Today we call it differentiated instruction. Back in the day, it was called the one-room school house. Is it an idea whose time has come around again? At Pajamas Media (hat tip: Joanne Jacobs), Charlie Martin costs out what it would take to bring back the one-room school house…in midtown Manhattan. Martin built his scenario using the average cost of about $14,000 per year that it costs to educate a New York City public school student.
We assume 24 students in Manhattan, and a one-room school built in quality office space in midtown. I laid out a floor plan and discovered we could fit it nicely into 1,050 square feet; equip it with good quality desks and chairs and with one iMac computer for every two students, plus one for the teacher and a Mac Pro as a classroom server; and add Internet connections and $1,000 per student for books and supplies. How much remained to hire a teacher? $230,000. Almost a quarter of a million dollars.
“I think we’ve solved the problem of recruiting good teachers,” Martin dryly comments. “For $230,000 a year, it would be the rejects from elementary teaching who would go to Harvard.”
Martin concludes of his own thought experiement that we spend amazing amounts of money per student, struggle to pay teachers well enough to keep them, while outcomes decline. “We’ve seen that we could go back to the model of a hundred years ago. It’s not only possible, it would make teaching into one of the most well-paid jobs in the country, even the world, and still save money,” Martin concludes. “As a close friend put it, ‘where is the money going?’”
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
0 Responses to “The Cradle of Differentiated Instruction”