Education DOES NOT NEED More Teachers For Fewer Students!
Everyone is always talking about more money, and smaller class sizes, being the answer to fixing problems in education!
This week’s Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s “Fun Fact Friday” video disputes that claim.
Fun Fact Friday! – Student/Teacher Ratio from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.
Kind of interesting, isn’t it?
And would you care to guess what the student-to-teacher ratio is in India (rapidly turning out the most advanced workforce in history)?
Would you believe 40.1 to 1? And in urban areas, it’s 80 to 1!
Now I’m not saying we need to increase class sizes to the level that India has, but it seems we should be putting more emphasis on students LEARNING in those classes, rather than one-to-one “face time” with their teacher.
As Don Kingsland says in “Set Our Teachers FREE!”, we need more emphasis on teaching students to be MOTIVATED to learn, rather than wasting time in school OR seeing it as a social experiment.
I’m not trying to brag, but I received a TOP NOTCH education at the private Catholic schools I attended as a child and young adult. I always scored in the top 99 percentile on every national test and received a total of twelve FULL scholarships as a result of what I learned.
The only reason I mention this is to emphasize every class I attended in elementary and high school had a MINIMUM of 40 to 50 students to every teacher.
It’s NOT the size of the class that matters (no matter what the NEA may say). It’s what happens DURING those classes!
Brennan
