section 1 of 7

Larry Rosen is president of the EdDesigns Group, Inc., professor at Stetson University and faculty associate at the John Hopkins University. He has 26 years of experience in teaching, administration and research in K-12 schools, community colleges and universities. This article is a summary of his presentation at the April CEFPI conference in Columbus, Ohio. The article begins with questions and answers, and is followed by selected slides from Larry's presentation. Contact information for the EdDesigns Group is provided after the slides.

Q: Larry, what's the ideal size for a school?
                          
LR: 300 - 500 students is an ideal size for a school. It's big enough for a social life and a football team, and small enough to provide students with a sense of community. We are going to end up with many charter schools this size, while the old schools with 1,500 students will become dinosaurs.

Q: A 500 student high school can't support a full-time physics teacher; how can this work for our district?

LR: It's not what you offer that matters in high school, it's how well you prepare students to learn. Some of the most successful private high schools focus on scientific reasoning rather than physics or chemistry. A broad, integrated approach has proven to be extremely successful, in fact, students are actually better prepared for college science. Why should a student take physics in high school, and then the same course in college? If they truly are motivated, they can take physics at a local community college.

Q: What about placing several small schools on one campus?

LR: This is a good approach, and worked successfully at the Celebration School in Orlando. Older and younger students have lunch together and work well together in classrooms as well. Florida [Larry was employed by the Walt Disney Company as a project manager and educational designer for the project].

Q: What's the ideal size for a classroom?

LR: The ideal size is one that supports the learning approach adopted by the planners and stakeholders.*

Approach to technology:
Larry is a strong advocate for technology in the schools. He and his partner, Peter Gerber, recently completed a comprehensive white paper for the Technology Committee of the Florida Governor's Commission on Education. The paper is called "Learning Power: Technology for Excellence, Equity and Effectiveness in Florida's Schools." According to Larry, technology should be integrated throughout the school, making large media centers obsolete. How does he use technology personally? Larry doesn't like to type, so he created the presentation and slides that follow by speaking to his computer, using voice recognition software to do the formatting.