Lisa Schencker of the Salt Lake Tribune reported that class sizes are rising in the state, despite an official low number. She realized that the official number of 22.8 students per class was misleading. The Tribune invited readers to write and identify large classes.
The Tribune asked readers last week to help us find the state’s largest classes. The Tribune received more than 100 responses via email, Facebook and Twitter — mostly from teachers.
One teacher in the Granite district said she had 52 students in her Utah Studies class for seventh-graders last year. A parent reported 43 students in her son’s Granite district honors English class last year. A Canyons foreign language teacher said she now has 42 students in one of her classes. A Logan School District teacher reported 56 students in one of her classes.
“The classes of 40 and 38 are frequently interrupted with management and behavioral issues, not enough computers in the same lab, etc.,” wrote Shelly Edmonds, a teacher at Hillcrest High, who noted she has one class with 40 kids this year.
Hillcrest High Advanced Placement Literature teacher Katie Bullock said she has 39 kids in one class and 100 AP Literature students overall.
“Try grading the amount of writing that takes place every week in an AP Lit course (or should take place … which doesn’t … because I can’t humanly keep up …),” she wrote.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is amazing that people outside the classroom have no concept of what it means to add extra students to a class. Last year I wrote a piece in an effort to give them an idea.
http://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/does-5-more-students-really-matter/
http://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/new-teacher-bill-of-rights-2013/
Class size statistics are often misleading because they may use the total number of professional staff including counselors, social workers, psychologists, speech and language, ESL and special education teachers in their calculations. This throws off the actual figure for the class size of a typical class.
they are not often misleading, they are always misleading.
in nj they are solving that problem. I hear they have just stopped collecting data on class size.
lol….the the osterich solution….good stuff
lol will keep that tucked for an upcoming meeting.
The official class size statistics are often misleading in LAUSD, too. If a school has two classes, one with 40 kids and one with 8 special day class students, the statistic shows a class size of 24. This is one reason we are losing the battle with charter co-locations because we are required to give up rooms based on average class sizes. To make matters even worse, the charters get to count smaller class sizes when petitioning for available space.
“Double Standards”
Why must students show their maths
Under Common Core?
While ed officials just quote stats
And rarely any more?
Welcome to the world of special education. It is under funded, under staffed, teachers are over worked, but are expected to grin and bare it. Feels more like babysitting then providing a quality education.
And it’s not just class size. For instance I have 5 preps and teach 7periods of 8 periods (they certainly aren’t hours at 47 minutes each) with 4 minutes between periods. Not to mention supervision before and after school one day a week. I refuse to do the lunch supervision. Oh, and we have 22 minutes for lunch which includes the two 8 minute travel times. And the first 20 minutes of time in class is supposed to be “sacred” where we’re not supposed to allow anyone out of the room, Gee, Johny I hope you don’t piss in your pants, Sorry, Janie, you can’t go to the nurse and get a feminine product that you forgot to bring, hope it doesn’t get too messy-don’t follow that one either.
“. . . two four minute. . .
Psychiatrist Stuart Brown has proposed this simple definition: “Play is
spontaneous behavior that has no clear-cut goal and does not conform to
a stereotypical pattern. The purpose of play is simply play itself; it
appears to be pleasurable.”
In a study of 26 convicted murderers, Brown discovered that as children,
most of them had suffered either “from the absence of play or abnormal
play like bullying, sadism, extreme teasing, or cruelty to animals.”
Brown’s work led him to explore the biological roots of play. “New and
exciting studies of the brain, evolution, and animal behavior,” he wrote,
“suggest that play may be as important to life — for us and other animals
— as sleeping and dreaming.”
– Stuart L. Brown, “Animals at Play,” *National Geographic*
Welcome to the factory farming class which will never be covered in officials’ record.
YES- IN THIS CASE, SIZE MATTERS.
This is my 20th year of teaching. I teach in a wonderful public fine arts school with wonderful students and great colleagues.
I have 143 students in 6 classes,
two 10th grade classes,
two 11th grade classes,
and two 12th grade classes.
These are college prep/honors-AP mixed.
No fluffy electives. These are all hard-core English classes.
I have six AP students in one of my senior classes. I have a STACK of recently turned in projects from these students. Each assignment is so thick (Times New Roman, 12 point, double spaced) that I need those extra big clips. These assignments will take me a couple of weeks to get through. I will have the next assignment from these hard working AP students before I finish the first assignment. I’ll have to do one here and one there. Each takes about 20+ minutes.
Look- it’s my job. I know. But when you find yourself grading essays by checking the thesis statement, skimming the intro and conclusion, then reading the body paragraphs, it’s a problem.
