 1941-1942; superintendent of Harrison Co. Schools

Karl Earl Mundt, U.S. Senator (R-SD) 1948-1973; superintendent of schools in Bryant, SD

Albert Gore, U.S. Senator (D-TN) 1953-1971; county superintendent of education, Smith Co.

James Strom Thurmond, U.S. Senator (D/R-SC) 1956-2003; county superintendent of schools Edgefield Co.

Oren Long, U.S. Senator (D-HI) 1959-1963; Hawaii superintendent of public instruction

By: dcowart

dcowart — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:20:15 +0000

I always wondered if any educators ever moved up the political ladder. So many of us stay away from city and state politics because of the perceived conflict of interest. I wonder if his experience will help influence Washington into making thoughtful reform and educatonall decisions.

By: john thompson

john thompson — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:13:04 +0000

The only things I know about Bennet are from Katherine Boo’s great New Yorker portrait of him, a student named Noberto, and others who went to Manual H.S. which Bennet closed. I was impressed that he was willing to meet the students, listen, and learn. I was really impressed by his honesty. Boo wrote, “Other ambitious superintendents admit privately that radical reform has
collateral costs, and that students like Norberto bear them. Compared with pliable second graders, teen-agers are a poor investment.” “More experienced superintendents had failed at reforms less ambitious than [Bennet’]”but Bennet still said “Well, one of these days someone’s going to pull it off, … Besides, I really don’t see how you can hold both propositions to be true: that these urban public schools aren’t fixable and that the America of a decade or two from now is going to be a place where any of us would want to live.”

Boo concluded with a metaphor which may be the most truthful statement of the effects of accountability that I have read, “Bennet considered the instruments of standardized testing primitive, and their results incomplete. Besides, a single year’s increase could be a fluke-or the fruit of a predecessor’s efforts. Still, if a person held the numbers up to a certain light, after a celebratory bourbon, he might see in them the power of plain and unrelenting expectation.”

Besdies, Bennet is the un-Rhee who has shown the way towards collaboratively designing performance pay and peer tutoring.

By: Patrick Riccards

Patrick Riccards — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:43:00 +0000

You learn something new every day. I just posted on the same topic, and I was racking my brain to remember if there ever was a schools superintendent in the U.S. Senate. The public education challenges today are clearly a little different than when Thurmond finished his tenure as superintendent of education for SC’s Edgefield County in 1933!

By: JJ Baskin

JJ Baskin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:49:52 +0000

This is fascinating. On the one hand, I hate to lose a level 5 leader from the the urban super pool, but it is amazing that there will be a sitting senator who ran a school district.

I know we have representatives and senators who are former school board members and teachers, but any administrators?