On Teacher Workload and Pretending
The New York Times published an article yesterday on the effects of budget cuts on class sizes across the country.
A few items that stand out:
A few items that stand out:
- "Across the country, public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession."
- "Staff cuts among reading, special education and English language specialists have hit especially hard."
- One teacher notes, "'There is no way I could adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of all the kids in my class.'"
- "...the public school population increased by 24 percent rom 1987 to 2012, while the number of working teachers grew by 46 percent."
It continues to surprise me how much seemingly sincere debate goes into whether class size matters. It's not really a debatable topic. Or, at least, it is something akin to debating whether the earth is at the center of the universe. Virtually any topic, I suppose, can be subject to seemingly legitimate debate if given play by the right media outlets.
A few weeks ago, a phenomenal teacher I know related to me that he recently told his administrator that he learned long ago he could not meet the needs of all the students in his class every day. He