NY: Carl Paladino Is At It Again

It was 2014 when the Alliance for Quality Education and Citizen Action released a report that laid out in painful detail how Carl Paladino was getting rich in the charter school business. Paladino was running Ellicott Development, a large Buffalo area property development company, that was doing fine business with at least five major Buffalo charter school operators. Paladino was particularly fond of leaseback arrangements, and in least one case he was the sole investor in the charter school.

Paladino ran, successfully, twice, for Buffalo's school board, promising he would recuse himself from charter votes, only he latter clarified that to mean any deal in which he had a direct conflict of interest; as a board member, he actually promoted the heck out of charter schools. Paladino was charter schools' best friend on the public school board.

At the time, I called him a charter wolf in public school clothing, but that's not really accurate because Paladino made little effort to disguise himself. Asked by the Buffalo City News if he was profiting from his work with charters, he replied "If I didn't, I'd be a friggin' idiot."

Paladino's mouth was generally on racist, sexist autopilot, and the rest of the board often tried in vain to shut him up. In 2016 he released comments to a local newspaper, in which he wrote he wanted to see President Barack Obama dead of mad cow disease and first lady Michelle Obama “return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.” He acknowledged these comments were "inappropriate;" the standard Paladino non-apology apology generally is some variation on "I suppose it was a bad PR move to say that out loud." Finally, in 2017 the state education commissioner booted him from the board for disclosing confidential information about contract negotiations with the teachers union. Paladino claimed this was a violation of his First Amendment rights. Sure.

But Paladino, who had an earlier unsuccessful run for governor under his belt, just can't quit politics. When Chris Jacobs withdrew after committing the unforgiveable GOP sin of suggesting that maybe not everyone needs to own an AR-15 style weapon that has no use except to murder human beings, Paladino jumped into the ring, quickly pulling an endorsement from Elise Stefanik.

First, he shared a post on Facebook linking mass murders (like the one that had just happened in Buffalo) to various bizarro mind control. Called on it, he went first with the "wasn't me" defense, then moved on to the "I forgot" and landed on a combo of "It was written by a good buddy of mine" and "I didn't actually read the whole thing before I posted it" (which, in all fairness, is about 95% of the people who post things on social media) while throwing in a dash of "I don't believe all the things in the article." Which begs the question of which things he does believe, but okay--damage mostly contained.

The Paladino went on the radio to talk about the need to rouse people up, and his mouth went off again:

I was thinking the other day about somebody had mentioned on the radio Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds. And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just — they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it, so that it’s not a strange new world to him.

Media Matters caught the interview and published the quote. Paladino responded that implying his comments meant that he supports Hitler would be "a new low for the media." Because quoting his words is just really below the belt, I guess? He went on to say that he was wrong to mention Hitler. "I understand that invoking Hitler in any context is a serious mistake and rightfully upsets people," which is again a version of "That was a bad PR choice" and not "What I said was wrong."

At any rate, if you're in New York and thinking you've heard Paladino's name before, especially in conjunction with saying awful things, you probably have. For people who care about public education or just human beings in general, this is probably not the guy to vote for.

AL: Looking For Holes In The Teacher Pipeline

Alabama has actually done a decent job of breaking down and collecting the numbers on their teacher pipeline, and while they don't draw a huge number of conclusions from the data, it's an interesting pile of numbers that may offer some lessons for other states as well.

The state government's report on teacher recruitment and retention shows that the teacher-student ratio has been improving since a peak of 16.49-1 in 2016. That's fueled by a drop in the number of students (steady for the last decade, with a big COVID dip at the end) along with an increase in the number of teachers. But a closer look shows that Alabama's awarding of traditional teacher certificates is down-- Bachelor degrees are down 26% over the last 18 years, though Masters degrees are up over the last three. The increase in teacher numbers in Alabama is mostly (90%) due to alternative and emergency certificates; since 2014, the state has actually awarded more non-traditional than traditional certificates.

