Self-Serving Liberal "Facts"

[PoliticalChic]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.






9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.





10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next







Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.



Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......



Certainly worth a try.

 

[editec]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Seems you are oblivious of the results from poor Asian communities....or the turn of the century Jewish communities on NY's Lower East Side.

Somehow Liberal folks have perfected selective memory.

What is imperative is the immediate removal of Liberals and Progressives from any contact with decisions about education.

Seriously.




1. Progressives claimed that intelligence was so fixed, and so important, that it had to be the basis for keeping certain races from entering the country, and to suppress the reproduction of races already living here.


2. Almost synonymous with 'the Progressive Era' is the idea that science was the basis for the ideas behind it. The impetus for the scientific views was the huge European immigration, especially the shift from Northern and Western Europeans, to Southern and Eastern Europeans. Unhappiness with the way these new waves looked, or behaved, scientists leapt to explain how inferior they were! For same, came the efficient manner of dealing with these problems. The start was the accumulation of data on crime rates, disease rates, mental test scores, school performance.

a. 100,000 soldier were tested during WWI, and those of English, German, and Irish ancestry scored considerably higher than those of Russian, Italian, and Polish.
Brigham, "A Study of American Intelligence," (1923), p. xx.

b. Carl Brigham, authority on mental tests, and creator of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test- claimed that the Army test 'disproved the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent.'
Brigham, Ibid, p. 190.

c. Black children in Youngstown, Ohio, scored higher than children of Polish, Greek, and other immigrants there.
Pinter and Keller, "Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children," Journal of Educational Psychology,(April 1922), p. 215.

d. What to do with these 'facts'?
For progressives and liberals, "theirs was the vision of the anointed as surrogate decision- makers....[including] an expanded role for government and an expanded role for judges to re-interpret the Constitution so as to loosen the restrictions on the powers of government."
Sowell, "Intellectuals and Race," p. 26.






3. Progressives used the fact that groups with lower IQs tended to have large families as a reason for eugenics, i.e., that over time, this would lower the national IQ. Actually, research in more than a dozen countries showed that the average performance on IQ tests rose substantially- by a full standard deviation or more- in a generation or two.
James R. Flynn, "The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932-1978, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 95, pp. 29-51; and Flynn, "Massive Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Really Means," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 101, pp. 171-191.




Here's a fact for you: the size of the font is unrelated to the veracity of your post....as proven above.

One would hope that with the new year, I will see an improvement in the content of your posts.


On the bright side, you may continue to count on me for the education you so sorely lack.

Seriously.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Bullshit...malarkey...nonsensical...and otherwise untrue.
India...gee..how is it possible so many doctors from here...hmm...if what you say is true - then it is impossible.

There are dozens more examples of wretched poor countries producing fine students and become successful.
It is not the poverty - it is the attitude.
Using poverty as an excuse is asinine.

 

[Whereisup]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.

9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.

10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next
Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.

Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......

Certainly worth a try.

Class size shouldn't make a lot of difference in the range of sizes you are talking about. In private schools and tutoring situations, the great improvement comes when there are fewer than 10 students in a class. Interestingly, humans can keep only about seven or eight digits in memory if the digits are flashed quickly.

The advantage of small class sizes fewer than ten, and better at less than five or six, is that the teacher knows what each student does and doesn't know, and which skills each student tends to have trouble with, and so forth. So the teacher can teach each of the children exactly what the child needs to learn next.

In a class of, let us say, twenty, a teacher doesn't have time to know each of the children that well.

Actually, we have come to a point in history at which we could have five or six students per class.

The Wall Street Journal has said that automation is reducing jobs so fast that we are entering a period when there simply won't be enough jobs in the world for a large percentage of the population.

That means that a small percentage of the population can produce enough for everyone. This should be no surprise. As a result of the development of good farm machinery, a quite small percentage of the population can produce food for everyone. A single farmer can produce enough food for more than twenty people.

So, do we just keep a large percentage of the population unemployed or do we find something useful for them to do?

Teaching children is highly useful, but is something that corporations can't do very well because it's not profitable enough. That is to say, teaching children well is not profitable enough.

