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I love how this issue has become political and non scientific! First it was “listen to the science”, now it’s something else? Aren’t the major donors to certai
by whb07 6y ago
I love how this issue has become political and non scientific! First it was “listen to the science”, now it’s something else?
Aren’t the major donors to certain political groups the teachers union? A much smarter person perhaps could tell me what these incentives might reveal...
- thatcat 6y ago10 students per teacher better for learning scientifially
- ghaff 6y agoSure. All you need is 2-3x the teachers and 2-3x the classroom space.
- bradly 6y agoOr 2/3x less time in the physical classroom.
- gremlinsinc 6y agoOr self-learning labs, w/ smaller group sessions throughout the day. Kids teach themselves, and younger students, educators step back into more 'facilitation' roles, and go 'deeper' on some subjects of importance, as well as answer questions and help kids who get 'stuck' on something. I do also think 4 hour class-time makes more sense, I've heard studies that Finland and countries w/ much better test scores have half the school days we do, and the extra downtime is good for the kids' brains.
- ghaff 6y agoThat’s not really addressing the immediate problem though for which people are looking to have far fewer kids in the physical building.
- gremlinsinc 6y agoTrue, lol I was just brainstorming better teaching methods in general.
- JPKab 6y agoThe data doesn't show this. There are diminishing returns. Reducing from 40 to 30 students creates improvements in outcomes. 30 to 20 does little. https://www.businessinsider.com/classroom-sizes-too-small-malcolm-gladwell-2015-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/classroom-sizes-too-small-ma...
- keenmaster 6y agoA greater supply of teachers would push down salaries, particularly after the pandemic is over. I'm not sure that the unions would advocate for small class sizes unless they're really worried that teachers might be fired or furloughed. That being said, I would rather just have the kids learn online for, hopefully, 5-6 more months.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bigyikes 6y agoHow would this increase the supply of teachers? Wouldn’t it do the opposite: increase demand? I’ve never taken an economics course so this is my naive assumption.
- esyir 6y agoYou're sort of right, but not quite. It would increase demand in the short term, but this reduced class size is a response to disease. When the human malware situation ends, class sizes might go back up, and the increased supply from aforementioned increased demand might suppress wages. This of course assumes that this event lasts long enough for the number of teachers to scale to meet this.
- JPKab 6y agoMalcolm Gladwell has some very interesting analysis of class size: https://www.businessinsider.com/classroom-sizes-too-small-malcolm-gladwell-2015-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/classroom-sizes-too-small-ma... He noted that with education budgets, smaller class sizes are chosen instead of paying teachers more, and that the data doesn't show the improvements you would expect.