High school teacher Arthur Goldstein reports what happened when teachers complained about overcrowded classes in New York City:
“A few months ago, a $1,600-a-day arbitrator named Deborah M. Gaines declared that Francis Lewis High School, where I work, could keep oversized classes, but that teachers of said classes would be relieved once a week from a school assignment, e.g. tutoring.
“It’s hard to imagine, by any stretch of the imagination, that 40 minutes per week of not tutoring alleviates the difficulties of teachers grappling with oversized classes. It’s even harder to imagine how less tutoring benefits students, particularly from a city that claims to put “Children First. Always.”
“If I’m a conscientious kid, sitting in one of our 42 oversized classes — some of which run as high as 37 students — and not getting enough attention from my teacher, I might be wondering how her being less available to tutor me helps the situation. Do I breathe a sigh of relief that she’s off that period and hope for the best? The arbitrator and the Department of Education seem to assume so.
“Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to grasp how it helps. I’m just a lowly teacher. But I’m also my school’s UFT chapter leader, so twice a year I report class sizes, the union files a grievance, and we bring them before an arbitrator.
“Usually there are a handful and we work it out. This year the number was higher, never went down, and in fact rose to 42 by my last count.
“Oversized classes are tough to manage, especially when teachers in New York City are rated by a rubric that values student engagement highly. In a room with over 34 teenagers, keeping them motivated and on task is challenging in that it demands total attention. The arbitrator may as well have declared that teachers of oversized classes will now have eyes in the backs of their heads.
“It’s been 50 years since class size limits were first established in the United Federation of Teachers contract. Since that time, we’ve managed to not improve upon them at all, and worked our way up to the highest class sizes in the state….”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Absolutely.
Careful, teachers. This is how the corporate reform industry holds tighter to the claim that they alone speak for parents in direct opposition to the teachers union. I can see the story now: teachers union reduces tutoring time. There will be no mention that this was part of a discussion about class size reduction, which by the way is overwhelmingly supported by parents and research.
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When teachers say that their working conditions are the students’ learning conditions, this is what is meant. When I began teaching in Boston, class size at middle and high school levels was 45. When I retired, it was still too high at 31. But in order to reduce class size, which costs money, over those intevening 35 plus years, teachers passed up pay raises to dedicate those funds instead to reduced class size. I’m sure the same is true for the UFT. It’s just how negotiations work.
Not honoring class size agreements means funds teachers choose to give to their students is being stolen from those kids. The teachers have forfeited salary for their own families and now neither teachers nor students get what they are entitled to.
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You have described a double whammy—and the rheephormsters will continue to claim that teachers are greedy and think only of themselves.
🙄
Pair this with a posting yesterday about a charter outfit in LA, Celerity. From the LATIMES article linked to in the posting—a particular teacher “taught in a portable classroom on an asphalt lot — not unheard of in this city of tight squeezes and little green space — but her students had no library, cafeteria or gymnasium. The school didn’t provide most supplies, Le said, so when her sixth-graders needed books, pencils and paper, she bought them herself.”
Of course, making up for shortfalls would be even more difficult if [re just one example in the article] a teacher “went at least five months without being paid.”
But the parties, with limousine service, that Celerity put on!
Teachers lose, students lose, we lose…
But for those lucky few leading the “new civil rights movement of our time” aka Rheephorm Dominionism, well…
$tudent $ucce$$ is it’s own reward.
😎
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The fact that Mr. Goldstein is an ESL teacher makes overcrowded class even a bigger travesty than it already is. I taught ESL in suburban NYC for many years. My district capped ESL class size at fifteen. I also taught French in a suburban Philly school district. One year I had a class of thirty-five. It was easier to teach the thirty-five middle class students than the fifteen ELLs I taught, and it has nothing to do with discipline. These ELLs are EXTREMELY behind their peers in all aspects of education. I have had high school students that could barely write their names and could barely do simple math. I have had many students that could not read at all in L 1, and I am sure Mr. Goldstein has had them too. With smaller classes I was able to invest time in these students, and it was still hard to try to overcome their learning gaps. Why should needy ELLs is the suburbs get smaller classes than those in the city? The reason is the way we fund our schools through property taxes cheats our urban students. Governor Cuomo lost a court case on fair funding, and he refuses to pay the millions he owes to urban schools. Why should young people in a city with some of highest real estate ratables in the world continue to be short changed? We need a better way to fund public schools.
