One Hundred Kindergartners, One Room, Three Teachers
The title of the article in the Detroit Free Press--Combined Kindergarten a Big Teaching Experiment-- is all most progressive educators in Michigan have to read before they hit "share." It's obviously more bad news about the Education Achievement Authority (EAA)--the failed statewide experiment in taking public education out of the hands of those most invested in its ultimate success: parents, communities, local taxpayers.
One room, three teachers (plus a part-time aide), and 100 kindergartners, more or less. On the day the reporter visited, only about 70 kids were present, which tells you something. Either there is an enormous attendance problem--already? In kindergarten?--or a class-sized cluster of miscreants were stashed somewhere else.
What we already know about the EAA (see here, here and here) makes the informed reader wonder about just such a dog-and-pony presentation, with camera-ready students, for the Free Press reporter and videographer. Possibly there is a major-league discrepancy between the number of kindergarteners enrolled (and drawing state funding) and the number who actually attend school there on a regular basis?
One thing's certain: this is a very cost-effective way to manage 100-ish five-year olds. Three cheap teachers, a minimum-wage aide for two hours, housed in a library (which, presumably, means no media specialist)--what's not to like about the stripped-down edu-efficiency at work here?
This is not a story about class size, however. Overstuffed classrooms are familiar to Detroiters--33 kids in a class, any class, is actually on the positive side of normal, unfortunately. It's worth One Hundred Kindergartners, One Room, Three Teachers - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher: