In article , Fitch R. Williams
says...

(Dan Caster) wrote:

I do not agree that you need to reduce the average class size. I do
agree that some class sizes need to be reduced, but some can be
enlarged. As far as I know there has been no studies that prove that
smaller class sizes improve learning.

What planet have you been on? One of the few "sure things" in education
is that reducing class size improves the transfer of information to the
students. It is one of the big advantages of private schools.

In general I tend to agree with you Fitch, and will certainly
agree with that proposition in general - but the reason I bought
up the class size thing (because I was sure the anti-public
schooling folks would say this) was my personal experience
with my daughter's primary schooling in a local private
(catholic) school. In spite of large class sizes (typically
35-ish) and the lack of any aids in the classrooms at all,
it seemed to me that the teachers were doing an outstanding
job of getting the material across to the kids.

Now of course (mind reader that I am) I will suspect that
your next comment will be "but just think of what they
*could* have done with half the number of students!"

Because my story is anecdotal only, I would have to smile
and agree. But honestly, totalling up what the operating
budget for that school was (based on the per kid cost)
and then dividing by the number of teachers to get the
rough pay for each one, I was pretty flabbergasted that
they could run a school on that little money. But they
did.

Which gets me back to the point that the reason they
*could* do that is because the kids are cherry-picked.
If you had to admit the way a public school does, the
entire thing would have the wheels come off in short
order I bet. This implys that if you try to generalize
that education system to the entire population, ie.
close the public schools and voucher all the kids, then
the total per-kid cost will have to wind up being much,
much higher than one would think. My strong suspicion
is it will assymptote to nearly the present cost of
a public school education in whatever area is being
looked at.

Jim

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