Leonie Haimson is a model of an activist who drives city and officials crazy, as well as the billionaires who think they can drive policy with their money. She has two passions: reducing class size and student privacy. She created two groups to fight for her causes: class Size Matters and Student Privacy Matters. Leonie and her allies (the Parent Coalition for Studebt Privacy) killed inBloom, the data mining program of students that Gates and Carnegie funded with $100 Million. (Full disclosure: I am a member of her board [Class Size Matters] and she is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.) With meager resources, Leonie writes, testifies, organizes, blogs, and is a force to be reckoned with.
See the lawsuit here.
“Advocates and city parents have filed a lawsuit calling on state Education Department officials and city schools Chancellor Richard Carranza to reduce class sizes in the public schools.
“The suit filed in Albany State Supreme Court Thursday was brought by advocates with Class Size Matters, the Alliance for Quality Education and nine parents from all five New York City boroughs.
“It claims the state and city Education officials have ignored a 2007 law called the Contract for Excellence that required the city to lower class sizes.
“Class Size Matters founder Leonie Haimson said the city has instead increased class sizes, with nearly one-third of all students in classes of 30 or more children.
“It is unconscionable that the state and the city have flouted the law and are subjecting over 290,000 students to overcrowded classes of 30 students or more,” said Haimson, citing a Class Size Matters analysis of city Education Department data.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I love you both dearly!
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That’s fascinating to know that there was actually a law requiring the city to reduce class sizes. I’d like to know more on how that was buried and hidden away, although I’m guessing that it might have to do something with the Obama administration coming into effect in 2008?
Great to see that people are fighting and advocating for students!
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Class size sure does matter. Thanks for all your hard work.
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https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio?source=c.em&r_by=230426
class size is important but so it a rationale evaluation system.
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I wish we had Leonie in Los Angeles. Class size and student privacy matter!
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Could we import her to Utah?
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Leonie did an amazing job with the inBloom. Stunning, really.
Class size, not so easy. It takes a lot of money to make a meaningful dent in class sizes. And as much as opinion polls show parents putting high values on class sizes, the public never seems to vote like they poll. We have a supposedly very pro-public education Mayor in NYC, and class sizes have not been a high budget priority.
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California greatly restricted class size in many grades and subjects for years until Rheephorm came along and swept all the gains away with a giant broom. I used to have 20 in a class. Now I have 36. Today, California has 48th largest classes among states. We give the money to charters and testing instead.
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Should have been “the 48th largest classes”.
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Was that Michelle Rhee’s broom, by chance?
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Is there another broom besides Rhee’s?
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Class sizes in NYC DOE schools are driven by the UFT contract, not C4E, the legal obligations of which have been fully met by recalculating the formulas that determine how state aid is distributed. The UFT has not made a serious effort in decades at the bargaining table to reduce class size.
New York State’s and (especially) New York City’s working and middle class taxpayers have provided more than enough resources to meaningfully reduce class sizes–around $27,000 per student this school year, or $216,000 for every 8 students. The UFT just has other priorities—diverting attention away from the drag an underfunded pension system and retiree family health care has on the system, and minimizing the amount of time working teachers spend in the classroom. Again and again class size doesn’t seem to come up.
It also needs to be said that historically only a small plurality of surveyed NYC DOE public school parents say that reducing class size is their top priority. I think that most would be happy to trade off having a few extra kids in the class if they know the teacher is great. Or they’d rather have an extra kid or three in their kid’s core classroom if it means the school can keep its art teacher and librarian.
Hopefully this suit and others will get class size and funding advocates to conclusively answer two questions: how is it not possible to provide a sound education while spending $432,000 per 16 students; and if the concern is that spending inequities between ultra-low-needs “private-public” districts like Scarsdale and high-needs districts is responsible for bad outcomes, then why aren’t advocates proposing to do anything to get the low-needs districts to spend less?
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Tim,
Every parent survey I have seen placed class size as parents’ #1 priority. When the Bloomberg administration saw this, they removed “class size” from the listed choices. Bloomberg—like you—thinks class size doesn’t matter and that a “great teacher” (decided by the discredited use of student test scores) should have a class size of 48.
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I know people say this on surveys, Diane, but I have yet to see voters actually put pressure on any Mayor to meaningfully reduce class sizes. It’s a curious thing, given how the issue polls.
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The last two school years, “Stronger enrichment programs (e.g. after-school programs, clubs, teams)” has surpassed
“smaller class size” as the top parent request for school improvement, 24 to 21% in 2017 and 27 to 21% in 2016. In the past decade’s worth of survey responses, the highest level of support for reducing class size was 25%.
Click to access 2017CitywideAnalysisofSurveyResults.pdf
Of course it is entirely possible and probable that 100% of NYC DOE public school parents would like their child’s class to be smaller than it is. But when they are asked what they would fix if they could fix just one thing, the urgency to reduce class size looks a lot different.
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it’s true for the last two years, class size came out second at 21%, compared to more enrichment and after school programs.
In any event 21-25% is very high considering there are nine choices choices given. Compare higher quality teaching at 8% or safer schools at 5%.
Why should parents choose between these options?
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There are a lot of drivers on that bus. The UFT does the same balancing act the DOE does. On the one hand, class sizes are a key work condition and reducing them improves work conditions for teachers. On the other hand, the DOE budget is what it is, and money spent on reducing class sizes is money not spent on wages and benefits. On balance, just like with the Mayor’s office, the union has decided that reducing class sizes is not a high priority. But at least the contract acts as a brake on class size creep.
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After observing classes and watching teachers try to control classes of 30 or so teens it is ridiculous that there is no cap on class sizing. One person is not able to control that many people and their education suffers for it. Let the parents sit in and see the chaos and have them complain. Everyone listens to angry parents more then teachers.
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When I taught in Utah and Arizona, class sizes of 35+ were commonplace and I actually had some classes above 40 students.
The class size threshold above which “chaos” ensues is teacher dependent, but even teachers who are very good at classroom management would probably have a hard time keeping 40+ students on task.
I’d say that when you get above about 25 students, class size probably has greater impact on teaching and learning than any other single factor. That is especially true in science classes that have a lab component, a key element of good science teaching.
But the “Pearsonalized learning” cheerleaders want more students and fewer teachers, so as long as they are calling the shots, classes will get bigger, not smaller.
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That’s the first time I’ve seen “Pearsonalized learning” – plan to adopt that pronto!
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She is committed, tireless and certainly one of the most competent, well-informed activists on public education out there.
I thank her for her constancy and intelligence. And I ask her, please, please, keep up the good work!
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She can’t be stopped because she doesn’t do it for the money. Passion, dedication can’t be bought.
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We public school teachers are fortunate indeed to have her as an ally.
As always, Diane, I thank you as well for your indefatigable work on behalf of public schools, which is on behalf on some of the most vulnerable children and families in our nation.
Kudos to you both!
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Thanks, Leonie!!!! 🙂
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