Rightsize this! When simple, ignorant solutions & simulations just don’t cut it
Posted on February 7, 2014
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Recently, TB Fordham Institute released a report by AIR researcher Michael Hansen on “Rightsizing” the classroom. Hansen based his analysis on data from the state of North Carolina, using distributions of teacher value added scores and class sizes to derive conclusions about how “great” teachers could be given larger classes, thus reducing students exposed to “bad” teachers, leading to overall benefits in terms of student outcomes. This dreadfully oversimplified, a-contextual (even taken out of the constraints of its actual context) extrapolation has since made the rounds across reformy outlets.
The solution to all of our woes is simple and elegant. Just follow these steps.
- Step 1: Identify “really great” teachers (using your best VAM or SGP) who happen to be currently teaching inefficiently small classes of 14 to 17 students.
- Step 2: Re-assign to those “really great” teachers another 12 or so students, because whatever losses might occur in relation to increased class size, the benefits of the “really