No, smaller is not always better -- that argument has salience in the discussion of public education reform. Choice, accountability, less governmental meddling -- these changes would free up time, space, and dwindling funds
Despite the Los Angeles Times' oblique hint that Romney does not care about the needs of inner city youth, the former governor of Massachusetts, who established a commanding legacy of expanding educational opportunity through charter schools, has demonstrated an open savvy to reach out to prospective voters in the most forbidding regions of the country for Republican candidates.
In the Philadelphia suburbs, he stood by his reasonable claims that smaller class sizes in themselves do not advance the learning of the student. Extremes like five students to a classroom are financially irresponsible, while fifty students in one class poses academic challenges beyond the ability of one teacher. Citing the learning and graduation rates of students in Finland and Singapore, Romney touches a third-rail in urban politics: the importance of stable, two-parents, a phenomenon devastated by government welfare.
On another note, I have always admired Mitt Romney's willingness to visit neighborhoods which have been historical hostile to the Republican brand, including South Los Angeles and Compton in California. Democratic operatives have taken Romney's visits to urban, working-class, and minority communities as an opportunity to skewer his wealthy connections and hefty business legacy, but they refuse to acknowledge the very elitism in their progressive stalwart champion Barack Obama, a Chicago organizer who has discouraged school choice for the black community, yet owns enough capital to enroll his two daughters in the most selective private schools. This double-standard must be attacked by leaders in the black community, who I am certain are tired of promoting candidates because of their color, yet who refuse to expand opportunities to their own people.
Perhaps Mitt Romney would be the first president in nearly five decade to erode at the liberal hegemony over the black community which the Democratic party has held for so many years.
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