Good Education Doesn't Scale, Bad Education Does

What most determines educational outcomes for a young student?

In my view, the most important criteria are:

• Teacher Quality

• Class Size

• Sense of trust and respect from adults

• Peer educational engagement

Ideally, we'd have talented, passionate, and empathetic teachers in small classrooms of highly engaged students, who feel trusted to act maturely responsibly.

It's not easy, but within a small community it can be done. You can find one or two great teachers. You can pool funds to afford a smaller class size. Parents and teachers together can build strong relationships with each learner as an individual, creating a sense of mutual trust and raising educational engagement.

Now imagine you are a school district. How do you systematically find hundreds or thousands of great teachers? You can't. The best you can do it put in credentialing systems and regulatory standards. This will reduce the chances you get a bad teacher, but it doesn't help find great ones and may even rule a lot of them out too.

What about class size? Your budget is set per student. Fewer students means less money to run the school, and it's not practical to fundraise the shortfall on such a massive scale. Unless the state gives you more money, your only real option is larger classes.

As to the relationships between students and their educators, and the student engagement that arises from that, you can hope for the best but it's completely out of your control. And large class sizes in a standardized system don't help. At best you will have a few strong students that are liked by their teachers thrive, while most can choose between following the rules and being ignored or risking criticism and judgment for 'making trouble'.

I don't blame the public school system. I have no idea how to make education successful at scale. But I know what I can do in one classroom. And I'm happy to start there.

Sebastian 4/7/23