Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 41 posts

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#31

Post by rmc »

yequalsx wrote: post #12
patio11 wrote: post #6

Class-size limits are an artificial constraint which were introduced because they occupy that happy space in the middle of the Venn diagram between "sounds good to voters" and "does something teachers unions actually care about." They do little, if anything, for education. You could solve this problem in an afternoon if you wanted to -- repeal class size limits, done. That will only actually happen if there is a seve…

Do you have evidence that class size doesn't matter? It seems intuitively obvious that class size does matter. Consider a single teacher teaching 60,000 average students in a stadium sized classroom versus a single teacher in a classroom with 20 average students. It seems to me that the probability of success in the latter classroom would be significantly higher than in the former. I don't know this to be true but it…

Not all teachers are created equal. Your pro small classes point applies if all teachers are just as good. However if one teacher teaches 60,000 people, you can pick the best teacher in the city. If one teacher teaches 20 then 20 students get the best teacher, and the other 59,980 dont. Instead of just hiring the top 1 teacher, you must now hire the top 3,000 teachers. The average skill of the top 3,000 will heavily affect the average level of teaching of the whole 60,000 students.

If you doubled all class sizes you might be able to double the quality of teaching.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#32

Post by tomjen3 »

akharris wrote: post #8
tomjen3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it do that? Computers are very cheap and the schools should be able to buy the software at such a low cost that all schools should be able to afford it. Compare this with the situation today where some children are being though by great teachers and some are being though by horrible teachers.

I think that's what dangoldin was saying. Poorer communities will be jammed with cheap software and computers rather than great teachers. The software teaching method definitely has merit, but it's not a solution to "we have overcrowded classes." It's not yet ready for that, and there doesn't seem to be anyone credible claiming that it is. This is just the outgrowth of bad policy and not enough funding.

That assumes they have great teachers now, which is not a given.

If they have bad teachers, even a semi stupid program will be better than that.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#33

Post by evgen »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #27
evgen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since "google it" seems to be the alpha and omega of your research abilities, here are some papers and research from the last five years that supports the case that smaller class sizes leads to better student outcomes when applied to K-6 education (as in long-term quantitative results and not just "student satisfaction"): Spyros Konstantopoulos and Vicki Chun, What Are the Long-Term Effects of Small Classes on the Ac…

Look, I don't claim to be an expert. I was just asking you to cite some of the voluminous research you claimed existed, and pointing out that the case seems far from clear. I just cited the first two on-point google results, one of which was about grade 1. Also, no one is claiming reduced class sizes have a detrimental effect. The claim is that their effect is small and probably not cost effective. Now, on to your ci…

You cited a study of college-age students and a study from France when there is a wealth of domestic data ready for your to cite and you expect the claims to be taken seriously? As far as your claim that these were the first two on-point google results, I guess it just depends on what you search for:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=research+class+size+student+achievement

I beleive that you are misreading the Konstantantopoulos and Chun if you think that it agrees with you. An achievement gain of that size in education is actually quite significant and both the abstract and text make this clear. To dismiss the fact that the study followed a third grade class for five years and showed improvement down the line by saying that "they don't even bother to look past grade 8" is more spin than reasoned analysis.

Once again, please provide the links to papers that show that smaller class sizes do not have a long-term positive impact on student performance. So far it seems you are much like the anti-CSR group I mentioned previously, all spin and bullshit. Prove me wrong.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#34

Post by yequalsx »

Alex3917 wrote: post #28
evgen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since "google it" seems to be the alpha and omega of your research abilities, here are some papers and research from the last five years that supports the case that smaller class sizes leads to better student outcomes when applied to K-6 education (as in long-term quantitative results and not just "student satisfaction"): Spyros Konstantopoulos and Vicki Chun, What Are the Long-Term Effects of Small Classes on the Ac…

"The most often cited research o this matter was conducted by Gene Glass and Mary Lee Smith. [...] Several features of the resulting curve stand out. First, for class sizes in the range of twenty to forty students, the effects are minimal. Second, significant improvement in student achievement does not occur until class sizes are in the range of fifteen students or below.[1] [...] The immense costs make classes small…

It may be true in a political sense that having classes smaller than 15 students is out of the question but the cost isn't that great. We spend around $1.2 trillion in national defense. $70 billion more for education is not that great a sum.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#35

Post by Alex3917 »

yequalsx wrote: post #34
Alex3917 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The most often cited research o this matter was conducted by Gene Glass and Mary Lee Smith. [...] Several features of the resulting curve stand out. First, for class sizes in the range of twenty to forty students, the effects are minimal. Second, significant improvement in student achievement does not occur until class sizes are in the range of fifteen students or below.[1] [...] The immense costs make classes small…

It may be true in a political sense that having classes smaller than 15 students is out of the question but the cost isn't that great. We spend around $1.2 trillion in national defense. $70 billion more for education is not that great a sum.

That's for the 1986 student population with 1986 dollars. If you correct it for the estimated 2018 student population and 2010 dollars, you're already around $190 billion. And that's not counting the cost of building new schools, or factoring in the rise in per-student spending. You're easily looking at well over a trillion dollars when all is said and done.