The report does show success for the Alabama Math and Science Teacher Education Program (AMSTEP), which pays post-2018 grads $2,500 federal student loan repayment per semester taught in Alabama, plus additional supplemental payments if they take a job at a hard-to-staff school. That lasts for a max of four years, and it appears to help, though so far only 61 teachers are using the program. All but 2 stayed in teaching, and 45 stayed in the same school. AMSTEP has yet to use up all its available funds. But yes-- fixing it so that beginning teachers have some help with their college debt is a good idea.

A less good idea is trying to beef up the alternative pipeline by making it easier to go that route; one suggestion in the report pilot an alternative certificate by doing online modules with Teachers of Tomorrow, an on line teacher certification mill. Also, maybe lower the class hours requirement for alt certification. 

One of the big problems with goosing the alternative pipeline is covered in Alabama's own report on teacher supply and demand. Alabama's turn over rate varies by district, with 18% on the low end and a staggering 32% on the high end. The report breaks down "ends" by voluntary and involuntary, and one of the intriguing but unaddressed pieces of data is that high turnover districts have a higher voluntary rate and a way higher involuntary rate (which is mostly about single year contracts that aren't renewed). 

Alabama is having a terrible time holding on to first year teachers--over 50% leave within their first three years, which is above the national rate of 44%. And the group that has the highest rate of turnover-- that would be the non-traditional certifications. Bachelor degree teachers are retained at a rate of 69%; master degrees follow closely with 65%. Alternative certs are retained at a rate barely over 50% (emergency certs bring up the rear at under 50%). 

So I'm not sure it makes sense to try to carry more water in the buckets with the biggest holes.

Nor do I think those are holes you can fix. We know that one of the best ways to retain a teacher is for them to have a successful first couple of years, and that means preparation and support. Folks who get an alternative certificate are getting less preparation for the job. It's like offering someone a chance to get to play on an NFL team by letting them skip all the physical conditioning or earing all those bulky pads. It may be exciting right up until the first play when they get hit hard.

These reports avoid addressing other issues, like, say passing anti-LGBTQ laws that require teachers to out students who think they might be trans, or passing anti-indoctrinatin' laws, Or Alabama's unspectacular teacher pay, though the report does make some targeted pay suggestions.  

It may not be within the purview of this report, but the absence of teacher voices is notable. The most obvious steps to pursue would include finding teachers who left the profession and asking them why. Alabama has a 25% "supply gap"-- IOW. 25% of the graduates who get teaching certification do not go and get a teaching job; someone really ought to ask them why not. 

Alabama has some good ideas, like spending $4 million on a teacher mentor program, and some bad ideas, like spending $822K on Teach for America (if there's anything that TFA is not set up to address with its "teach two years then go get your real job" model, it's turnover rates). They even tried to pass a Teacher Bill of Rights in order to build respect for the professions--but it was allowed to quietly die in the legislature. 

Thank You, Teachers

We're at the end of another road, another 180-day road trip over the Mountain of Education, and this is always a hard part of the year.

Teaching is about building relationships, creating a little classroom community. I've seen memes that call it like creating a little family, and I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. But whatever connections are built in the course of the year, once the school year crosses the finish line, all of those connections are done. At end of the year, teachers have to say goodbye. 

We know that the end of a relationship is hard. Adults do it now and then, and it's almost never easy. More like a little mini bout of grief and loss. Teachers do that every year, with between twenty and two hundred young humans. 

It's also the Season of the Second Guess. Did I cover enough? Did I get them ready for the next thing? Could I have done more for those students that were less successful? Should I have covered X instead of Y? Did I miss too many chances to give a student a needed boost? Was I pre-occupied and thoughtless at the moment I could have made a critical difference? Was I enough? 

Could I have done more, or done better? It's always a tough question to grapple with, because the answer is always "Yes."

That can only be worse in a year like this one. in which students carried gigantic steamer trunks full of  challenges and hurts and missed opportunities left over from last year's pandemess (and the year's before that), and then they had to process more terrible news from this year, and teachers had to try to manage all that in the midst of unprecedented levels of public attacks on teachers (They're slackers! They're indoctrinators! They're groomers! They're teaching that thing that I can't really explain, but oh boy is it bad! They're terrible at their jobs, but maybe we should make them carry guns!). 

