Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Mitt’s kids’ school thinks small classes are better

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Mitt Romney says that only teacher unions want small classes, and only because smaller classes mean more teachers. There’s no educational benefit.

Tell that to the folks at the Belmont Hill School, the exclusive private day/boarding school where all five Romney boys prepped, which proudly boasts a 6:1 student/teacher ratio and “class size averaging 12 students per section.”

The issue of class size is complicated and the answers are not clear-cut. But, it’s just plain wrong to demonize the teachers union for promoting smaller classes when you sent your kids to a school with class sizes half the size of many (most?) public schools and that counts the small class size as a virtue.

Updated: As a commentator pointed out, Mitt’s kids graduated from Belmont Hill years ago. Whatever Belmont Hills philosophy at the time isn’t that relevant. Education policy evolves. And, I don’t have access to any contemporaneous statements from Belmont Hill on the value of class size. The point is that the Romneys obviously think that Belmont Hill is an outstanding school. So, the fact that the school that the Romney boys (now men) attended now touts small class size is some indication that small class size is not some ideal that teachers union made up to create more jobs.

Also, let’s face it. The Romney’s shelled out the big bucks for Belmont Hill with the expectation that every parent has for high-quality private schools: small class size.

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Comments

  1. Any idea what the teacher/student ratio was back then?

    Wanna try bashing the 20+ grandchildren instead? It’d be more current.

  2. But, the point is that the right now the school that learned up Mitt’s kids thinks class size is relevant and important. It’s not just the teacher unions.

  4. One, education has to be held at the local and state level, not at the federal level. We need get the federal government out of education. And secondly, all the talk about we need smaller classroom size, look that’s promoted by the teachers unions to hire more teachers. We looked at what drives good education in our state, what we found is the best thing for education is great teachers, hire the very best and brightest to be teachers, pay them properly, make sure that you have school choice, test your kids to see if they are meeting the standards that need to be met, and make sure that you put the parents in charge.

    I don’t think there is an optimal class size, but more a range with the trade off of cost. Maybe anything over 30 is too big and anything under is good with a class size of 1 being best. I would think private schools which cost lots of money can offer many features which are far beyond the “acceptable” level of educators but I don’t see how this correlates with the complaint. Maybe he would NOT support horseback ridding for public schools as being excessive while he sends his kids to private schools… that offer horseback ridding. So what?

    Mitt (and Obama) might be very big supporters of public education, but they both send their kids to private school. So what?

    • As I wrote, the class-size issue is complicated. But, let’s have an honest discussion about it. That small classes are better isn’t just something the unions made up for selfish reasons.

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