So why not put some of the unemployed to work teaching classes of 5 or so students, up to the point where all classes are 5 or so students. That would require training, of course, but it would be a good job for a percentage of those rendered unemployed by automation.

The automation itself would provide the goods and services that their salaries would represent. The monetary system would need to be rearranged a bit, but remember that money is only a bookkeeping system. For example, we can produce a certain amount of food regardless of what the monetary system used to distribute the food is.

Jim

 

[Whereisup]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Seems you are oblivious of the results from poor Asian communities....or the turn of the century Jewish communities on NY's Lower East Side.

Somehow Liberal folks have perfected selective memory.

What is imperative is the immediate removal of Liberals and Progressives from any contact with decisions about education.

Seriously.




1. Progressives claimed that intelligence was so fixed, and so important, that it had to be the basis for keeping certain races from entering the country, and to suppress the reproduction of races already living here.


2. Almost synonymous with 'the Progressive Era' is the idea that science was the basis for the ideas behind it. The impetus for the scientific views was the huge European immigration, especially the shift from Northern and Western Europeans, to Southern and Eastern Europeans. Unhappiness with the way these new waves looked, or behaved, scientists leapt to explain how inferior they were! For same, came the efficient manner of dealing with these problems. The start was the accumulation of data on crime rates, disease rates, mental test scores, school performance.

a. 100,000 soldier were tested during WWI, and those of English, German, and Irish ancestry scored considerably higher than those of Russian, Italian, and Polish.
Brigham, "A Study of American Intelligence," (1923), p. xx.

b. Carl Brigham, authority on mental tests, and creator of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test- claimed that the Army test 'disproved the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent.'
Brigham, Ibid, p. 190.

c. Black children in Youngstown, Ohio, scored higher than children of Polish, Greek, and other immigrants there.
Pinter and Keller, "Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children," Journal of Educational Psychology,(April 1922), p. 215.

d. What to do with these 'facts'?
For progressives and liberals, "theirs was the vision of the anointed as surrogate decision- makers....[including] an expanded role for government and an expanded role for judges to re-interpret the Constitution so as to loosen the restrictions on the powers of government."
Sowell, "Intellectuals and Race," p. 26.






3. Progressives used the fact that groups with lower IQs tended to have large families as a reason for eugenics, i.e., that over time, this would lower the national IQ. Actually, research in more than a dozen countries showed that the average performance on IQ tests rose substantially- by a full standard deviation or more- in a generation or two.
James R. Flynn, "The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932-1978, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 95, pp. 29-51; and Flynn, "Massive Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Really Means," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 101, pp. 171-191.




Here's a fact for you: the size of the font is unrelated to the veracity of your post....as proven above.

One would hope that with the new year, I will see an improvement in the content of your posts.


On the bright side, you may continue to count on me for the education you so sorely lack.

Seriously.

You are claiming something that doesn't exist. About a hundred years ago, when the first intelligence tests came out and began to be used by the military, these ideas did emerge. However, the progressive scientists quickly debunked those ideas and sorted out the confusion. Progressives haven't believed what you say they believe for 90 years or so.

Jim

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Bullshit...malarkey...nonsensical...and otherwise untrue.
India...gee..how is it possible so many doctors from here...hmm...if what you say is true - then it is impossible.

There are dozens more examples of wretched poor countries producing fine students and become successful.
It is not the poverty - it is the attitude.
Using poverty as an excuse is asinine.

India subsidizes education. While the US hires from other countries (such as India), they actually invest in their own people. They don't graduate so deep in debt, they're slaves to the government.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.

9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.

10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next
Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.

Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......

Certainly worth a try.

Class size shouldn't make a lot of difference in the range of sizes you are talking about. In private schools and tutoring situations, the great improvement comes when there are fewer than 10 students in a class. Interestingly, humans can keep only about seven or eight digits in memory if the digits are flashed quickly.

The advantage of small class sizes fewer than ten, and better at less than five or six, is that the teacher knows what each student does and doesn't know, and which skills each student tends to have trouble with, and so forth. So the teacher can teach each of the children exactly what the child needs to learn next.