And while many teachers are talking about this (some on their way out the door), most are not, because being a teacher means trying not to talk about the hard parts of your job, because then people will just say you're whining.

It's just a tough time in a tough year.

So, teachers, I have this to say to you.

Thank you. 

Thank you for pushing forward as best you could every day. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for trying to watch out for your students. Thank you for teaching and teaching and keeping on with the business of teaching, getting those students to grow in skills and knowledge and humanity, even when they came to you missing part of their foundation in everything from knowledge and skills to just remembering how to do school. 

Thank you for pushing on even when you felt as if you were pushing through a dark and trackless land. Thank you for every day when you gave something at school that you had hoped to save for your own home. 

Thank you continuing even on the days when it seemed as if so many people wanted to tell you how wrong you were, but didn't want to pitch in to help.

Thank you for all the hours that you poured into the work. Thank you for every small victory you scored, and for coming back after every defeat.

Thank you for putting your heart on the line.

Thank you for standing up. Thank you for hanging in. Thank you for pressing past all the endless Other Stuff to do the core of the work--the teaching. You students know so much more now than they did a year ago, and that's not nothing. Thank you for that.

For every one of you who stood watch over the rising up of parents' beloved young humans, thank you.

For every one of you who stayed to do the job, thank you (and for those of you who didn't, I get it, and thank you, too).

There is a special kind of drained exhaustion that comes at the end of a school year. May the summer fill you back up, and may the coming weeks bring you back in touch with everything that helps you feel the joy and beauty of being your best self, of being fully human in the world. 

Thank you.

High Quality Instructional Materials

When folks, particularly reformy folks, start talking about high quality instructional materials, I reflexively bristle. Part of it is that HQIM means, for some folks, materials that are aligned with the Common Core (either by name or under the various alias it has adopted). I also associate the term with curriculum-in-a-box, the kind of program that salespeople tout as teacher-proof, just as long as the school content delivery units present the program "with fidelity" aka "like mindless robots whose compliance is required and whose professional judgment is forbidden." 

But the truth is, I need to take a deep breath and return my hackles to their seated unraised position, because there is a conversation about quality materials worth having, albeit a more nuanced and complicated one than the one we're inclined to have (also, I'm pretty sure that "a more nuanced and complicated conversation than the one we're inclined to have" covers a huge number of education issues).

Because I know better.

The best instructional materials I ever had (not made by me) was a literature series by MacMillan-Scribner. A solid selection of literature, and a really great set of both questions for the selection and materials to create a unit test. The whole package was about 80% aligned with what I wanted to accomplish in the class. It saved me untold hours.

On the other hand, in 39 years, I never saw a grammar/usage/writing text that was worth the paper it was printed on. Most were simply dreadful, with explanations that were unclear and exercises that were too brief and often poorly focused. I depended on my own created materials for about 90% of my teaching in those areas. 

On the other other hand, there was my mentee who started her career depending heavily on Google as her teaching assistant, and not in a good way. We had too many conversation like this:

"I found a worksheet about this book/standard/lesson on line"

"Great. Why are you using this particular worksheet? How does it fit in your unit objectives?"

"It's about this book/standard/lesson."

There's still a problem with chirpy articles like this one (from EdReports, whose whole raison d'etre is certifying instructional materials as 100% common core fresh) that presume that if teachers just understood HQIM better, they'd realize that HQIM would make everything awesome. This is not true, either. 

And of course the entire conversation is muddied up by the term High Quality Instructional Material, which means whatever you think it means. So let me tell you what I think a piece of high quality instructional material looks like.

Accurate and Appropriate Content

I shouldn't need to bring this up, but every teacher has been there--you're working your way through new teaching materials and realize that the writers of the book got something wrong. Well, that's if you're lucky and vigilant; otherwise, the mistake will be brought to your attention by a student.

