Turning the Titanic: A victory for education reformers in Illinois?

[noimagination]

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One way to eliminate a strong writing component in an english classroom is to increase class size. High quality feedback of student writing is time consuming and difficult to do. Put more students in a writing intensive class and you will see much less writing occurring. What you are arguing for here is less rigor. I have no problem with class of 25 but get above that and you will see less Writing and fewer science labs due to supervision and safety issues.

I am not at all convinced that a higher quantity of written work is necessarily a good thing. Improving writing skills is an area our schools desperately need to improve in. But it seems to me that shorter written material is every bit as valuable for this task.</p>

<p>See below on labs.

Book Budgets are usually very different than classroom supplies. Most science rooms have a very difficult time proving an interactive lab based environment in limited supply budgets. Decreasing supply budgets has a direct impact on instruction. Books are a bit of a different issue.

Thanks for the info on budgeting terminology. However, I’d argue that we spend too much on labs as well. I know that the labs included in the standard AP Biology curriculum, for example, are really terrible right now. They are looking to reform that particular course, but I can think of numerous cases where expensive lab supplies are not necessary to teach either good lab technique or the concepts related to the lab.</p>