A comment on the blog:
I’m an LAUSD middle school art teacher with class sizes reduced to 31, 32, 39, 44, 45 and 48. That averages almost 40/class. AVERAGE doesn’t make sense! With 48 students in a 50 minute class I have no time to actually help students. More students means more time on attendance, more time passing out and collecting supplies (for which I have no budget.) My class of 45 has a sped teacher’s entire class load of 6th graders mixed in with 7th and 8th. If it is based on average and the actual class size doesn’t matter, why not give me 250 in my first period??
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I might add that class size is out of control in California. My kindergartner went from 24 last year to 31 this year in first grade. Just finished the 2nd week of school, and there are at least 5 red/yellow cards handed out every day in class this year. Red/yellow cards were rare last year. One teacher and 31 six-year-olds. Educaton or institutionalized daycare? I would love to see how many minutes any “reform” administrator in America lasts in that class. My bet is about 20 minutes. Why are we doing this to our teachers and students? Oh, and by the way, the district would rather pay the “fine” for large class size than pay for more teachers – it is “cheaper.”
Do you think that the downtown bureaucracy–elected and installed–really cares. LAUSD is a failure!
http://www.examiner.com/article/if-it-s-lausd-i-push-the-failure-button
Addressing the ridiculous……..good idea: cram all 250 kids into the cafeteria, Gym, chorus room, library, halls, band room, for each period/teacher and count heads for FTE, collect $$, DO NOT GO TO JAIL…..Job done! Go home! American Education at its BEST? Insanity! Many of us have asked Arne, Barack & Bill to teach in these settings. None are breaking down our school room doors. Too busy BSing the rest of US.
Just consider this tidbit from RheeWorld concerning the rheephormer mantra about the unimportance of class size:
Harpeth Hall, where at least one of Michelle Rhee’s children went/goes to school.
Go to their home page:
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org
Then under the menu heading “About US” go to “50 Reasons.”
“29. 8:1ratio: Our teachers know our students.”
But just how could the teachers know their students with all the burn and churn? Strangely, there is this:
“14. Our faculty average more than 18 years of teaching experience and 80 percent hold advanced degrees.”
And forget about wasting time on the arts when there is a STEM shortage. Oops, my bad:
“21. Girls dance, sing, paint, act, and play music in comfortable theaters, studios, and auditoriums.”
“23. Every student is eligible to receive free, semiprivate lessons on the instrument of her choice. That’s music to our ears.”
“32. Picture perfect. Three campus art studios, a photography lab, and stellar instructors create a dynamic atmosphere for artists of all levels.”
“Education reform” anyone?
🙂
I am a ten year retired California teacher. Unfortunately we have always had high class sizes. It has now spread to the lower grades. I had 35 fifth graders and my neighboring teacher had 42 EL sixth graders one year. It sure made a big difference even though I never had under 30 students in grades 6-8 as well! When people claim it makes no difference they don’t know what they are talking about.
Just curious: how much of the class size problems are attributable to uncontrolled immigration that’s supported by sanctuary city Democrats and cheap labor loving Republican employers?
That immigrant stuff is not going to fly. These folks work hard And Contribute a great deal to our economy. School officials, EducRAT$, white chalk criminals and billionaires? Not so much…
The district has been exploiting “illegals” for decades. I say deport Deasy, his toadies, corrupt middle management , all Broadies and philanthropists instead
It’s a straw argument. My area has had enormous class sizes for as long as I can remember (both as a student and teacher) and there was not a large immigrant population until very recently.
The concern about immigration won’t fly with economically uninformed Edworlders, but non-partisan economists know better. Sure those folks work hard – but whatever taxes they pay don’t come close to paying for the public benefits they receive: public hospitals, public school costs for their kids, etc.
Everyone on this blog is outraged by high tech employers wanting to import cheap labor from India and elsewhere. Why no concern for existing low-skill American citizens whose unemployment rate is over 21%? Why are you all on the same side as the cheap labor loving U.S. Chamber of Commerce?
“Just curious: how much of the class size problems are attributable to uncontrolled immigration that’s supported by sanctuary city Democrats and cheap labor loving Republican employers?”
I’ll bite — how much? Or do you not know?
Analyses I’ve seen about California have discussed school districts that have a lot of immigrant students that require significant tax dollars. I don’t know exact figures – that’s why I asked.
I´m waiting the links to these “non partisan economists”.
Turn off MSNBC, and broaden out your reading beyond the Nation, DailyKos, and the NEA newsletter. The best analysis by a liberal writer on this topic was published in The New Republic. I apologize in advance for bursting ideological bubbles and exposing “educators” to ideas they never heard from their Social Justice indoctrinators, aka “professors.”
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113651/liberal-opposes-immigration-reform
It’s not the size of the class. It is the change in respect for the teaching profession that parents send along with their children each morning. Tragically, parents are inundated from the media that our public schools are “failing.”
occupy the schools!
LAUSD has the oddest system designed to make sure every teacher is working to maximum capacity. They have ranges of student enrollment, so if your enrollment falls in a certain range, it triggers the corresponding number of teachers. If you are in the low end of the range, great, you aren’t packed. If your enrollment is at the upper end of the range, or if the enrollment falls disproportionately on one or two of the grades, you’re in trouble. You will have packed classes, or “split” classes (a ridiculous construct), and never mind if more roll in after “norm” day. It certainly allows the district to keep almost every teacher working at or above capacity, but also has the unfortunate side effect of having many students in crowded classes, or in split grades where the teacher is trying to teach the standards of two grades.
It must not just be LAUSD that does this, because it sounds just like the way classes are put together in my district in Utah. My school has lost 5 teachers over the last 5 years, and we actually have MORE students than we did before.
California class sizes are out of control. My district is now at a point in which 40 is the norm in each class. At the same time there are over 60 teachers being paid an extra stipend on top of their regular salaries to indoctrinate those of us who actually teach real students in the Common Core. We could really use those teachers in the classroom.
I know this post is about class size, but it really caught my attention that an art teacher had NO budget for supplies! Most of us are probably use to spending our own money for our classes, but art supplies for 241 students?!