My district has no money while a charter chain is starting a new school with millions in seed money from people like Gates and other edupreneurs. My school looks like someone picked it up and dropped it. Stained ceiling tiles, tired walls, a whack-a-mole AC unit (it seems that only one or two zones out of maybe seven work, and nobody knows from day to day who gets lucky). The center hallways are either as cold as a meat locker or damp and hot like a NYC subway station in August.
I have way too many students 3,4 and even 5 years below reading level and absolutely no help. I am on my own when it comes to helping these kids.
I have two college students doing observations with me from the local university and I have to bite my tongue. What can I tell them? That they must have rocks in their heads for wanting to be English teachers? That master teachers like me are dinosaurs? That since my state gutted pensions and we all have to work until we’re 66, that the normal flow of incoming teachers and retiring teachers has been disrupted?
Thank you, Eli Broad, for putting one of your monsters into my state to run public education into the ground.
Hurrummph!!!!
“. . . and I have to bite my tongue. What can I tell them?”
Don’t bite too hard as you won’t be able to talk afterwards-ha ha.
TELL THEM THE GODDAMNED TRUTH!
There is no excuse in the world good enough to not do that!!
Why is it that educators think they have to play nice, to never say anything critical of educational malpractices, to . . . ad infinitum?
Because they’re “afraid”! (of shadows if I may add)
COME ON EDUCATORS, GROW SOME COJONES.
Quit playing the part of the abused spouse, break out of the Stockholm Syndrome, STAND UP FOR THE MOST INNOCENT OF SOCIETY-THE CHILDREN since, it appears, you’re not willing to stand up for yourself!!
that the VAST MAJORITY of educators
We must play nice or constantly be job hunting. If you make waves, then you start job hunting. It’s a great profession….ugh!
I know Music doesn’t get much love in education these days, so it’s probably no surprise that I have 50 students in one Middle School music class. Other classes are in the high 30s and 40s.
Specialists get screwed all the time by the class size stuff. They get counted in the class size ratio to make the district look better than it is, but otherwise, they are treated like dumping grounds. My district provides a .2 certificated staff for classes in overload, but those only go to the classroom teacher. If the music teacher has 38 5th graders crammed into a room, they don’t care, and they don’t get any help. For some of my kids, music or PE was the ONLY place they had success – and a room crammed full of that many kids is not only unsafe for both kids and teachers, it is not conducive to helping kids find something they enjoy and/or can be successful in. Music, PE, library, and art (I wish we had art specialists!) are so important to the well-rounded lives of kids, and as a classroom teacher, I have always valued them. I get tired of seeing specialists get the shaft year in and year out. We all need smaller classes.
Here here!
Imagine if all the Gates, Broad, Rhee and Wallton money went to support enrichment in our public schools – to add art and music specialists, add PE coaches, create science labs at the elementary level and at the middle and high school levels to fund a full curriculum and reduce class sizes. How much further along we would be…
Be careful Caligirl….you’re making too much sense. That is against the rules.
I am one of those Utah teachers. I can’t complain about my class size so far…I have 22 in my 3rd grade class. But that is completely out of character compared to other years. Anywhere from 25-29 total students is my usual; the numbers change monthly, even weekly, as students move in and out. My Granite District school is also a Priority school, and we are in our first year of a three-year School Improvement Grant. Down the hall from me are the 2 6th grade classes with 36-38 students for each class. Our classrooms are obviously made for 30 students and 1 teacher; there are 30 cubbies in each class for students’ belongings. Our 3 all day kindergarten classes all have 27-29, and no aide. First grade classes, 3 of them, have the same as kindergarten. I mentioned that we are a SIG school, but we also have the highest mobility rate in the state; the highest chronic absenteeism rate; over 50 different languages spoken between our immigrant and refugee students; 6 buses that transport approximately 89-90% of our students; we average 81-86% of our students for free/reduced lunches; we have homeless students; chronic mental health and behavior problems; family legacies of gang involvement; and the list goes on.
Are we able to get more teachers? No, not really because during the summer there is this process of projecting total student enrollment for each school, with some magical formula that doesn’t work for every school – because we don’t have standard schools that fit into a standard formula. That formula leaves us desperate for 3 teachers; 1 kindergarten, 1 first grade, and 1 6th grade. Our 6the grade teachers keep apologizing to the rest of us, because it’s obvious when 2 overcrowded 6th grade classes like theirs, are going to keep the whole school from making that dictated percentage of growth. Which is tied to bonuses.
I should mention that in those 6th grade classes, only 36% are benchmark, 27% are strategic, and the rest are intensive; these are students who are reading on a 3rd grade level or less.
