I'm fascinated
by this article in NY Mag, and the more I think about it, the more I change my mind why that is. At first blush, I thought it did a good job of encapsulating both sides of class size. But on closer examination, it kind of paints class-size advocates as fanatics, while offering little or nothing in the way of why we believe as we do. On the other hand, it portrays the other side fairly well--reasonable class sizes cost too much, and union is bad.
I've taught classes of 15, 25, and 35, and I can tell you there's a world of difference in what you can accomplish. Folks like Bloomberg, Klein and Obama place their kids in private schools with class sizes below 15, but have no problem advocating larger class sizes for our children. In fact, those who administrate schools ought to be required to patronize them,