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The 100+ billion that Apple, Microsoft, GE and other so-called “American” companies owe in taxes on money that is currently kept in offshore accounts would be a start to help fund some of the neediest schools. (These companies are always complaining about how they can’t find qualified Americans. maybe they should put their tax dodging money where their mouth is)
There are about 100,000 public schools in the US and if one distributed that 100 billion among the 33,000 neediest, it would be 3 million dollars per school. Or one could even start with the 10,000 neediest — 10 million dollars per school.
A start, and after closing the offshoring loophole, one could tax “American” companies at slightly higher rate to continue funding.
It’s clearly not that the money does not exist.
But I won’t hold my breath that this would ever happen under either a Republican of a Democrat because both are bought and paid for by tax dodgers like Apple and Microsoft.
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So good to read your series of posts on how corporate $ squirreled offshore could vastly improve learning conditions in pubsch. & the reason we can’t look to either party to fix this is Cit-United et al regs loosened– or enforcement defunded– steadily since the ’80’s. Get the $ out!
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Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to privatize Newark… They don’t want to help struggling public schools. They would just create more charters.
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My 100 billion number above is off by a factor of about 5.
As of last April the top 50 us companies were holding 1.4 trillion dollars in offshore accounts.
At 35% tax rate that would be almost 500 million owed in us taxes.
So multiply my contributions to schools above by a factor of 5.
33,000 neediest could get 15 million apiece.
10,000 neediest could get 50 million. In other words, the schools could be completely replaced with brand new ones.
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Typo above
500 billion owed in taxes (not million)
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Google is another serial tax dodger.
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I agree with Robert Reich that if companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google do not wish to play by the rules established by Congress, then they should no longer enjoy the benefits and protections afforded to American companies.
They should be forced to move ALL offices and operations offshore and afforded no protection by the Us if some foreign government tried to nationalize them, for example.
If they don’t wish to pay taxes here, fine, but they should not be able to have their cake and eat it too.
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The other simple way to raise a very large sum would be even a relatively small tax on Wall Street financial (eg stock) transactions.
Even 0.5% could raise over 100 billion per year (see cepb report based on 2008 transactions
http://cepr.net/publications/reports/ftt-revenue
This is one of the very reasonable proposals that Bernie Sanders made.
But of course dishonest hacks like Paul Krugman made him out to be a pie in the sky dreamer, accusing him of making outlandish economic claims and using voodoo econ
I say dishonest because Krugman knew full well that many of Sanders’
Proposals were eminently reasonable because he (krugman) had actually supported them himself.
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It’s always interesting to compare class sizes in some of our public schools with those in the schools attended by the Trump kids. That said, class size impacts health and safety as well as learning. Other professions such as nursing have set limits because they know there is an impact. Kids in crowded conditions are more likely to get sick. Safety is a serious liability issue in overcrowded science, PE, and vocational classes. To date, I remain frustrated because there has been no message that resonates with policy makers, parents, or media and moves them to action.
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Perhaps we could do better on limiting class sizes if the elements of health & safety were emphasized. Americans tend to be more alert to health/ safety concerns than quality of education. Comes from the meme that anybody can teach, but med folks are ‘real’ professionals. US suffers from an anti-intellectual attitude. But some blame goes to us: we lack a central professional org like AMA– by default our only power-center is unions, which attracts anti-labor-union sentiment.
And I wonder if the difference between enforcing common-sense limits between nursing & teaching has something to do with liability? Citizens are quicker to sue hospitals (even doctors) than schools. This is partly because healthcare is overpriced & Americans underinsured. But it’s also easier to view a regional hospital as an ‘other’, as opposed to the district school (or local fire or police dept). [Personal anecdote: having once been grievously injured in an accident caused by a police chase, I quickly understood that even friends/ neighbors viewed a lawsuit against local police as an assault on their own wallets.]
