50 kids in a class

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They are still using the 50 student model and it sucks....

Yawn...

[Anonymous]

What, specifically, sucks about it? Just curious and looking for actual examples of why it's not working.

[Anonymous]

Also, how do you know it's not working?

[Anonymous]

Yes, tell us.

[Anonymous]

We're all ears

[Anonymous]

C'mon.

[Anonymous]

I drew up in a poor country and I was in a class of 63 kids in my elementary years. Was it fun and ideal? Far from it. Did we make it? Yes. Did I get a good education? You bet!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I drew up in a poor country and I was in a class of 63 kids in my elementary years. Was it fun and ideal? Far from it. Did we make it? Yes. Did I get a good education? You bet!

And then you came here, because you wanted something better for your child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:all i can say in reaction is....most of the educational research shows that small class size is the biggest predictor of student success. literally, the number of people in the room. not student/teacher ratio either. just the overall number. there was some magic number that predicted success. i think it was 14. so 1 teacher and 13 students was actually better than 2 teachers and 14 students, for example.

interesting stuff.

That is actually not true. The greatest predictor of success is the quality of the teacher. An excellent teacher with 25 students will produce much greater learning than a mediocre teacher with 10 students. That being said, it would obviously be better to have an excellent teacher with 10 kids!

You're not fooling anyone, Michelle Rhee!

We all know teacher quality is completely irrelevant. Even if it weren't, no one can measure it so we shouldn't even try.

[Anonymous]

Great teachers are hard to come by these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I drew up in a poor country and I was in a class of 63 kids in my elementary years. Was it fun and ideal? Far from it. Did we make it? Yes. Did I get a good education? You bet!

And then you came here, because you wanted something better for your child.

grew. the damn smart phone.

I didn't have a child back then Yes I came here to get a better life.

[Anonymous]

We often take for granted how privileged we are. We make demands for things because we can. Some kids on this planet don't even have pencils or paper to write with, in a dirt floored classroom. Be thankful for what you have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We often take for granted how privileged we are. We make demands for things because we can. Some kids on this planet don't even have pencils or paper to write with, in a dirt floored classroom. Be thankful for what you have.

Given. Are you saying that because many people in the world are much worse off than we, we should abdicate our responsibility as parents to ensure that our children receive the best education that we can provide to them? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to compare to other options that we may have than to just raise our arms in the air and say, well, we have floors and pencils and that is better than others have, so to hell with further comparisons and improvements?

[Anonymous]

Some people just don't get it and perhaps never will. It's all in the perspectives. Yes you should by all means find the best for your child. However 50 kids in a class are not the end of the world. Good for you that you have pencils and floors.

[Anonymous]

I would flip out if my school did this. But I was part of an "open classroom" in 5th and 6th grades, two joined rooms with two teachers and some parent helpers. It was great except when you weren't good at something, it was very hard for the teachers to find the time to catch you up. So you could read ahead as far as you wanted but if you fell behind in math, you'd keep falling behind.