Sizer is dead

When I was in graduate school, one of the most influential books I read was Ted Sizer's "Horace's Compromise." It was a blueprint for secondary education reform that consisted of smaller class sizes, small teaching loads (80 students per teacher), more interactive classes, and a focus on the bigger picture rather than mundane facts and trivia.

Sizer went on to write two other books in the series, "Horace's School" and "Horace's Hope." I have all three books although I've only read the first one in full. Someday I'll read the other two.

Anyway, I saw today that Sizer died this past week of cancer. Reading his obit got me thinking about his books again and education reform. I was recently appointed the co-chair of my school's accreditation team and it's been an exciting opportunity to help shape the future of the school. I think I am going to go back and delve more into Sizer's ideas as we work on this process.

The Globe article on Sizer is here but below is a taste:

Dr. Sizer, who also served in the 1980s as chairman of the education department at Brown University, founded the Coalition for Essential Schools in 1984, which spread his approach and theories across the country through schools that adhere to a set of common principles.

Among those are the belief that teachers should be directly responsible for no more than 80 students and get to know each child in depth. Also included in the principles is “less is more,’’ a phrase Dr. Sizer often repeated and one that runs counter to prevailing trends toward standardized testing that require students to memorize a broad range of facts in a multitude of subjects.

“Rather than try to cram thousands of facts into a kid’s head, decide what’s really important and spend more time on it, on powerful concepts, rather than trivia that they forget after the test is over,’’ Gardner said. “What Ted would say is what’s missing now is the desire to learn, the passion to learn.’’

Dr. Sizer believed schools should inspire students to want to read and expand their knowledge even when tests weren’t looming. Students, he would say, should develop “habits of mind.’’