Waiting for Basics

Last night I finally sat down to watch "Waiting For Superman."  To me the most compelling part of the documentary is that not once did it mention class size.  One part of the movie mentioned overcrowding in the halls, but the movie never did address the difficulty of one teacher trying to engage thirty or forty students.  The model schools they profiled showed about twenty kids sitting in a circle.
My sister tells me that the governor of Idaho is now saying that class size has no effect on teaching and learning, and that kids are more "self-directed" these days.  I would love to have him come to the kindergarten class I'm helping in.

The consistent cry for education reform is the roadblocks, the bureaucracy, the where do we start?  To me it seems like we should just start with what we know.  We don't allow more than fifteen school-aged children in daycare, yet adding fifteen students to an already full classroom in the school system is standard.  Cutting staff and funds while we add students is not the way to increase learning.

Bill Gates was somehow a viable source of information about education in this movie.  Why not George Bush?  Although I've never actually researched this, I'm pretty sure that neither has ever spent a minute as a student or a parent in a public school.

The movie showed that, as we know, there are amazing teachers out there who are making big differences in students' lives.  Unfortunately, there are also teachers who don't want to be there.  However, while I do wish these teachers would leave, I can't see how teachers who don't embrace their careers can be the reason for our problems.  We already know which demographic will fail at school before the testing ever even takes place, and that is not just a school problem, it's a societal problem.

Bill Gates is right about one thing: the success of our society depends on education.  Every person should have access to the best education possible, and it is the governments responsibility to secure the funding, space, facilities, and staff needed in every school to facilitate learning.