Sorry for the six-month hiatus. A recent NY Times piece by Michael Winerip as part of his education column does a commendable but alas rare job of framing class size. It does not suggest the reader assume Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and others in the “so-called reform movement” are right about class size and achievement just because they speak from a position of authority. And it also does a nice job of not making a cost-achievement calculus the final, and therefore presumably ultimate, issue.

It cuts against the dominant journalistic narrative that usually runs as follows: “Kids and people associated with them like small classes, but more adult-like people in higher status positions use a higher-status epistemology of dollars-per-test-score and find small classes to be inefficient.”

But it also nails the details: It starts off pointing out that Duncan, Gates, and the like either attended private schools with small classes or send their kids to them. And it pokes fun at the fanfare that was kicked up around a test-score rise that turned out to be a blip of statistical unreliability. But the most important thing here to my eyes is that instead of succumbing to the narrative that maybe the more recent class size reduction can make that rise come back for real, the issue of test score rises is simply left behind. This allows the reader to experience a different narrative where test scores aren’t the goal of class size reduction, a narrative I try to tell in The Teacher’s Attention.

Education Week’s recent article on growing class sizes around the country (and weakening limits) has a great interactive map that gives details on state class size limits.

Last week’s This American Life tipped me off to Graham Rayman’s pieces in the Village Voice about a whistleblower in the NYPD.
What’s the educational connection? Well, first off, the whistleblower is named Adrian Schoolcraft. Second of all, the corruption comes down to trying to cook the data about crimes in the precinct because everything is fed through a number-crunching system. Fighting crime becomes about making the numbers look good, it becomes “data-driven.” Sound familiar? Rapes were not entered into the system but petty tickets were issued without cause to meet quotas. On paper, it’s a well-policed neighborhood–just like a school system focused on raising test scores is doing “good teaching.”

NCLB and the like do a great job of hijacking racial justice concerns to bolster the unquestioned “common sense” of “free”-market solutions. New Orleans is a blatant example of a larger trend: The marketizing of schooling is supposed to ride in on a white horse to solve the racial achievement gap. Consumer choice–not democratic input–is supposed to be the say that people need in schooling.

Leigh Dingerson just wrote a piece in Rethinking Schools that calls the bluff of D.C.’s dedemocratized “chancellorship” of Michelle Rhee that–like a state of exception or martial law–replaced the elected school board.

The likes of anti-test-score people like me say that it’s about the process not the product. I’m wondering if the “free”-market folks are in essence also beginning to reveal that they believe much the same thing, except that for them the process is autocratic and punitive. According to the article, the test results in D.C. since replacing 40% of its teachers are the same (or worse) for each racial group, so one wonders whether it was the process that was the goal all along.

Beholding Rhee on the cover of Time as disciplinarian of public educators brings some people joy: Is it that she brings results or that she brings what fascism brings, and TV cops who rough up the suspect: the reassurance of powerful leaders?

It’s about process not results for the neoliberal education people too: Rhee is a success not because of scores (which didn’t materialize) but massive firings and the top-downing of public education, its de-democratizing.

KSL news did a good response from the teacher perspective to Jeb Bush’s comments about the lack of importance of class size.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=12150074

According to the SL Tribune

some took issue with Bush’s claim that Florida’s success is unconnected with a constitutional amendment voters there passed in 2002 limiting class sizes. “Obviously, he hasn’t been in a classroom with 30 versus 20 students and the degree of personal instruction that can provide,” said Kory Holdaway, Utah Education Association government relations director.

Jeb says Utah should give letter grades to schools. What about citizenship grades based on sharing money and parent time?

September is when U.S. News puts out their famous college rankings. An ad that touted small classes led me to a ranking the magazine does based on class size–percent of classes below 20 students:

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2009/11/24/colleges-that-offer-small-classes-on-a-budget.html

There was also an article (”The 100 Percent Promise”) on a network of Houston charter schools that guarantees college entrance for all graduates–and their students are 90% low income and only 95% of color.

The secret technique appears to be relationship load: “Barbic decided to start a charter school with smaller classes that would permit teachers to build relationships with students.” Later we read, “Teens at other high schools, public and private, are fortunate if they can meet with their college counselors for a few hours over the course of the semester. At YES, they’re face-to-face with a counselor for an hour each day for two years.” It’s also a 6-12 model, i.e., no separate middle school.

They create a college-bound culture, but they’re able to do so through better relationship load. According to their website, they have eight campuses and 4200 total students, which works out to an average school size of 525. With seven grades, then each grade has only 75 kids on average.

What’s missing from the article? The assumption that test scores are the key to success in life. One would assume that if these schools were getting better scores, they would tout it. But they don’t need better test scores. Community colleges don’t ask for your test scores–all you need to do is fill out the application.

As I point out in my book, the small schools movement has shown huge gains in college entrance and completion without having to achieve gains in test scores. It suggests that persistence–not facts memorized–is what counts in academic success. Facts are now available online for the persistent to remind themselves of at a moment’s notice.

Test scores are about scapegoating public education alone for racial economic inequality, pure and simple.

http://www.waxingamerica.com/2010/01/growing-poverty-in-madison-part-i.html

Claus von Zastrow, Executive Director of Learning First Alliance, rightly points out in a blog post that the failure of class size research to show enough test score gains to be worth the cost past 3rd grade really points to the failure of test scores themselves to tell us much.

Interestingly, the author of the first comment speaks to precisely my train of thought when I looked into the class size research and its limitations. I ended up looking beyond just class size to the other–intertwined–relational factors. Tom came across my book in that process.  His comments are:

Chicago’s school board and “CEO” recently proposed to raise class sizes to 35 (article) but then backed down to union pressure (article).

What’s lost in the discussion of this victory is that the old class sizes are already too high.

According to the Sun-Times, “K to third-grade class sizes will remain at 28; fourth- through eighth-grade classes will stay at 31, and high school classes will rise from 28 to 33.”

Talk of acute budget shortages obscures the fact that class sizes have always constituted a budget shortage.

We don’t need more genius teachers or amazing plans. We need more adults per student.
– Raul and Elizabeth Martinez, Northeast Portland
Click here for other views from Oregonians on “lowest performing” schools.