California plunges into the unknown in expanding class sizes - by Michael Kirst
Even before the negotiations concerning tax extensions collapsed, California’s class sizes were ballooning. Now we are exacerbating class size increases, but there is no research to predict or understand future implications. Class size studies have focused on ranges from 30 to 15. Results are contested, but no study has examined California’s “natural experiment” of moving [...]
A schism on college readiness - by Kathryn Baron
Robert Schwartz, academic dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, are allies on most aspects of school reform, but fundamentally disagree on whether the mission of high school ought to be to prepare all students for college. Haycock says that’s an absolute; Schwartz says it’s too [...]