I know I may not be the person to fly the flag, what with my years of cranking out typo-riddled posts on this blog. But textbooks are expensive, and textbook companies are well-paid, so I don't want to open up a book and find a noun called a verb or Stephen Crane called a Romantic writer. I want materials created by somebody who knows the content and knows it well and not someone who is just plugging in stuff for a template (or--and I don't know how much this is an issue in other content areas, but in English it's a pain--is apparently working from an open copy of someone else's textbook and trying to copy it without actually violating copyright laws).

Nor do I want a textbook to include baloney like calling enslaved people immigrants or the USSR a Communist paradise or otherwise attempting to put a particular gloss on the content. 

And since time saving is one of the appeals of HQIM, the prospect of sifting through a haystack like Teachers Pay Teachers for some needle of high quality material seems like a problem. It may be my old-fartiness shining through, but TPT seems like an invitation to Just Grab Something without taking the time to find something good (and in that same time, could I not design something of my own).

Also--material that is grade/age appropriate. This is a hard one, given the wide range of end users. That's just one reason we need--

Flexibility

EdReports likes to say that the think teachers should implement materials with "integrity" rather than "fidelity." I agree at least half with this--no materials that demand to be implemented with fidelity are high quality, because what that actually means is that someone, somewhere, has decided that they know the best way to teach material to students that they haven't even met. The teacher is in the classroom; the book's authors are not. Note: anything with a script is not HQIM.

HQIM are adaptable, so that the teacher can use them to construct a lesson that's best for the class they're facing. EdReports actually cites some research to back this up, suggesting that  “'adaptation with guardrails' can actually help strengthen impacts on student outcomes beyond what is possible through program fidelity alone. In other words, learn the materials by sticking close to what the manufacturer suggests, then as you become familiar, adapt to suit. 

Implicit in all this is that HQIM provide more materials than you can actually use--because you're not going to use all of it. You're going to use the pieces that work best for you and your students, including making adjustment for achievement levels within the class.

Actual Support

Here's what teachers are used to getting: a PD session from some company rep who spent a couple of years in the classroom, then checked out for this sweeter gig. This person will suggest that you don't know what you're doing and will blow off any practical questions you want to ask.

Here's what teachers need, particularly with materials that are computer based: A person they can call who can actually answer questions and provide support other than reading from the same manual that the teacher already looked at on line. 

The Why

There is nothing more critical in a classroom than the why. The teacher has to know why they're covering the material, and it has to be a good reason and not "because someone told me to" or "it will be on the Big Standardized Test" or any of the other reasons that students hear, correctly, as "Blah blah blah no good reason." 

For HQIM, this becomes another aspect of flexibility. Instructional Materials cannot supply the why (pro tip: "Because it's in the book" is not a useful why) for the teacher, but they can be clear about what sorts of why the particular materials address. When a teacher goes to the materials bank, they need be able to search beyond "something about Hamlet." They should be dipping into the library looking for "exploring the themes of Hamlet" or "reviewing character relations in Hamlet" or "examining the plot sequence in Hamlet" and the teacher should be able to look for these specifics without having to read through every single piece of material to figure out what it's about.

A well-done teachers' guide can even help develop the why of a unit by suggesting possible ideas to explore.

A bad set of materials hides its why. The worst grammar/usage text I ever had offered terrible grammar exercises, and it was only after I was several chapters in before I realized that the exercises were all organized exceptions to or quirks in the grammar concepts, trying to test the students' grasp of the concepts with examples from the fringes--without ever giving students a chance to practice the basic core of the idea. 

Teacher enhancing, not teacher proof

No brand of instructional material can make a great teacher out of a lousy one, but administrative demands to follow a program with fidelity can make a mediocre teacher out of a good one (or a former teacher out of a good one). 

I know there are sales reps out there whose pitch, implicit or explicit, is "Buy our stuff and you will have a complete curriculum and a whole staff of teachers on the same page." And I have worked for a couple of administrators who totally bought that pitch. 

