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Friday, February 18, 2005
Does Class Size Matter?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox, accompanied by her curriculum director and three staff aides, visited the AJC’s editorial board this week. Also in tow was Chester E. Finn of the Fordham Foundation, a conservative group that gave Georgia’s new curriculum high marks. (The group gave Georgia’s now-reviled current curriculum a pretty good review in 2000. Finn said the organization’s standards have risen since then.)
Lucky girl that I am, I got to sit in on the chat.
Asked about Cobb’s plans to outfit middle and high school students with laptops, Cox said she thinks the venture will succeed. “In Cobb County, this may be the key to making all middle schools great,” she said. She noted that Cobb hired away Kim Quinn, whom Cox brought to the Georgia Department of Education from laptops-in-schools-happy Maine. But Cox said she doesn’t favor giving laptop computers to all middle and high school students in Georgia. “Not at the cost, no, not at this juncture.”
Cox was not enthusiastic about class size being a big deal in terms of test scores. She said it’s more important to give teachers resources, often in the form of teacher assistants (parapros). For example, when she was a high school social studies teacher, she didn’t mind having 25 kids in each of her five classes until it came time to read and grade 125 essays. “I don’t think it’s a matter of a very strict standard where we have to put a lot of money into bricks and mortar,” she said. Finn agreed, saying: “We can’t show a meta correlation between smaller classes and better learning.” But he acknowledged there may be anecdotal evidence that smaller classes are better.
Do you think small classes make a difference in the quality of education?
Cox also shared her idea on how to reward teachers, but I’ll hold off on that until Monday. Have a great weekend!
