We can afford very smart, very well-paid teachers — if we raise class size, writes Matthew Ladner on Jay Greene’s blog. He cites high-scoring South Korea (and throws in Indiana Jones).
Higher pay and prestige allows South Korea to recruit teachers from those in the top 5 percent of their university graduating classes. Korean schools have many applicants for every teaching job. Meanwhile, in the United States, the low upper cap on the pay fails to attract many of our brightest and most ambitious students. American schools on average recruit teachers from the bottom third of American university graduates.
. . . The most sophisticated analyses of student learning gains have consistently found individual teacher effectiveness far more influential in driving achievement than class-size.
. . . we must develop school models which recruit high ability students into the teaching profession, track their performance using value-added methodology, pay them much higher wages commensurate with their performance, and give more children the opportunity to learn from them. Larger class sizes can finance higher teacher pay for highly performing teachers.
But teaching 40 culturally, linguistically and academically diverse American students is not like teaching 40 Koreans, commenters point out. Throw in student-centered learning and you’ve got chaos.
Ladner suggests inner-city Catholic schools, which typically have larger classes, could be a model.
A New York City charter middle school opening in 2009 will pay teachers up to $125,000 to teach classes of 30 students; teachers will work a longer school day and year. The school will scrimp on other expenses to attract the best teachers.
Here in Brazil we have something like 35, 40 students per class. Ir´s hell and it doesn´t work. Our results in international standard tests are terrible and without the more efficient private schools it would be even worse.
And the problem is that the discipline used on Korean Schools is pratically impossible to be used in the West.
When I was in elementary school and junior high school in the late ’60s and ’70s (at various schools in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi), we routinely had 30 or 32 students in classes. It didn’t seem like a big deal. It seems that the only thing that keeps it from working today is the problem of discipline, but much of that stems from parents not insisting that their kids act as expected. If a teacher can have control of 30 students (or more), I can’t see that it’s really a problem to teach them. I don’t know if parents, teachers or administrators have what it takes to get the problem under control enough today for it to work, though.
Wow, that analysis is completely and utterly flawed. Korean (and Asian students in general) do not succeed because of their well paid public school teachers with oddly large class sizes. Their public schools have nothing to do with it and are often considered to be a joke.
They succeed because of the widespread use of private cram schools (Hagwon) that the students attend in parallel with their public schooling. They spend as much time, if not more, there than in public education. Anything that leaves out the associated private spending and class time the Koreans give the Hagwon system is missing everything.
And this same issue is found all across the Pacific Rim. Japan, Hong Kong, China, etc. all have strong cram school systems which have as much, if not more, to do with their educations than the public schools.
Jeff the Baptist,
You raised an excellent point. I never even heard of private tutors when I was in school, now they are quite common. I expect this trend to continue. I wonder if it has any measurable national effect.
I attended school at the start of the baby boom and overcrowding was common. My peers who attended Catholic schools had 40 to a class. In my experience the lone teacher had no trouble maintaining control without special technology, teacher’s aides and specialist support.
The little I have read about Korean and Japanese public schools is not as bad as you imply. The cram schools seem like an arms race between students to get the highest scores. What can you tell us about the poor Asian public schools? Why are they a joke?
Korean and Asian students succeed because their parents — and society — demand it. I was reading a blog by an English teacher in Korea, and one entry made me laugh out loud — he said that young children in Korea tend to be incredibly spoiled. They run amok and do whatever. And the reason for that is because once they start school, all the fun stops. Might as well let them go crazy while there isn’t any schoolwork to do, eh?
My mom was a good student in school. Therefore, she would get hit if she got anything less than a perfect score on her tests and assignments. Corporal punishment in Korean schools isn’t as severe today, but my cousins who are still there say that it’s still in effect.
My parents say that they moved to America because they didn’t want my brother and me to go through the crazy Korean school system.
If not for the fact that many classes will have to have their walls torn out to accomodate the extra space needed for more desks, it should be easy. I’m sure it won’t be expensive to get extra science equipment as well.
What’s needed is to emulate the college system, the education system with which Americans seem to score highest (which requires some moments to digest, I’m certain, but bear with me for a moment.) Have master teachers and lower-paid adjunct teachers, get the best upperclassmen to teach the lower grades, let children choose their own schedules, let attendance be the responsibility of the students, treat students as if they are there to learn, kick out the students who aren’t passing, let people fail, allow specialization for students and faculty, have sabbaticals, allow students to take a year off if they wish, have the students in classes be based on their ability rather than their age, have the schools open for more than the traditional scheduled times (if a teenager wants to start at noon and go to school until seven, why can’t this be done?,) and so forth.
Will slackers still slack? Yes, but nothing has stopped that yet anyhow. Just give me a system where the slackers get left behind, and I’ll be happy.
I really don’t think you could pay me enough to teach 40 students at once — not with my current age group, anyway (middle schoolers, and I don’t have that many students *total*!). As others have pointed out, there are huge cultural differences in Korea which make it much easier to deal with large class sizes. Similarly, the parents who choose to send their kids to Catholic or charter schools are much more likely to have behavioral expectations of those kids. I think it can work in isolated instances in America, but not as a general solution.
In my public elementary school, class size was 35-36, every grade, every year. The school of 950 students was run by a single principal and his secretary.
The parochial school around the corner had 50 students per class.
Public schools got excellent results but the Catholic schools did better.
Why is this no longer possible? What has changed? Everything. The culture once supported dysfunctional families. Now the culture undermines sound families. Our communities are no longer healthy environments for children. So it takes 2-3 times as much money for the schools to compensate for this cultural collapse.
Yes, you could get excellent results with 40 students per class and super-star teachers but only if you could be selective about students, changed administrative practices and the legal environment, had a consensus about how the schools should form the character of their students and had full parental support and involvement.
My statement that the Asian schools are a joke is a bit of an overstatement, but even comparing their public schools to ours is an apples to oranges comparison.
For instance, those 40 kids in their classrooms? They take every class together for the entire school year. The kids don’t change rooms, the teachers do. I would imagine this would have a huge impact on classroom dynamics.
Koreans segregate their students by sex once the hormones start flowing in middle school. They segregate their students by perceived aptitude with kids being tracked to academic or industrial schools in high school. The parents essentially have complete school choice, even within public schools as long as their kids can meet requirements. It is illegal for school age children to have jobs.
And that isn’t even touching upon the symbiotic relationship between public education and the private supplementary academies.
If that’s a joke, I don’t get it.