by David Safier
Great idea from the Goldwater Institute: cut teachers -- only the bad ones -- and add their students to the good teachers' classes.
No, I'm not kidding. From Fool's Gold's Matthew Ladner:
Research shows, however, that students would be much better off if schools did let their most ineffective teachers go, and redistributed the students to more effective instructors. Teacher quality has been found to be 10- to 20-times more important than class size in achieving student learning gains. Schools could thereby cut their spending and improve student learning simultaneously.
It's an inspired idea if you think about it. Great teachers love their students, right? So if they have more students, they'll have more to love.
More students to give the individual attention they need to thrive. More papers to go through with the careful, laborious attention necessary to understand students' strengths and weaknesses. More students with behavior problems to give special attention so they become willing, eager learners.
Don't worry about increasing salaries and improving teaching conditions -- including lowering class size -- to attract the best and the brightest into education. Make teaching harder! That's the way to attract more great teachers.
You can't make this stuff up.
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