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The challenge in public education reform is doing anything interesting/useful without doubling teacher headcount and increasing salaries (at the very least, to
by brimble 5y ago
The challenge in public education reform is doing anything interesting/useful without doubling teacher headcount and increasing salaries (at the very least, to increase supply without decreasing quality).
All sorts of approaches are possible with 5 students per teacher, but not 10, and with 10, but not with 20—let alone 25 or more.
- kqr 5y agoStudent-to-student mentoring is a part of the solution. Empirically shown to work really well. I don't know why more schools don't do it.
- brimble 5y agoI do not know if it's the case for this particular approach, but it's often the case that very effective reforms that don't require increasing teacher head-count do rely on having very good teachers and admin. Which means that a wide roll-out would require one or both of: more spending on training; more spending on salaries to increase the quality of the candidate pool. A top-quintile teacher may be way more effective than a middle-quintile teacher, to the point that entire education frameworks and strategies are viable for them that aren't for the middle quintile, but the trouble is only 20% of your teachers are top-quintile. Ditto admin. You'd be amazed at how mediocre admin can completely ruin a good plan.