The lovely and brilliant Mrs ERJ and I are having a spirited conversation regarding the "optimum" size for a high school graduating class.
Larger classes have more resources, although that is less of a constraint in the age of the internet.
Smaller classes might be more effective because every student can be "best" or within striking distance of "best" at something. Hence, the majority of the student body is likely to be motivated as opposed to being swept along with the current.
Our conclusion was that 150 (+/- 45%) might be a reasonable guess.
John and Charles Wesley, founders of what are now known as "Methodists" suggested that 150 was the ideal number of families for a congregation. 150 was probably an median population for a pre-agriculture, arch-type village.
School systems with graduating classes over 220 may be more economically efficient but might not be more effective. Do you measure success by infinitesimally tiny economic slivers or by the percentage of students who do not fall through the cracks and disappear?
A tangent to our conversation involved the role of standardized tests. Without standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, how will exceptional students from smaller school districts or students who are home-schooled be able to access elite Universities, should that be their goal?
Not that "...elite Universities..." are a brand of appreciating value.
The malicious part of my personality envisions granting those students at Harvard, Stanford, Yale...U-of-M Dearborn (and a few Congress-critters) who "support" beheading infants a leave-of-absence from their university/Congress, waivers and a ticket to Gaza City to live-their-best-life fighting for Hamas. Surely, some D-Day vintage landing craft can be pulled out of mothballs for their use.
Words have consequences. Do they have the sand to make sacrifices and to live coherently with their speech?
On the positive side...
Israel waived the prohibition in Gaza importing nitrates (for fertilizer) and is now delivering nitrates to Gaza in job-lot quantities via airmail.
Too much concrete and rebar mixed with fertilizer to be useful
ReplyDeleteDude! You are tracking the bread-crumbs I am laying down!
Delete20 kids in a one room schoolhouse, times $15,000 each, $300,000 a year-$150,000 tax free to the teacher, and $50,000 tavx free to an assistant, and $50k for rent.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely guarantee the results would be , at worst, no worse than what we see now- and suspect in most cases way better.
OK< maybe the scale should change somewhat, but very small schools could be a boon for kids, teachers and parents alike- we can reach out to the whole world with tech, we don't need a giant 4500 student prison.
Dunbar's number strikes again.
ReplyDeleteI read years ago about school performance and the conclusion was it didn't matter so much if a classroom had 20, 27 or 35 students in a math or English class. The deciding factor in school performance was overall size of the school.
ReplyDeleteBig school are too alienating, too impersonal.
I forget the optimum overall size but I think 800 for all HS grades might be right.
As for the calls in some colleges to support the Gazan head choppers
...gal at NYU Law School (class president?) who is a "they", just got "their" job offer rescinded. She emailed to NYU students that basically Hamas was just doing some decolonization struggle during their "uprising". "Their" future employer caught wind of "their"position and nixed the job
Case of go woke, go broke
Agree. Graduated with 102, too small. Wifey graduated with 250, too big. With 150ish peers you can slink and hide without being lost in the shuffle. Your dating pool is approx 75 people. ~150 boys (Jrs and Srs on varsity) should make a decent sports team in at least one sport.... Friday night lights is like a second religion in The South.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't "best' at anything, but graduated 10th in my class...out of 20.
ReplyDeleteI think the best class size is 1. 4 of my 6 kids were homeschooled.
I graduated in a class of over 1000. My wifes class was about the same at a different high school. My best friend in college graduated in a senior class of 8. I can't tell you what I missed , because I was quite happy to be rather anonymous. My buddy did not have that opportunity in his school. He got dragged into every activity like it or not short of playing in the band. Academically, I doubt there was much difference in our ability to read, write and do math.
ReplyDeleteOur son’s class size was two. We spent a few hundred $$ annually on curriculum, and a couple times that on “field trips” for more practical, and sometimes hands-on instruction. Both sons tested well above average for their ages and both are successful adults today. Younger son is 30 and they own their home and have no debt.
ReplyDeleteYep, we home schooled.
I think management and teacher quality matter as much or more than overall class size.
ReplyDeleteBoth have to be committed to excellence for all students and compensated in line with that.
I went to an excellent public high school with a drop out rate of <1%.
Most of the teachers had graduate degrees because the district paid for them and increased salaries.
We out competed stem and magnet schools across the state - and did it for 30% less per student than very rough districts.
J
If I had graduated with my class in San Diego, the class size was about 2,000 or so. But we moved to WNC between my junior and senior year. So my new graduating class was 45 students. It was culture shock, believe me.
ReplyDelete