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Relieving of a 40 minute tutoring responsibility might work in public schools, but in charters there is a much simpler and far more effective solution
“Charter Secret”
To keep the classes small
You just suspend the chaff
You don’t suspend them all
Just quarter to a half
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Cut the baby in half.
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Wouldn’t that just double the number?
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Maybe you need to fuse them — if refusing fails.
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You could double the state funding you collect, one allocation for each half, they would be separate educational units.
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Good point, and classroom disturbances would probably also go down, so maybe this idea of cutting the baby in half is a good one after all.
To halve or not to halve, that is the question
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Horizontally, vertically, diagonally to the left, or diagonally to the right? Details, we need details to know what is the proficient way!
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Which teacher gets which half?
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Sound like this needs to be taken to a higher level. The arbiter is obviously biased and incompetent.
As for teachers making agreements to give up salary in return for smaller classes. It sounds good in theory but never seems to work out. The powers that be seem to find a way to weasel out of their responsibility.
In Texas, most teachers haven’t gotten a raise in 15 years. When the state created a health insurance plan for teachers in 2001 they agreed upon a contribution to the plan. In 15 years their contribution has not changed. Every premium increase has been shouldered by the educators. 3-percent raise coupled with a 2.9-percent premium increase equal…no pay raise.
I don’t have the data to prove it, but it seems that the poorer and more urban a school then the more likely that they will have larger classes with less qualified teachers.
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What you describe is mainly a function of healthcare costs outstripping COL increases for decades– reigned in a bit during Obama yrs, but still biting more out of every citizen’s budget every year. Our family is in the private sector, & has seen this steadily for 40+ yrs in the same industry. Almost every yr we get a notice re: ‘improvements’ to healthcare options, which is inevitably double-speak for increased premiums & restricted services.
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I’d be interested to know what positions the DOE and the UFT took in the arbitrations as to the proper remedy for oversized classes. It’s not clear to me whether this was a DOE proposal, a union proposal, or a split-the-difference approach. Highly unlikely that the arbitrator came up with the idea spontaneously.
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It doesn’t sound like a teacher proposal since it doesn’t solve the teachers problems–class size issues or time for individual student support. It sounds like someone trying to frame the issue as one of teacher complaints about unfair work practices rather than about their real concerns about meeting the needs of their students.
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Again… it is 16 years since my own experience taught me that the UFT was nonexistent.
Maybe Mike Mandell is actually fighting for teachers…. although I doubt it. He was there when this was ongoing http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
They emptied NYC schools over 15 years, of the creme of experienced educated, teacher-practitioners, by allowing any and all principals to break all the rules governing CIVIL RIGHTS.
AFTER personally filing a lawsuit for the abuse, Randi came along and helped me…
I was ‘arbitrated’ out of my job, and I was so famous, that Pew/harvard was filming me as the cohort for the REAL National Standards. I was a gift to kids, but the PRINCIPALS ARE UNACCOUNTABLE TO ANYONE… just like our new president.
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“The Arbitraitor”
Arbitrator?
Or arbitraitor?
Some are Vater
Some are Vader
Vater is German for father, also the source of Darth Vader’s name
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Though it won’t solve everything; keep in mind that the State (aka: Cuomo) still owes NYC billions of dollars which are supposed to go towards maintenance of existing structures and building of new ones.
Then, of course, there’s the space and money that the NYCDOE is now mandated to give to any new charter school that’s deemed “worthy” in the eyes of the State, thus adding to the problem of overcrowded classrooms.
This brings to mind Bloomberg’s boast that, if he had his way, he’d fire half the teachers and double the salary AND class size of the remaining teachers. And if any of the kids were left without desk, then he’d be able to look them in the eye and know whether they were learning or not.
Those contemptible, moronic ideas and words actually saw the light of day and were featured on public mass media.
Big money and politicians have wanted us to fail for decades. The students are collateral damage. I don’t say this lightly, either, for anyone who’s reading this. I came to education at age 40 from a management background. Management hates unions. I saw and recognized “education reform” for what it was in the beginning, and have watched it grow, despite my and many others’ efforts to sound the alarm.
The fact that Betsy DeVos or anyone remotely like her is even being considered for the job of Secretary of Education says it all.
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