Perusing recent class-size related news I ran across an interesting example of an intervention for low-achieving, low-income kids that doesn’t pin hope on novel method, technology or extraordinary teaching. What it highlights is the radical old idea that kids spending time with adults who have time to spend with them are likely to learn what those adults want them to.

This program in South Carolina capitalizes on two aspects of what I describe in my book as relationship load reduction: class size and continuity (keeping students and teachers together longer).

[T]he students in their summer classes will be the same students they work with this school year. They will have substantially smaller classes.

Williams, who taught one of the Quick Start classes at James Simons, will have 10 students in her third-grade class this year, compared with 18 last year. The smaller class will ensure her students receive more one-on-one attention, she said.

She agreed to participate in the program because it gave her the chance to develop relationships with her students and learn their academic strengths and weaknesses before the school year began.

“I couldn’t turn that down,” she said.

She wished she could’ve had more time with her students this summer, but she feels confident that they will be reading on or above their grade level by the end of this school year.

(“Failing our students series: Fast Forward Summer programs bolster students’ reading, math skills.” Diette Courrégé. The Post and Courier. Thursday, August 6, 2009)

More time with the same, fewer students. Radical.

Garrett Delavan