There are two problems. First of all, good teachers will be hamstrung, and lousy teachers will still be lousy (how to unlousify them is a whole other post). HQIM should save teachers time and trouble, not micro-managing them.

Second of all, imagine this--the company goes out of business and all of their materials suddenly vanish. If leaders in your district are suddenly saying, "Oh no! Now we have no curriculum!" then you never did, because teaching materials are not a curriculum. They should be used to implement your curriculum and enhance your teachers' work. It's like putting seatbelts in your school buses, strapping all your students in, and announcing that your focus is safety as you send a driverless bus careening down the road. 

Create your curriculum. Then select your books etc based on how well they fit your district's plan. Which means--yes--that some high quality instructional materials may conceivably be an excellent fit for one district and not so much for another. (Which takes us back to the old "Wait a minute--we can't have a whole bunch of different curricula higgledy piggledy all over the place," and that really is a post for another day).

NH: Don't Worry, Be Happy

Teachers and parents have heard plenty about self care over the past two years. Now New Hampshire's leaders have decided to make a big fat "fix yourself" PR campaign out of it.

The whole self-care message depends a great deal on context. Self care is a good thing, a practice that everyone should follow in dealing with the stresses and pressures of life.

But when the message comes from the people who have power over that stress and pressure, it takes on a whole new meaning. That meaning is roughly, "You had better take care of your own interests and health because I'm not going to doing a damn thing about it." It comes perilously close to telling a person who's angry at your misbehavior to calm down and stop being so hysterical.

Sometimes it's part cluelessness and part deliberate obtuseness. I'm thinking here of Andrew Carnegie who told his employees that they should take the time to read and enrich their leisure time, even as he was also telling them that they would be required to work ten hours a day, seven days a week. Or Arne Duncan doubling down on the stakes for high-stakes testing, then admonishing schools that they were putting way too much emphasis on the high stakes test.

So here comes New Hampshire's Department of Education with its new 603 Moment campaign. The campaign was launched at a New Hampshire Fisher Cats ball game, where Governor Chris Sununu offered some chirpy encouragement:

"Just like the #HomeHikeChallenge from the last two years, our #603Moment initiative seeks to help New Hampshire kids, parents, and families refocus and appreciate the little things in life," Sununu said. "Let's channel these 603 Moments into positive change and renew important discussions on the importance of social and emotional health not just in our schools, but also in our communities."

Note that "seeks to help" apparently means "offer suggestions for things you can contribute to this PR campaign just in case you don't know what little things you appreciate." Frank Edelblut, homeschooling businessman-turned-politician and New Hampshire's spectacularly unqualified Education Commissioner, offered some help, pointing out that a special moment could occur "on a walk or a lunch break, or perhaps it is a peaceful reflection while visiting a favorite place, or just a few deep breaths while in the midst of chaos."

Look. I want to be clear that I am an absolute believer in self care and in cherishing all the small, beautiful moments that come along in life. Life is rich and beautiful if you take the trouble to see it. We should all absolutely cherish the good moments in our lives.

But this is not that.

This is the kind of campaign that makes me really, really want to see the meeting that spawned this. 

Did a bunch of suits at the ed department gather round and say, "You know, I think of all the problems facing our families, the big one is that the little people just don't stop appreciate that they can take deep breaths when everything is turning to poop around them." Or was it more along the lines of "What's something we could come up with that would distract people from the lousy couple of years we've had?" 

Or was it more like a boss saying, "I need some ideas for something--anything--that we could do other than actually implement better, more supportive, more human policies for teachers, parents and students." And then after some puzzled silence, somebody piped up with, "I hear all the youths are using that social media stuff. Maybe we could start some kind of happy social media thing on the interwebs." 

I also wonder if the term "toxic positivity" passed through anyone's mind. 

NH's leaders have been unrelenting in their attacks on public education. Repeated voucher-based attacks that ultimately resulted in hiding an unpopular voucher bill in the budget. Helping Betsy DeVos and Club for Growth launch a privatizing tour. Charter promotion from everyone between Christian nationalist Hillsdale College to hapless amateurs. Welcoming in privatizing micro-school business Prenda. Joining the teacher gag law parade. Encouraging their buddies to chop local school budgets to the bone. All while the news keeps telling us that US teachers are being pushed to the brink.