I know this issue is a concern all over the country. I know each classroom has it’s own struggles just because of diversity – or being non-standard. It’s one thing for a person like Bill Gates who doesn’t understand the first thing about pedagogy, child development, language acquisition, teaching strategies like Close Reading, or having that ‘withitness’ that teachers must have, but when our districts and state leadership who come from a teaching background are creating situations destined to fail. It’s is a complete, idiotic conundrum!
Going with the thinking and reasoning of Bill Gates and others, I’d like to announce that I am applying for a position on the state medical review board. I have experience in the medical world. I’ve seen a doctor many times for many years during my life!
I need to update my numbers. I received a new student today. My school is getting another new round of refugee students. This is our second in the last 3 weeks. How many students have moved out? One, maybe 2 per class. We are busting at the seams…literally! A few pipes and and a/c units burst and we are having flooding in a couple parts of our school. Burst right through the walls and a ceiling!
I will go to a screening of The Toughest Job at the Mississippi Public Broadcasting studios Thursday night to thank our former governor William Winter for his leadership in enacting the Mississippi Education Reform Act, which among many other things, limits my class size to 33. Thank you Governor Winter! http://www.mpbonline.org/williamwinter/
33 is still too large for elementary but it is better than 36 – CA state law
Anything over 15 students for grades 1-3 with a teacher, adult aide and sped teacher as needed is an abomination.
The 33 limit applies to high school. It’s 27 for middle school and 24 for elementary school. We are very fortunate in that respect.
In regards to school funding, not so much. A former governor now has over 20 districts as plaintiffs to sue the state of Mississippi for back funding because they have almost never met their legal obligations.
Each of the first grade classrooms (Davis district) at my school had 30 students in them last year. I did have a two week period of 32. The previous year, we had five classrooms of twenty. That group went into 3 classes of 33. Third grade averaged 35. Fully one third of my students did not know letter names or sounds and had no sight words upon entering first grade. Math skills were equally low. I don’t blame kindergarten teachers who also had 30 in each class. There is no time for individual intervention with these kind of numbers. In early childhood classrooms we refer to these types of classes as herding cats. You spend so much time getting students ready to learn that there is no time left to teach.
Utah state motto – stack ’em deep and teach ’em cheap.
(While out of the other side of your mouth, proclaim how much you value children, how important they are, and how everyone in Utah should have MORE.)
My aunt retired after a class of 33 first graders in Jordan district. She figured she’d spend less in medical bills if she wasn’t teaching than if she was teaching.
very true…it is exhausting…
I am in Davis District. I have 245 total students in 8th grade history and 9th grade geography. We lose a bunch of funding because of a charter school that has bragged in public that they kick out kids after October 1 (count day) back to their home schools. My student load in 2008 was 190. Next semester, I will have 280 students.
From the Brookings Institute:
The most influential and credible study of Class Size Reduction policies is the Student Teacher Achievement Ratio, or STAR, study which was conducted in Tennessee during the late 1980s. In this study, students and teachers were randomly assigned to a small class, with an average of 15 students, or a regular class, with an average of 22 students. This large reduction in class size (7 students, or 32 percent) was found to increase student achievement by an amount equivalent to about 3 additional months of schooling four years later.
Because the pool of credible studies is small and the individual studies differ in the setting, method, grades, and magnitude of class size variation that is studied, conclusions have to be tentative. But it appears that very large class-size reductions, on the order of magnitude of 7-10 fewer students per class, can have significant long-term effects on student achievement and other meaningful outcomes. These effects seem to be largest when introduced in the earliest grades, and for students from less advantaged family backgrounds.
In summary, STAR researchers have found positive effects of early and very large class-size reductions on academic achievement in school and college attendance, with the economic benefits of the program outweighing the costs. These are important results from a very strong research design.
I have 182 students in English II (Sophomore English). This class along with Algebra I determines my whole school’s AYP. If I only spend 1 minute per week, which is unrealistic, it will still take 3 hours of my own time to grade 1 paper per student. My official planning time is taken up with mandated meetings. I am only guaranteed 2.5 hours per week of real planning time. Give me back my planning time!
http://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/does-5-more-students-really-matter/
“I should mention that in those 6th grade classes, only 36% are benchmark, 27% are strategic, and the rest are intensive; these are students who are reading on a 3rd grade level or less.” About 35% of our students are 2 years behind in reading (even more in math) and we are a “solid middle class ‘white mom suburban’ area” 20 miles north of NYC. I feel like I went to sleep on June 25, 2014 in the US and woke up in the Twilight Zone in a socialist country on 9/2/14. Very grateful for the activism this year! Best.
This is happening everywhere across the nation. A teacher friend of mine has 193 students on her roosters for this year. Students were having to carry their chairs around with them from class to class at the beginning of this year until more desks could be brought in. She is struggling to keep up with grading much less everything else that is put upon our teachers.