Calling the Baby Ugly

There are two related concepts missing from this article and Arne Duncan's remarks. If relationship with a good teacher is of great importance, then reduction of classes size and, more generally, number of students each teacher teaches, must be critical goals.
If good teaching is critical, and assuming (I'm being ironic) that we believe that people can learn, then teaching teachers, making new teachers into good and better and great teachers, should be a goal. Strategies to reach this goal include setting up systems of mentor / master teachers, providing time in the school day for interactions among teachers in which they exchange ideas on teaching and subject matter, and support for teachers to take courses and participate in conferences.
Otherwise, isn't it all just luck?

We homeschooled our three. The oldest is now halfway through law school in the top third of his class. Our middle daughter just graduated from the local university in Kinesiology with a 3.4 GPA and the youngest has been accepted to Cal Poly Pomona's 12 ranked nationally engineering program out of a local junior college. We did it on a budget of $500 annually per child. The State of California spends $8,000 per year, per pupil. You decide

Duncan sounds like someone who might have a real impact if he were given a chance. However, that will never happen. Obama has already arranged to have his daughter's school mates kicked out of attending their current school as the voucher program in D.C. is cut off at the behest of the Teachers Union. Any attempt by Duncan to improve the quality of teachers, rather than just their salaries, will be thwarted by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and a party beholden to the teachers union. It's amazing how 50-60 years ago we still had 1 room schools in the country with multiple grades all packed into 1 class, like Little House on the Prairie, and they turned out Spelling Bee champions and math whizes. Yet too many of todays Unionized teachers turn out illiterates, thugs, and 25% plus dropout rates while blaming it on not being paid enough, that being defined as making as much as a Dr. or Lawyer!!

Must . . . fight . . . urge . . . to agree . . . with George F. Will . . .

Blast! I've failed. I think many of the posters here miss a point. The argument isn't against smaller class sizes per se - it's about the most effective application of resources. In a perfect world, we would reduce class sizes, increase teacher quality, and renovate public structures simultaneously.

Currently, we cannot. And the quality of individual teachers is increasingly the most measurable controllable indicators of future achievement (unfortunately, poverty and single-parent households are still greater predictors of performance - one thing at a time).

Malcolm Gladwell had a great article about this in the New Yorker - I'll quote directly to save time. "Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year???s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half???s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year???s worth of learning in a single year."

Granted, if we could flood schools with good teachers and lower class sizes, it would be preferrable - however, one does tend to fight against the other (we're already short good teachers, so how do we lower class sizes while enforcing stricter standards?)

As for the teachers who argue against a full school year - suck it up. We can reduce burnout through other ways - by increasing midwinter breaks, or even having a midweek break all year round. The goal isn't necessarily to increase time spent in the classroom, but reduce the loss of retention caused by long summer breaks. I don't agree with Will's teach twelve hours a day, but we're trying to engage kids during those hours anyway, through community outreach and organizations.

I retired in 2007 after spending a life time teaching in inner city schools in Los Angeles. Will just doesn't get it. He claims that states, pressured by teachers unions, water down their standards. He should have done more research. During my tenure, California issued a mind-boggling set of new state standards. We were required to post them in the room. One educational "reformer" insisted that we memorize the standards, just like Chinese teachers were supposed to memorize Chairman Mao's Little Red Book during the Cultural Revolution. Every day, we had to write the standards we were to cover on the white board (AKA chalk board) and our students were supposed to copy them. If any educational bureaucrat walked into the room, the students were supposed to tell the bureaucrat what standard we were covering.
Truth told. I had a lot more important things to remember than 3 pages of standards - starting with my students' names. (I normally had to learn about 140 to 180 names within 2 or three days) Then there was a lot of other relevant data about my students that I had to remember - like who did not get along with whom.
Forcing students to copy the standards while I took role was also a waste of time. Instead of copying standards, I'd find a recent statement made by President Bush, and projecting it on the over head and having my students correct President Bush's grammatical errors. That was a far more relevant activity.

Many of the standards were either redundant or inane. I particularly hated the standard that required students to "appreciate an author's use of figurative language." As a reader for the AP English exam, I knew that standard was particularly idiotic. It was much more important for my students to know why an author used figurative language. I also felt it was important for my students to know why advertisers use figurative devices like metonymy to convince my students to buy cigarettes or overpriced cognac. (I achieved this aim by spending a Saturday morning shooting billboards in the neighborhood surrounding my school and putting on a slide show for my students called "Figurative language in the 'hood.")
By the way, George, could you give me an example of metonymy? My students could. And I taught in one of those "failing" public inner city high schools that everyone wants to replace with private schools. (which my students can't afford to attend.) What was George F Will saying about stupid unionized teachers destroying the country?
The bottom line is that I taught students, NOT standards. That's one thing that none of the so-called educational reformers nor George F. Will seem to understand.

