"Dan Caster" wrote in message
m...
I will go off and do some more reading. But the quotes you provided
seem to agree with what I have been saying. Class size counts, but
there is a lot that can be improved in the education system without
changing class size ( and requiring more teachers and more
administrators ).

Well, yeah, there are a lot of issues. You had said that there were no
studies supporting the idea that reduced class size improves student
performance. That's all I was objecting to.

In fact, reducing class size is an expensive proposition. By itself,
compared to other, individual things that might be done, it's probably not
at the top of the list of smart things to do. But it's a proven winner
overall. That seems about as firm as anything gets in this field, based on
experience and studies of the experience.


To me the Federal Government should be providing research on how the
education system can best be improved.

They do, Dan. Much of that research you'll find on ERIC is funded by the
feds. There is quite a lot known about what works, some of which can't be
implemented because of costs or inertia, both political and bureaucratic.

And encouraging a free market
place of ideas where the better methods can win out is part of that
process. So vouchers allow parents to move their kids from schools
that are not working to schools that do work. And that means the
better methods will win out. The current system does not provide
that.

I don't disagree with that as a general principle. There ought to be some
good ways to improve education by somehow employing the engine of
competition.

Like most things political, though, the argument is polarized into
unreasonable and extreme positions in which there is more smoke than light.
There are so many caveats, and so many irregularities to the pure version of
either position, that anyone who takes a polarized stance on it is forced to
defend absurd and unreasonable points, if he's incapable of conceding that
it's a mixed picture that only contains statistical tendencies, rather than
absolutes.

Ed Huntress