Additional thoughts on class size
Having read the comments to my previous post and Mathew's article, I understand that there is a chain of logic that can be superimposed on results seeming to show that smaller class sizes don't have an effect on achievement. The logic appears to be that smaller class sizes = more teachers needed = drawing upon more low-quality teachers = flat achievement. This is perfectly plausible, but it occurs to me that it sets up a false choice: As if you have to decide between smaller class sizes (which I think almost everyone admits are beneficial with high-quality teachers in a critical-thinking curriculum) or fewer low-quality teachers in the schools. To let Chris Whittle of Edison Schools summarize this false choice, "Which would be better, a bad teacher with 15 kids or a good one with 30?"
I understand the parallel suggestion that by raising class sizes for good teachers, we can pay those good teachers more, but, again, a false choice. Firstly, the more kids we're shoving into the good teachers' classrooms, the less impactful their high-quality teaching will be. Secondly, why not pay all teachers more and recruit so many high-quality teachers that we don't have to overload any of them. I know it's not as simple as pressing a button and raising teacher salaries, but at some point in the process of truly improving education that is a necessary (though not singularly sufficient) step. It helps no one to try to ignore that reality and instead find stopgap measures using current resources which are less educationally sound for the students -- for instance, burgeoning class sizes.
If smaller classes are in fact advantageous to student learning given a good teacher, and if the problem standing between making them efficacious is the size of the pool of good teachers, then isn't the key to focus our efforts on improving the supply of good teachers instead of hacking away at small class size programs? While appreciating the here and now, our policies have to keep an eye towards the long-term.
I understand the parallel suggestion that by raising class sizes for good teachers, we can pay those good teachers more, but, again, a false choice. Firstly, the more kids we're shoving into the good teachers' classrooms, the less impactful their high-quality teaching will be. Secondly, why not pay all teachers more and recruit so many high-quality teachers that we don't have to overload any of them. I know it's not as simple as pressing a button and raising teacher salaries, but at some point in the process of truly improving education that is a necessary (though not singularly sufficient) step. It helps no one to try to ignore that reality and instead find stopgap measures using current resources which are less educationally sound for the students -- for instance, burgeoning class sizes.
If smaller classes are in fact advantageous to student learning given a good teacher, and if the problem standing between making them efficacious is the size of the pool of good teachers, then isn't the key to focus our efforts on improving the supply of good teachers instead of hacking away at small class size programs? While appreciating the here and now, our policies have to keep an eye towards the long-term.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 11:38 AM.
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