In a class of, let us say, twenty, a teacher doesn't have time to know each of the children that well.

Actually, we have come to a point in history at which we could have five or six students per class.

The Wall Street Journal has said that automation is reducing jobs so fast that we are entering a period when there simply won't be enough jobs in the world for a large percentage of the population.

That means that a small percentage of the population can produce enough for everyone. This should be no surprise. As a result of the development of good farm machinery, a quite small percentage of the population can produce food for everyone. A single farmer can produce enough food for more than twenty people.

So, do we just keep a large percentage of the population unemployed or do we find something useful for them to do?

Teaching children is highly useful, but is something that corporations can't do very well because it's not profitable enough. That is to say, teaching children well is not profitable enough.

So why not put some of the unemployed to work teaching classes of 5 or so students, up to the point where all classes are 5 or so students. That would require training, of course, but it would be a good job for a percentage of those rendered unemployed by automation.

The automation itself would provide the goods and services that their salaries would represent. The monetary system would need to be rearranged a bit, but remember that money is only a bookkeeping system. For example, we can produce a certain amount of food regardless of what the monetary system used to distribute the food is.

Jim

Good post.

I have two friends who are 5th grade teachers. Both have enormous classes - around thirty kids. Those who think those teachers can do an effective job have never tried to control that many kids that age. I know someone else who teaches at a private school where class sizes are about 10 or so. His comment about 30+ kids in a classroom - 'the teacher has her hands full just making sure they don't burn the place down'.

Part of the problem is that parents take little responsibility these days. They drug little Susie and Johnny to control them but if that big mean teacher picks on them, the kid gets no discipline at home. Unless its a beating. Parents need to work with teachers instead of against them.

And, I've said it before and I'll say it again - the most successful education programs are those that invest in the student's future because that is the future of the country as well.

No, Political Chic, what you wrote about is definitely NOT "worth a try" and frankly, its that cavalier attitude of throwing-spaghetti-against-the-wall that is our problem.

 

[rdean]

Republicans who don't believe in science talking about education. Hilarious.

 

[initforme]

All these fixes coming out. Lets do this, lets do that. Lets test more. You will never EVER fix those kids who are habitually tardy, come from completely upturned home lives, who don't get proper care and nutrition, who are in and out of legal trouble, and the list goes on. But we want a teacher to make them become a genius and fix all their problems. Then we want their pay and benefits lowered. As a conservative I can see how this would be an impossible job.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Bullshit...malarkey...nonsensical...and otherwise untrue.
India...gee..how is it possible so many doctors from here...hmm...if what you say is true - then it is impossible.

There are dozens more examples of wretched poor countries producing fine students and become successful.
It is not the poverty - it is the attitude.
Using poverty as an excuse is asinine.

India subsidizes education. While the US hires from other countries (such as India), they actually invest in their own people. They don't graduate so deep in debt, they're slaves to the government.

What the...sooo you are saying the US Government does not subsidize education?????????

 

[PoliticalChic]

And, let's puncture another of those teacher union fables:

There is no convincing evidence that certified teachers are more effective in the classroom or that ed-school-based training helps.
Education Schools Project


See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dstaiger/Papers/nyc fellows march 2006.pdf for evidence that certification has very little effect on student achievement.



“…private schools appear to do fine- perhaps better-without being compelled to hire state certified teachers.” “Troublemaker,” p. 283, by Chester E. Finn, Jr. Former Assistant Secretary of Education under President Reagan.





The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence proposed the following requirements alone for a teaching license: graduate college, pass a criminal background check, and a rigorous test of knowledge of their subject.





Why has American tripled its teaching force instead of paying more to fewer but superior instructors?

a. The seductiveness of smaller classes.
b. Institutional interests profit from a larger teaching force: unions, colleges, certain political parties.
c. Societal, legal and political forces press schools to treat children differently, resulting in various sets of classes, especially ‘special ed.’

 

[PoliticalChic]

Republicans who don't believe in science talking about education. Hilarious.

You keep repeating that falsehood.....

