Public schools need reform, not money
Eva Lowell Ledyard
Publication: The Day
The Connecticut Education Association is now spending our tax dollars, in the form of forced union dues, on advertising touting their new education "reform plan" that peddles the same shopworn panaceas about increased funding and lower class sizes. But taxpayers are wise to the scam.
There is little empirical evidence that lower class sizes improve student achievement. Wadi Haddad, in summarizing his review of class size studies for the World Bank, wrote that a "decrease in class size does not guarantee an improvement. More important is what the teacher does." Average class sizes in Connecticut are already five students below the national average of 25. Lowering them even more would be enormously expensive.
Nor will increased funding help, absent fundamental curricular changes. Students in Connecticut and across the country are victims of bankrupt progressive educational ideas that deprecate the acquisition of a core knowledge base.
"Look it up on the Internet," they say. But cognitive psychologists recognize that mastery of core subject content is a prerequisite to higher order thinking skills. The answer lies in the K-8 Core Knowledge curriculum developed by E.D. Hirsch, which gives children the substantive knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century.
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Public schools need reform, not money
The Connecticut Education Association is now spending our tax dollars, in the form of forced union dues, on advertising touting their new education "reform plan" that peddles the same shopworn pana...
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