Before George F. will decides that finding talented teachers is more important than reducing the teaching load, he should conduct some research. In fact, I'd invite him to measure the floor space in Room 3105, my "home" for about 11 years. Because of the size of my classroom, I couldn't get any more than 36 desks in my classroom. And originally my classroom didn't have 36 desks. I showed up a week before the school year started, and stole a few desks from other classrooms. Whenever I got a class of 40 to 42 students, I did not have enough room or desks to go around - so while some students got desks, others had to make do with impromptu arrangements. Try as you might, it's really hard to make students feel welcome in a classroom where they can't even find a place to sit. It's ironic that the fire department imposes capacity limits on bars, but they don't do anything about over-crowded classrooms. And it doesn't matter how talented you are, you can't increase the floor space of your classroom.
In addition to space, learning the names of 160 to 200 students in two or three days is a daunting task that Will has never tried. But beyond that, there is a lot of other informal data, you need to pick up on. You need to figure out whether any students are near-sighted, dyslexic, or diabetic. You should find out which students lost a cousin to gang violence, which students have been dumped by their parents and are being raised by their grandmother, which students live in group homes .. the list goes on. The larger the class, the more difficult it becomes to get to really "know" the students. Then, there are the crises, If the girl in the next to the last desk in row street is crying, it's pretty important to find out why. It's harder to do this with a large class where you are always falling over desks to get anywhere. If you teach 41 students during a 55 minute class period, that gives you about 92 seconds or so for each student. Whatever needs or problems an individual student has, you have to solve those problems in about a minute and twenty five seconds.* That arrangement might not bother Will, but if you're really a dedicated and talented teacher that shortage of time for a little TLC really hurts.
Since I taught English, large classes posed an additional problem. I tried to assign an essay once every 7 days. That really is the only way to develop proficient writing skills. Large classes meant I had a novel's worth of reading to do every night. Reading and grading an essay is only part of the job, I might add. You also need to attach a sheet of commentary, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each essay you read and constructive suggestions on further improvements. I also tried to make sure my students got their essays back in 24 to 48 hours. Maybe Will should trying doing that - not once, but every other evening for an entire school year.
Before Will decides that large classes are great, he should try teac

It would be great to offer the older teachers a one time buy-out like business and industry does. That would get rid of many of the older teachers, add new young innovative teachers (at a LOW pay scale) and help local districts struggle with the budget (due to the older teachers in the upper salary bracket). When one does the math, it is incredible the savings that districts and states can have. I am a VERY much a conservative but I do crunch the numbers.

A decline of +80% since 1/23...What up with that???? Kool-Aid wearing off????

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 37% of the nation???s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-one percent (31%) now Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +6 (see trends).

This is the ninth straight day that the President???s Approval Index rating has been in single digits. Previously, the rating had slipped to single digits just once.

NOBAMA!!!

Want two parents for disadvantaged kids as George Will suggests? Let gay adopt.

Well I would have to say as a student who dropped out last year and got a G.E.D. and is ow attending university classes I do not blame the teachers for not caring or doing as good of a job as they could because i went to one of the poorer districts and I had one of the highest I.Q.s at over 140 and it was not because of the teachers i dropped out but because of my own personal choice in the matter kids today see a world of glitz and glamour and they think school will not get them there I mean i had some of the most caring teachers supporting me and still do even though I have moved on from high school you need to start looking at the filth in washington who are corrupt and pathelogical liars before we turn on our educators because without them we would not have our doctors, lawyers, ect.

USA spend much more money per student than any country in the world, and still has one of the worst graduates, no surprize that almost any foreigner in US univercities has higher grades than native born Americans.
Another fact: inside US the worst public schools suck more money than the best.

American education is a joke.Math program is laughable (in Russia and China 8-graders know more than US High School graduates), physics does not exist in High School at all. No homework (??). So-named exams with their multiple-choice answers stimulate memorizing facts rather than creativity and deep knowledge.

It is hard to believe that Bush graduated form one of the best univercities with high grades, so Obama has nothing to brag about.

Who is he most popular students in US schools, the best students? No, on the male side it is sportsmen and drug dealers, on female side - cheer leaders and whores.

The most stupid solution will be throwing more money, just learn how other countries do it. I did not hear from any President or Education Secretary that it is their plan, they prefer to invent our own stupid ways.

As a teacher I find this line of thinking absurd. Now instead of throwing money at the problem we will throw time at it too! Show me a professional who supports extending the school day and year and I'll show you someone who has spent little to no time in a classroom. Kids like adults suffer from fatigue and burn out. Anyone with experience will tell you that as the day wears on students wear out with it. While these ideas may work in Chicago, few ideas can be applied nationwide with any degree of success. Also where will the money come from to support the extra days spent at school along with the extended hours? I would imagine that you would have to increase teacher pay to reflect the extra work load. In my state, teacher pay is tied to property tax and I have serious doubts that will be raised in the near future. I guess the brilliant Mr. Duncan, who has never spent time in the classroom as a teacher, will figure out a way to attract new highly qualified teachers to work for less pay and less time off. Perhaps that is why he would rather 100,000 new teachers as their salary would be far less than the 100,000 with experience. Better yet, lets tie pay to "merit" so that anyone who teaches with half a brain will flee the under performing schools for one with gifted kids in order to get a raise. Every administration has new ideas to fix the problems in education when these problems are actually at home. Fix the parents and let the kids enjoy the summer. But wait, that would kill Obama's plan for adding jobs as those burger flipping summer jobs that employ teens will not become instantly available.