Communities had to plan on whether the increase was permanent or temporary.
If permanent, you built more buildings and/or brought in trailers as satellite classrooms.
If temporary, you either brought in trailers, erected low cost Quonset huts or even contracted with local churches to use their space for the overflow.
Some schools guessed wrong and found surplus buildings on their hands at the end of the boom. Some communities converted them into senior centers. Others sold them to local farmers for pennies on the dollar to convert to hog barns.
Average class size for that era was close to 40 kids. Most of the teachers had to work during the summer to make ends meet. They weren't a separate government pampered unionized elite who earned more in nine months than most of the parents of their students earned in 12.
And, still, we managed to produce better results than most of our modern counterparts. Why do you suppose that is?
“They need a new education model not run by teachers unions, but by private enterprise.”
Maybe then we would have more engineers like we need instead of captain Planet brainwashed idiots we don’t.
Absolutely! It would be an excellent time to take the bold step of privatizing education. Now that would produce some real progress. The worst thing that happened in this country was when government took over education. Innovation stopped dead in its tracks.