...I'm beginning to worry about you.



per·sev·er·a·tion (pr-sv-rshn)
n.
1. Uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.
2. The tendency to continue or repeat an act or activity after the cessation of the original stimulus.



".... often seen in organic brain disease and schizophrenia."
Perseveration | Easy to understand definition of perseveration by Your Dictionary


Uh-oh.........

 

[PoliticalChic]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.

9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.

10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next
Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.

Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......

Certainly worth a try.

Class size shouldn't make a lot of difference in the range of sizes you are talking about. In private schools and tutoring situations, the great improvement comes when there are fewer than 10 students in a class. Interestingly, humans can keep only about seven or eight digits in memory if the digits are flashed quickly.

The advantage of small class sizes fewer than ten, and better at less than five or six, is that the teacher knows what each student does and doesn't know, and which skills each student tends to have trouble with, and so forth. So the teacher can teach each of the children exactly what the child needs to learn next.

In a class of, let us say, twenty, a teacher doesn't have time to know each of the children that well.

Actually, we have come to a point in history at which we could have five or six students per class.

The Wall Street Journal has said that automation is reducing jobs so fast that we are entering a period when there simply won't be enough jobs in the world for a large percentage of the population.

That means that a small percentage of the population can produce enough for everyone. This should be no surprise. As a result of the development of good farm machinery, a quite small percentage of the population can produce food for everyone. A single farmer can produce enough food for more than twenty people.

So, do we just keep a large percentage of the population unemployed or do we find something useful for them to do?

Teaching children is highly useful, but is something that corporations can't do very well because it's not profitable enough. That is to say, teaching children well is not profitable enough.

So why not put some of the unemployed to work teaching classes of 5 or so students, up to the point where all classes are 5 or so students. That would require training, of course, but it would be a good job for a percentage of those rendered unemployed by automation.

The automation itself would provide the goods and services that their salaries would represent. The monetary system would need to be rearranged a bit, but remember that money is only a bookkeeping system. For example, we can produce a certain amount of food regardless of what the monetary system used to distribute the food is.

Jim

Good post.

I have two friends who are 5th grade teachers. Both have enormous classes - around thirty kids. Those who think those teachers can do an effective job have never tried to control that many kids that age. I know someone else who teaches at a private school where class sizes are about 10 or so. His comment about 30+ kids in a classroom - 'the teacher has her hands full just making sure they don't burn the place down'.

Part of the problem is that parents take little responsibility these days. They drug little Susie and Johnny to control them but if that big mean teacher picks on them, the kid gets no discipline at home. Unless its a beating. Parents need to work with teachers instead of against them.

And, I've said it before and I'll say it again - the most successful education programs are those that invest in the student's future because that is the future of the country as well.

No, Political Chic, what you wrote about is definitely NOT "worth a try" and frankly, its that cavalier attitude of throwing-spaghetti-against-the-wall that is our problem.

You have provided an example of exactly what I stated about the Liberal procedure as compared to the conservative.

 

[GreenBean]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Millions of children are enslaved in public schools that more closely resemble correctional facilities, they are isolated from competition, stifled by union rules, and force fed a steady diatribe of racist and leftist propaganda. Yet Liberals resist change, insisting instead on throwing more of everybody else's hard earned money at the problem. More funding, more , more, more. That solution hasn't worked, not when Liberals and corrupt Democrats control the Machine.

Newark,NJ spends $18,000 per student — One of the highest of any major public school system — yet only 30 percent of 8th graders can pass the annual proficiency test in math.

D.C. public-schools, which also has among the highest per-pupil expenditures in the USA is continuously among the lowest test scores.

Detroit Public Schools - In 2011, Detroit tied Washington, D.C. for last place in eighth-grade reading scores.

