Given the debate over the importance of small class sizes in public schools, I thought you might enjoy reading this snippet from a Ronald Reagan commentary — recorded 30 years ago today:
In what has been called the most thorough study of the [public] schools ever made Dr. James Coleman of Johns Hopkins U. says there is no relationship or ratio between the quality of [education] & class size or the number of pupils per teacher or cost or [teachers’] salary.
I’ve used the brackets to convey the sense of Reagan’s shorthand. The original version — with shorthand, insertions, deletions, and other changes — is included in Reagan In His Own Hand (Touchstone, 2001).
The quote above is one element of a commentary in which the future president also asked, “May I suggest the possibility that educators tinkering with the system — their eyes on a brave new world they were going to build right in the classroom just may have tossed out some pretty tried & true fundamentals.”