So maybe--just maybe-- the governor or the state and the head of the state's education department could come up with something more helpful than "Tell us about that one time you took a nice walk during your lunch break." Maybe they could craft some policies that are supportive of public education and the people who work there and the students who learn there. Maybe they could stop strip-mining public education for money to hand to education-flavored businesses. Maybe they could come up with something more useful than a hashtag.

Speaking of which, the hashtag #603Moment is not exactly burning up on the tweeter machine. There are a few staged student pics, some links to promo articles about the initiative, and then some tweets like these:

my #603moment is when Commissioner Edelblut continuously makes it known he doesn’t care about NH students or families like he thinks he does. Shameful to even have you as a representation of education in this state.

If you ever needed an example of #gaslighting or #toxicpositivity, #603moment has you covered.

My #603moment is when Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut continues to work against teachers and students for his own benefit

And, responding to Sununu's promotional post

The day you leave office #603moment.

You can play along-- just use the hashtag #603Moment. And remember to smile smile smile.

ICYMI: Wrapping Up The Year Edition (6/5)

This week our local school districts will wrap up the year, so it's all graduations and packing up rooms and the rest of those things I no longer do. I always feel extra retired this time of year, for better or worse. But one thing I know for sure--every teacher I know (including the CMO (Chief Marital Officer) here at the Institute is really very ready for a break from what has turned out to be a very hard year. So three cheers for that. Meanwhile, here's your reading list for the week.

It's okay not to have the words

Jose Luis Vilson reflects on the same ugly mess we've all been thinking about it, with his usual high level of thoughtfulness.

Reigniting passion for teaching after a difficult year

Trevor Muir is one of those edu-celebrities, but this is a pretty good piece about using the summer to recharge. 

Teachers need more resources--not revolvers

Some straight talk about Texas and their program for turning teachers into marshals (spoiler alert: it's not going all that well).

FCMAT-- California's Unaccountable Political Player

Thomas Ultican with a tale of how a body created to ease school district crises turned into a juggernaut, and not the good kind.

Neither truth nor consequences

TC Weber continues to track the shenanigans of edu-grifters in Tennessee. Next up-- a bureaucratic bus tour!

Moms for Liberty has created nightmares for schools across the country

The New Republic (paywall alert) takes a look at M4L and determines, among other things, that the group is more about winning elections than anything else.

Susan Ohanian: A passionate spokesperson for teachers

The Charlotte (VT) newspaper decided to write a profile about Susan Ohanian, who has been in the Ranting About Education business for years. 

Brevard teacher's banned book drive raises over $5,000, angers Moms for Liberty

Last time I looked, it was up around $15K. A Bayside High AP English teacher is going to put Naughty Books into the hands of students this summer. 

Signing letter of career intent

We make a lot of fuss over high school athletes signing letters of intent for college. What would it look like if we mad a similar fuss over a kid who decided to become a plumber? Like this.

Betsy DeVos and her school privatization agenda are no match for Michigan parents

Sarah Lahm, writing for Our Schools and published at Alternet, looks at how parents have been getting in the way of DeVos's latest attempt to bring vouchers to Michigan.

Ohio arms teachers

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Ohio's crazy-pants idea to let teachers carry guns in school with just 24 hours of training. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, over in Forbes, I wrote about Ohio legislators' desire to make teenaged female athletes get a genital inspection to prove their gender, and the money that one PA charter school is handing out to parents. Also, arming teachers is a bad idea.

Also, I think I missed this piece for The Progressive that looked at how school choice actually does the opposite of parent empowerment.

The (Not A) Mystery Of Class Size

The most fundamental issue of education in this country, the issue that underlies virtually all other issues, is that we want to have it and we want it to be good, but we do not want to pay for it. We want a Lexus, but we want it at Yugo prices (and we're pretty sure that Those People could just make do with a bicycle).