In 2009, when the Detroit Public School (DPS) system was facing bankruptcy engendered by huge operating deficits and widespread corruption, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan characterized it as a “national disgrace.” The disgrace, unfortunately, is much more than meets the eye: For all of the bankrupting spending, the school system’s educational results for the 88 percent black student population remain abysmal. And yet the DPS is but a microcosm of the silent scandal haunting the Left, which controls the district and countless others across the nation in precisely the same circumstances. Throughout America, minority students find themselves conscripted into these institutions of misery, while the architects of their prisons remain accountable to no one. - Detroit Public Schools: Bankrupting Minority Students’ Futures

Major Democratic cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia is where the largest numbers of children cannot read, write, and compute at anything approaching acceptable levels

The most disastrous of Americas inner-city schools are controlled by Democrats and Liberals, their Unions overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party and its left-wing agenda. staffers and bureaucrats who do not adhere to leftist liberal views are weeded out and banished under at times, the most treacherous of methodology. Teacher-training colleges resemble indoctrination systems and those who escape the halls of this vile form of academia are decidedly leftist, conservatives, or those who betray a conservative opinion are flunked out long before graduation.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Expecting our school systems to be healthier than the communities from whence they draw their students is, of course, asinine.

Now seriously, PC.

You do not already know this?

Seems you are oblivious of the results from poor Asian communities....or the turn of the century Jewish communities on NY's Lower East Side.

Somehow Liberal folks have perfected selective memory.

What is imperative is the immediate removal of Liberals and Progressives from any contact with decisions about education.

Seriously.




1. Progressives claimed that intelligence was so fixed, and so important, that it had to be the basis for keeping certain races from entering the country, and to suppress the reproduction of races already living here.


2. Almost synonymous with 'the Progressive Era' is the idea that science was the basis for the ideas behind it. The impetus for the scientific views was the huge European immigration, especially the shift from Northern and Western Europeans, to Southern and Eastern Europeans. Unhappiness with the way these new waves looked, or behaved, scientists leapt to explain how inferior they were! For same, came the efficient manner of dealing with these problems. The start was the accumulation of data on crime rates, disease rates, mental test scores, school performance.

a. 100,000 soldier were tested during WWI, and those of English, German, and Irish ancestry scored considerably higher than those of Russian, Italian, and Polish.
Brigham, "A Study of American Intelligence," (1923), p. xx.

b. Carl Brigham, authority on mental tests, and creator of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test- claimed that the Army test 'disproved the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent.'
Brigham, Ibid, p. 190.

c. Black children in Youngstown, Ohio, scored higher than children of Polish, Greek, and other immigrants there.
Pinter and Keller, "Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children," Journal of Educational Psychology,(April 1922), p. 215.

d. What to do with these 'facts'?
For progressives and liberals, "theirs was the vision of the anointed as surrogate decision- makers....[including] an expanded role for government and an expanded role for judges to re-interpret the Constitution so as to loosen the restrictions on the powers of government."
Sowell, "Intellectuals and Race," p. 26.






3. Progressives used the fact that groups with lower IQs tended to have large families as a reason for eugenics, i.e., that over time, this would lower the national IQ. Actually, research in more than a dozen countries showed that the average performance on IQ tests rose substantially- by a full standard deviation or more- in a generation or two.
James R. Flynn, "The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932-1978, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 95, pp. 29-51; and Flynn, "Massive Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Really Means," Psychological Bulletin, vol. 101, pp. 171-191.




Here's a fact for you: the size of the font is unrelated to the veracity of your post....as proven above.

One would hope that with the new year, I will see an improvement in the content of your posts.


On the bright side, you may continue to count on me for the education you so sorely lack.

Seriously.

You are claiming something that doesn't exist. About a hundred years ago, when the first intelligence tests came out and began to be used by the military, these ideas did emerge. However, the progressive scientists quickly debunked those ideas and sorted out the confusion. Progressives haven't believed what you say they believe for 90 years or so.

Jim

"... the progressive scientists quickly debunked..."

Sorry, Jimmy....you can run, but you can't hide.


Progressives used the idea to invest eugenics, forced sterilization.

1. . Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, writing in "Hereditary Genius," concluded that particular families produced an inordinate number of high achievers. Similar reasoning was applied to races. It was Galton who coined the term "eugenics," which promotes a consideration of the survival of different races. Galton wrote "there exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race." Haller, "Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought," p. 11.

a. Intellectuals, social scientists, and scientists of various types are firmly convinced of their conclusions....until they're not. Through the first half of the 20th century, observable, testable differences among and between groups were attributed to heredity. Then, beyond the middle of the century, the same differences were attributed to environment, especially an environment of racism.

b. Progressives took a negative view of European immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Today, there are also intellectuals who cast aspersions on whole groups who aren't like them. The following quote is amusing based on the history of Liberals:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Now....which dunce said that?





So.....did the Progressives repent?

Give up the view that some human lives just aren't work being kept alive?

Not a chance!



2. Shocking? Not the view of refined progressives at this late date? Guess again.
"Signs of ObamaCare's failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law's most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, sometimes called a "death panel," threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution's separation of powers.....

For a vivid illustration of the extent to which life-and-death medical decisions have already been usurped by government bureaucrats, consider the recent refusal by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to waive the rules barring access by 10-year old Sarah Murnaghan to the adult lung-transplant list. A judge ultimately intervened and Sarah received a lifesaving transplant June 12. But the grip of the bureaucracy will clamp much harder once the Independent Payment Advisory Board gets going in the next two years." David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley: An ObamaCare Board Answerable to No One - WSJ.com




Wise up.

 

[Daktoria]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.






9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.





10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next







Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.



Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......



Certainly worth a try.

I'm not sure if that's exactly what's being argued there by liberals.

What's really being argued is people aren't statistics, but if some conservatives want to treat people like they're statistics in having to conform to popular practical traditional norms within a certain degree a variation, and only being valuable if they're monetarily useful, then liberals might as well counter-balance them by playing number games back at them.

There's also a matter that more authority figures in schools makes it easier for students to be kept in line, and this is something conservatives should sympathize with since they agree that public schools are out of control with behavioral issues. Likewise, there are so many conservatives who insist on using authority figures in the first place to discipline children rather than taking a graceful approach through heritage instead.

 

[GreenBean]

https://thetruthaboutmedia.com/

 

[PoliticalChic]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.






9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.





10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next







Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.



Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......



Certainly worth a try.

I'm not sure if that's exactly what's being argued there by liberals.

What's really being argued is people aren't statistics, but if some conservatives want to treat people like they're statistics in having to conform to popular practical traditional norms within a certain degree a variation, and only being valuable if they're monetarily useful, then liberals might as well counter-balance them by playing number games back at them.

There's also a matter that more authority figures in schools makes it easier for students to be kept in line, and this is something conservatives should sympathize with since they agree that public schools are out of control with behavioral issues. Likewise, there are so many conservative who insist on using authority figures in the first place to discipline children rather than taking a graceful approach through heritage instead.

You seem clueless about conservatives....and I should have let your post go after "I'm not sure if that's exactly what's being argued there by liberals."

It was the hermeneutic key to the rest of the post.


Let me speak for this conservative:

Vouchers....free will for those using education.

It certainly worked well as the G.I. Bill.....

 

[Daktoria]

So very many myths to puncture....so little time.



Consider the following....

"That class size should be small is revered like an article of faith in this country. Its adherents include parents, education groups, politicians and, of course, the unions whose ranks it swells. In many states it is even required by law, which has lead to millions of dollars in fines against schools in Florida and a lawsuit against New York City by its teachers union."
The cost of small class size - The Washington Post


Smaller classes means more teachers hired, which, in turn, means more union dues which can be used to purchase more....politicians....who push for even smaller classes.

But, intuitive though it may be....there is no truth to the view that smaller classes result in more learning.
The opposite may be true.






1. "Last month, ... officials in the Brevard County Schools had broken Florida state law—on purpose. Their offense? Placing more kids in classrooms than Florida’s Class Size Reduction statute allows..... What if they had assigned the “extra” students to their most effective teachers, leaving fewer pupils in classrooms presided over by weaker instructors?
What would be the impact of such a practice on student achievement?

