Class Size

Here's a SOAP BOX lecture....

The Iowa Legislature and I'm sure every other state legislature is looking at education.

To revamp

To revolutionize

To recreate

Everyone thinks it is broken and it needs to be fixed.

And it does, but can't the same be said for the medical field? The government? Wall Street? The legal world?

And on and on and on.

But education is a field everyone thinks they know and can change because they were once a student. How many of us can say we were once a doctor?

So I overheard an exchange on NPR this week with an education representative and a couple of legislators. The class size initiative of a few years ago was brought up and I guess our state has devoted 300 million dollars to the Class Size Initiative and 4th graders scores only changed/improved by one point.

Not enough of a change for the Initiative to prove effective.

I'm not going to disagree with facts. I'm sure that is the truth, but here's my spin.

 A small class size in the elementary years and any year in education only makes sense. It's common sense. You can't tell me that a family with two children isn't able to devote more time and attention to them than the Duggar family with 19. Really?

But here's the caveat. I don't think scores will be any different with elementary kids whether they are in a class of 12 or 27. Smaller class size benefits aren't going to show up by 4th grade test scores. Kids don't pay attention or retain the material for very long for a test. Research on the brain indicates that if one wants retention the material has to be presented in short segments, repeated over a period of time, with hours of sleep in between. There is no way this method can be completed in the classroom of today. There is too much pressure to push on, even if the student doesn't understand. Many classrooms have an edict to be at a certain point in the curriculum on a specific day, the same as every other classroom in the district. This is making the supposition that every student learns in the same way, at the same time. Is every heart surrey the same? Every law suit? Every recycle pick up? NOTHING is the same. We are working with a human element.

I digress. Back to the test scores only changing by one point upward. I think the difference in test scores, based on class size, will show up by high school. IF the smaller class size teachers have been doing their job they will have taught more life skills, more study skills, more problem solving skills, more real life experiences and all this will come together with maturity by 18.

I'm not ambitious enough to search to see if any research supports my theory, but I think it's a good one. Learning takes time and maturity. Something teachers and students don't have much of any more.

No one has patience, constituents or legislators, but that's what we need. Time and money.

I taught for way too many years with way too many students.

But again, who is asking me?