No issue captures this better than the issue of class size.

There is plenty of research to underscore the benefits of smaller class sizes, but seriously-- who needs it? It's bad form to pretend that anecdotal evidence is not true data, except in this case we're talking about anecdotes from several million teaching professionals, several million children children, and several million parents. 

Ask parents. Would you rather have your child in a class of fifteen or thirty-five? Then find me even a dozen parents who pick the larger class. Heck, even people in the "Gosh, there's no hard evidence that smaller is better" crowd admit that they still prefer smaller for their own children. Meanwhile, every teacher will tell the same story that I will tell you about my years in the classroom--with fewer students, I could give each student more personal attention. Not only that, but as an English teacher, fewer students meant that I could do more writing assignments as well as provide richer feedback because I was only grading 150 essays over the weekend instead of 300.

I mean, we could play this game all day. Ask any teacher if they are more effective with large or small classes. Ask students how they feel about being one face in a large crowd in class. Ask any high school teacher what the difference is between grading 100, 200, or 300 tests. Ask any parent if they hope that their child will get a really big class next fall. Ask a teacher what size class would more likely entice them to work at a particular district.

And yet, in the wake of a New York legislative requirement to reduce class sizes, here comes stuff like this fat slice of baloney in the New York Times that tries to pretend that class size is a unsolved mystery of the ages:

The bill reignited a half-century-old debate that has pitted teachers and parents who believe smaller class sizes are better for children against city officials, who point to evidence suggesting there are better and more cost-effective ways to improve education.

As Matt Barnum correctly points out, the allegedly more cost-effective policies are not actually identified. The article is entitled "Class Sizes Set to Shrink in New York City Schools, but at What Cost?" as if there is some tragic, fraught price for these smaller class sizes. What cost!! What cost, indeed! 

It should be noted that the "smaller" class sizes in the bill are caps of 20 for K-3, 23 for 4-8, and 25 for high school. That's down from current caps of 25, 32, and 34 respectively--which are insane class sizes. (There's also a limit of 40 for "performing groups" which strikes me as a different sort of problem for schools with big band and choir programs). So we are not talking about a huge reduction in class size here.

But it's all just too too expensive. That's the message over and over again in the article. The schools will have to hire crappy teachers to fill up the gaps. NYC chancellor David Banks warns that this "unfunded mandate" will require program cuts. "And there's no good reason to think it will work," say many policy leaders, who also say, "I personally insist on finding a school with really big classes for my child." Ha! Just kidding. I'm betting not a single one of them ever said any such thing.

It's a longstanding reformster dream. Every so often someone re-proposes the Super Sardinemaster model of teaching, in which a couple hundred students are crammed into a room with a Really Awesome teacher. The logic is that if a teacher is great with 20 students, she'll be equally great with 150. By similar reasoning, we can assume that if Pat is a good spouse for one person, Pat would also be a great spouse for 50 people at the same time.

Maybe the Super Sardinemaster will be "augmented" with technology. But the important part is that you don't have to hire so many teachers, and you can pay the few you hire more money, so everyone's a winner, right? As always, nobody who proposes this also says, "And I'm putting my kid in a program like this the instant it exists."

It's the same old guiding principle-- "I don't want to spend a lot of money educating Those Peoples' Children." And I'm convinced that some folks are doubly reluctant to spend more money on personnel costs, that they'd much rather spend money on programs or buildings than on people. 

Research shmesearch--most of it is really asking if class size affects scores on the Big Standardized Test, and who cares? We know what's best. We know what works. We know that smaller classes are better. It's what we want for our own children, what we want for ourselves. We want maximum human connection in a classroom (see also: a few million people less-than-pleased with distance learning), and that means a group size that facilitates greater humanity, not a class size that obstructs it. 

We know what's best. We know what we want for our own children. We just don't want to pay the cost of providing it for Those People's Children. It is the underlying problem of education in this country, and some of New York's policy leaders are determined to come down on the wrong side of it.