2. The idea is straightforward: Give the better teachers more kids and the weaker teachers fewer—then see what happens. It’s a common-sense option with many supporters. We know, for instance, that parents say they would opt for larger classes taught by excellent teachers, rather than smaller classes with instructors of unknown ability.

a. In a study last year for the Fordham Institute, the FDR Group found that a whopping 73 percent of parents would choose a class with twenty-seven students—provided it is “taught by one of the district’s best performing teachers”—over a class of twenty-two students “taught by a randomly chosen teacher.”

3. Further, given the choice between fewer students and more compensation, the teachers themselves choose the latter. In a well-done study of their own, Dan Goldhaber and colleagues found that 83 percent of educators in Washington State would prefer an additional $5,000 in compensation versus having two fewer students in their classes.








4. Given districts’ aversion to assigning students [equally to all teachers], ....we approached economist Michael Hansen, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Hansen, an expert in labor economics and the economics of education, has ample experience mining North Carolina data and conducting simulations of this genre.

a. He uses three years of data (2007–10) to generate past value-added measures. For the fourth year, he estimates how teachers actually performed, and then he simulates what the impact would have been if students instead had been allocated to teachers based on their prior performance, with an eye towards maximizing student gains. The allocation process results in larger classes for the most effective teachers and smaller for the least effective.

5. The key finding: Minor changes in assignment lead to improvements in student learning. The results were relatively modest for the fifth grade; there, even when as many as twelve additional pupils were assigned to effective teachers, it yielded gains equivalent to extending the school year by just two days.

6.. At the eighth-grade level, however, the results were much more robust. Hansen found that assigning up to twelve more students than average to effective eighth-grade teachers can produce gains equivalent to adding two-and-a-half extra weeks of school.







7. Yet adding fewer students pays dividends, too. In fact, 75 percent of the potential gain from allowing up to twelve students to be assigned to the best teachers’ classes is already realized when allowing just six students to move. Specifically, adding up to six more than the school’s average produces math and science gains akin to extending the school year by nearly two weeks. This impact is the equivalent of removing the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers from the classroom.

8. And that is without actually removing them. As Hansen explains, “Class-size shifting enables the lowest-performing teachers to become more effective than they may be otherwise.”.... we should shrink some teachers’ classes down to zero students—and take the money saved thereby to bump up the compensation of effective teachers.






9.Last, Hansen examines whether this reallocation policy helps our neediest students gain more access to effective teachers. In a word, no. Gaps in access for economically disadvantaged students persist, primarily because the pool of available teachers in high-poverty schools remains unchanged under this strategy. Hence, this policy alone won’t remedy achievement gaps.





10. In the end, one simple change—giving effective teachers a handful more students—could mean a big boost to student achievement."
Right-Sizing the Classroom : Education Next







Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter)

We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.



Here we can see the method applied to education.
Common sense alternatives supported by evidence......



Certainly worth a try.

I'm not sure if that's exactly what's being argued there by liberals.

What's really being argued is people aren't statistics, but if some conservatives want to treat people like they're statistics in having to conform to popular practical traditional norms within a certain degree a variation, and only being valuable if they're monetarily useful, then liberals might as well counter-balance them by playing number games back at them.

There's also a matter that more authority figures in schools makes it easier for students to be kept in line, and this is something conservatives should sympathize with since they agree that public schools are out of control with behavioral issues. Likewise, there are so many conservative who insist on using authority figures in the first place to discipline children rather than taking a graceful approach through heritage instead.

You seem clueless about conservatives....and I should have let your post go after "I'm not sure if that's exactly what's being argued there by liberals."

It was the hermeneutic key to the rest of the post.


Let me speak for this conservative:

Vouchers....free will for those using education.

It certainly worked well as the G.I. Bill.....

Conservatives shouldn't support vouchers because they contradict family values.

Every family in society does not live in or near a successful community, so lots of children would end up getting bussed to school districts which are long distances away. Likewise, the parents of those children would struggle to represent their children's interests in PTA meetings nevermind faculty meetings in case of disciplinary, scheduling, or extracurricular activity issues.

The free market has its place, but there are foundations that do not get privatized when it comes to living in a civil republic.

If you were a libertarian, I'd try to persuade you otherwise, but you're not, so I don't think I have to go there.