Tag Archive for ‘class size’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

If you really want to reform education, Messrs. McCain and Obama, forget the unions, policy wonks and the business community, and heed the words of those who have skin in the game: parents. Elizabeth Green of the New York Sun has a piece about a new group trying to inject parents’ point of view on ed reform into the campaign.

Leading the charge are two groups, Chicago-based Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), and New York’s Class Size Matters. “There’s a complete disconnect between what we’re being told by the politicians and the businesspeople about what we should want schools to do, and what parents want schools to do,” PURE’s executive director, Julie Woestehoff, tells the Sun. ”But frankly what parents want schools to do is better for their children. They know best.”

Naturally, there’s a manifesto in which PURE offers its own ed reform ideas. Titled “Common Sense Educational Reforms,” it differs sharply from both the “Broader Bolder” group’s and the Education Equality Project, led by Joel Klein and Al Sharpton. The parents’ wish list includes increased parental involvement, lower class sizes, and a “rich, well-rounded curriculum.”

Sounds good so far. I’m all for giving parents the biggest, loudest megaphone on education issues. They are, after all, the consumer. On the other hand, the manifesto sounds suspiciously non-parental in its demand for kids to have ”project-based learning in a curriculum connected to their own lives and culture, with progress evaluated by high-quality, appropriate assessment tools that are primarily classroom-based.” The group is also decidedly anti-charter schools, which will be a hard sell to parents whose kids have been spared from a life of educational neglect by charters.

With more than $4 billion expected to be cut from public education budgets in the coming school year, school districts across California may increase class sizes in primary grades. “Educators are loath to increase student enrollment in the youngest grades,” reports the San Diego Union-Tribune, while noting that research on the efficacy of smaller class size is inconclusive.

“Since 1996, California has nevertheless set aside huge amounts of money – nearly $2 billion for the current school year – to limit class sizes to 20 students in kindergarten through third grade. Those are the crucial early years of schooling, when children acquire reading and math skills that determine their success later,” says the U-T.