Tight budgets can improve education

As school districts across the nation feel the budget crunch, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan feels this can actually result in some benefits, saying, in part, “when you’re flush, you keep doing the same things.”  The U.S. is notoriously high in spending compared to other countries, yet our results are just not there – proving it is not necessarily the amount you spend that affects education, but how you spend it.

For instance, rather than trying to lower class sizes, which Duncan knows is not correlated to increased learning, except in reading for grades K-3, what if teachers are incented to teach larger classes?  Or how about using technology for a great AP teacher to teach 4 classes at once?

It’s different, creative ideas like these that are needed to help us improve education in the face of continually shrinking revenue.  What ideas do you have?  Feel free to share them here, or email me your thoughts.

To read the Newsweek article, click here.