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Recently, it was reported that Ohio Governor John Kasich and his people are claiming that Salman Khan is in favor of classrooms with 50:1 student-teacher ratios. Kasich, who is waging war on public education in Ohio, with his attempts to dismantle collective bargaining and just about anything else that keeps veteran teachers in the classroom, wants Ohioans to believe that the highly-intelligent Khan has a better, cheaper way to educate America's kids.

If you watch the TED video above, you'll see that Khan is in favor of reinventing education, but not by increasing class size. In fact, Khan says the opposite.

"I've never said that class size should be increased to 50-1 or that it would be better, or as effective, as a lower class size (obviously, the lower the better)," Khan told Learn it in 5. "What I have said is that beyond class size, we should maximize the amount of time the teacher has to spend time with students, and that might be able to be addressed with technology (technology can do a lot of the blocking and tackling so that class time can be freed for interaction and investigations and projects).  We think this makes the teacher even more important than before."

Khan's presentation is proof

In fact, if Kasich or any of his staff members had watched this TED video, they might have realized that all Khan is suggesting is that teachers work more efficiently, using the software that the Khan Academy provides. At roughly the 12:30 mark of the video, Khan explains the mountains of data provided on an individual student. Even if one teacher could monitor 50 students on computers, which Khan never said, in order to effectively evaluate the data, a class size far less than 50 would be necessary.

Interesting that Governor Kasich, who wants to cut teacher pay and create larger classes, is twisting the words of the high-profile Khan, so that citizens will think that quality education can take place in a room with 50 students and one teacher, which Khan's presentation and his own words clearly prove won't work.

If Governor Kasich is willing to lie about Salman Khan, one must wonder what else he's lying about.