tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post6985709004279035272..comments2023-03-23T09:51:05.485-04:00Comments on Eduwonkette: skoolboy's Rejoindereduwonkettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05072705276536120758noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-8663053471176998362008-01-06T08:40:00.000-05:002008-01-06T08:40:00.000-05:00Under mayoral control, only two men have any real ...Under mayoral control, only two men have any real say in what happens in the schools, the mayor and chancellor. Given this governance system and the particular tactics employed by the administration, I think the class size advocacy approach taken by Class Size Matters has been far more successful than I would have thought possible. <BR/><BR/>The reality is that the mayor and chancellor absolutely do not want to reduce class sizes yet the pressure on them to do so is intense. They have consented to begin with 75 schools in response to pressure brought by the State under the Contracts for Excellence agreement. Advocacy groups like CSM and other had a large hand in that. As a parent of elementary school kids in classes of 28, I'm not happy with the progress but trying to sell Tweed on a pilot program as you suggest is not a viable strategy.<BR/><BR/>As for attacking you personally, I think you are being overly sensitive. You are making comments on education advocacy and politics and your qualifications to do so are suspect. I think it is important for the readers here to understand that. Honestly, as an anonymous blogger it is not clear if you even have the qualifications to make the academic arguments you make. Public school teachers who fear retaliation absolutely should employ anonymity but I don't see why academics need to.<BR/><BR/>As for Eduwonkette's "policy" on comments, it is my kids in the system. The academics, politicians and faceless foundations with no skin in the game are going to hear from me whether they like it or not.Patrick Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10631038958645725010noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-55101689132919952492008-01-06T01:31:00.000-05:002008-01-06T01:31:00.000-05:00Patrick,You're free to disagree with me, but attac...Patrick,<BR/><BR/>You're free to disagree with me, but attacking me personally violates the spirit of eduwonkette's blog, and we're both guests here. Back in October, she posted on attacking the ideas, not the person. <BR/><BR/>Do you think the current advocacy approach has been successful in reducing class sizes in New York City? I don't believe that it has. That's why I am advocating a different approach.skoolboyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886593381368126893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-17287256588537793362008-01-06T00:27:00.000-05:002008-01-06T00:27:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.skoolboyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886593381368126893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-8202790198649352302008-01-05T23:00:00.000-05:002008-01-05T23:00:00.000-05:00I'm sorry but skoolboy's arguments betray a fatal ...I'm sorry but skoolboy's arguments betray a fatal lack of familiarity with either children, classrooms or the reality of the Bloomberg administration's tactics. As parents we are used to the patronizing and condescending attitudes of the administration but it's a bit much to be lectured here on how to advocate for what has come to be expected in every other learning environment in the state, public or private. <BR/><BR/>If I were an academic I would direct my energies to finding positions I felt strongly enough to defend without hiding behind anonymous facades.Patrick Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10631038958645725010noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-44572574060747033852008-01-03T15:14:00.000-05:002008-01-03T15:14:00.000-05:00Wonderful debate! Had you two continued, I would ...Wonderful debate! Had you two continued, I would have continued to agree mostly with the person who I had read last.<BR/><BR/>Discussion is key. A decade ago, when we were more of an inner ring suburban school and I was teaching freshmen, I saw how learning decreased after we had more than 33 or 34 students. Today in our much poorer school, the dropoff occurs closer to twenty. Back then I had a class of around 70 for a month The biggest apparent problem was that every square inch was taken and big football players accidently elbowed their neighbors as they wrote, and I only had about three square feet and I'm always moving. There was no discipline problems but of course the weaker students had the biggest dropoffs in learning. <BR/><BR/>Last year I had forty-plus seniors in classes and often students in one side of the class had cousins who had killed cousins of students on the other side of class, and vica versa. But they behaved well in class and worked. My intuition says they learned less than the huge class of a decade before.<BR/><BR/>I had classes of 70 sophomores last year for a couple of weeks and after a Quarter they were reduced to 35. Those classes never recovered. I predict they will have a dropout rate of 85% or more.<BR/><BR/>This is a long way of agreeing with both of you. Class size reduction should be a main priority, certainly over the gimmicks that have grown with NCLB. But as long as poor districts resort to the most outrageous methods of balancing their books (in my case assigning 240 students to me, and 200 plus to many other core teachers while reducing class size in tested subjects to 15 and while spending millions on on-line tutorials and the infrastructure for testing.)we will need to discuss the best practical ways of investing in personalized settings.<BR/><BR/>John ThompsonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-1219605853086946062008-01-03T10:55:00.000-05:002008-01-03T10:55:00.000-05:00Rachel, that's a hard question to answer in the ab...Rachel, that's a hard question to answer in the abstract, because every district has a different mix of problem conditions and values, and resources available to address the problem conditions. I wouldn't start with reforms; rather, I'd start with diagnosing problem conditions that are amenable to policy action. Different stakeholders will have diverse and sometimes conflicting ideas about which problems are salient and most important. A trick espoused by Eugene Bardach is to try to define problems in terms of deficits or excesses, e.g., "too many new teachers in our district leave within the first three years," or "the demand for our summer enrichment program exceeds the supply of seats." I would argue that a formulation such as "too many kindergarten students are in classes larger than 20 students" is not a good problem statement, because it builds the solution (class size reduction) into the problem. A better formulation might be "too few kindergarten students are active participants in learning activities," which allows for a broader range of potential policy solutions than just class size reduction.skoolboyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17886593381368126893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1589405835312873091.post-85920644274178623952008-01-02T18:53:00.000-05:002008-01-02T18:53:00.000-05:00I'd agree that skoolboy's original discussion of t...I'd agree that skoolboy's original discussion of the research on class size was pretty balanced. However, from a policy making perspective (I'm a local school board member...) there's something frustratingly circular about a lot of the discussion.<BR/><BR/>Say your district has class sizes of 30 elementary grades. The STAR study looks at the difference between classes of 13-17 compared with classes of 22-25, so in the narrow sense it tells you little about whether trying to reduce class size from 30 to 25 would be a good thing. But does it really (as some people claim) tell you NOTHING?<BR/><BR/>My sense is that one of the biggest impediments to real educational reform is that too many people are looking for simple, unambiguous answers. And preferably, simple, unambiguous answers that involve no additional spending. The sort of answers that could be the centerpiece of some presidential candidate's education platform...<BR/><BR/>But reducing the scope and stakes a little: for policy makers working on a smaller scale, what reforms, besides reducing class size, should be getting our attention?RDThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08566356038836885187noreply@blogger.com