Also, decreasing the class size to 15 students wouldn't get you very much improvement over current class sizes. It's only for every incremental decrease below 15 that you start to see meaningful improvement.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#36

Post by yummyfajitas »

evgen wrote: post #33
yummyfajitas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I don't claim to be an expert. I was just asking you to cite some of the voluminous research you claimed existed, and pointing out that the case seems far from clear. I just cited the first two on-point google results, one of which was about grade 1. Also, no one is claiming reduced class sizes have a detrimental effect. The claim is that their effect is small and probably not cost effective. Now, on to your ci…

You cited a study of college-age students and a study from France when there is a wealth of domestic data ready for your to cite and you expect the claims to be taken seriously? As far as your claim that these were the first two on-point google results, I guess it just depends on what you search for: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=research+class+size+student+achievement I beleive that you are misreading the Konstantantopoulos…

Why the hostility? You picked a different search term than I did, big whoop (I picked "class size student outcome"). I guess that makes me a bullshit artist.

Now, you may be right that a 0.04-0.12 standard deviation improvement is large within the field of educational interventions. All that proves is that the entire field of educational interventions has produced little/no gains.

This is how small 0.12 standard deviations is: http://imgur.com/BJDHc

You and the authors can attempt to spin that as something significant, but it doesn't contradict Patrick's original assertion. He claimed that smaller classes "do little, if anything, for education." You cited a source showing that they do little. You didn't contradict him.

Here is my citation, which shows that smaller classes "do little, if anything, for education": Spyros Konstantopoulos and Vicki Chun, What Are the Long-Term Effects of Small Classes on the Achievement Gap? Evidence from the Lasting Benefits Study, American Journal of Education 116, November 2009.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#37

Post by yummyfajitas »

yequalsx wrote: post #34
Alex3917 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The most often cited research o this matter was conducted by Gene Glass and Mary Lee Smith. [...] Several features of the resulting curve stand out. First, for class sizes in the range of twenty to forty students, the effects are minimal. Second, significant improvement in student achievement does not occur until class sizes are in the range of fifteen students or below.[1] [...] The immense costs make classes small…

It may be true in a political sense that having classes smaller than 15 students is out of the question but the cost isn't that great. We spend around $1.2 trillion in national defense. $70 billion more for education is not that great a sum.

At all levels of government (i.e., federal, state and local), we spend $850B on education and $792B on the military, your guess of $1.2 trillion is not even close.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2009_US.html

Reducing class sizes from 25 to 15 would require 66% more teachers, lets guestimate that the cost of education would rise by 40% [1]. That's $340B for fairly small improvements in educational outcomes (0.04-0.12 standard deviations, according to stats posted elsewhere in this thread).

[1] Not all costs would scale upward with teacher salaries. We could sometimes repurpose 2 30 student classrooms into 4 15 student classrooms, and some administrative costs would scale with # of students.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#38

Post by yequalsx »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #37
yequalsx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be true in a political sense that having classes smaller than 15 students is out of the question but the cost isn't that great. We spend around $1.2 trillion in national defense. $70 billion more for education is not that great a sum.

At all levels of government (i.e., federal, state and local), we spend $850B on education and $792B on the military, your guess of $1.2 trillion is not even close. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2009_US.html Reducing class sizes from 25 to 15 would require 66% more teachers, lets guestimate that the cost of education would rise by 40% [1]. That's $340B for fairly small improvements in educational outcomes (0…

I guess you've never heard of supplemental spending, black operations and whatnot. Defense spending isn't solely the defense department. We spend a great deal of money on intelligence services.

My response was solely to the quoted number of $70 billion or so. $80 billion is not a lot. It appears the number quoted was in 1984 dollars or something like that. Even then it still isn't a lot given that the defense budget then was around $300 billion.

I prefer spending money on education, health, peaceful purposes but not everyone agrees. The point I made though, still stands. It's a not a lot of money and it isn't as if we couldn't do it.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#39

Post by dantheman »

absconditus wrote: post #22
dantheman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the only way to address problems with entrenched interests is to change the playing field, technology can serve this purpose. So instead of having to fight tons of battles against teachers unions, implements some technology that drastically weakens their position -- in this new landscape political battles can now be won. I of course think school vouchers is the end all be all of school reform since it allow…

I have yet to hear a convincing explanation of how technology is the answer to our education problems.

Depends on what technology.

1. Books are clearly better than only having lectures - so there's one example of where technology has improved education.

Depends on educational problems:

1. What age group are we focusing on? * Adults are clearly different from teenagers * Teenagers are clearly different than children

A one size approach, probably won't work.

2. College Lectures are an outmoded form of teaching. It'd better to have the lecture recorded and perfected, and then allow the student to watch it -- making sure to jot down their questions and then discuss with the professor and fellow students -- it's a better use of everyone's time and makes the content available to everyone. In science and math I expect this to be a huge win at the lower levels where mechanical notation and rules need to be learned.

As we progress up the abstraction layer to where we need exemplars to train our ability to recognize patterns I think that computers will still have a long way to go -- this is where guided direction is important.

3. When I was a child I had difficulties learning to read, I did some special classes primarily involving software that significantly improved my reading ability. I extremely happy I was afforded that opportunity.

Re: Florida schools replacing teachers with computers

#40

Post by bugsy »

I don't understand how class size is being reduced with people going to computer labs with no teacher. Isn't the idea of class size that there is at least one teacher per N students? With these labs there are zero teachers per N students, which is effectively infinity students per teacher (0).
Post reply on HN