Leonie Haimson knows the research on class size, and she explains here why Los Angeles teachers are right to strike for smaller classes. The higher the needs of the students, the more they need smaller classes. Yet in our society, only the very wealthiest students attend schools where class sizes may be as low as 12 or 15.
She writes:
Though some people make the claim that class size doesn’t really matter for a great teacher, it does. Research conclusively shows that small classes benefit all students, but especially disadvantaged students of color, who reap twice the benefit from small classes.
In the Hill newspaper, former U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan, who worked under former president Barack Obama, wrote an op-ed in opposition to the strike and in defense of the district’s position in which he made several questionable claims. The first was to support the district’s statement that LAUSD has smaller average classes than any other large California district but San Francisco. He wrote:
“On class size, Los Angeles Unified has an average of 26 students per class. Of the 10 largest school districts in California, only one has a smaller average class size than Los Angeles.”
There is conflicting data on this, but suffice it to say that information on the LAUSD website supports the union’s position that average class sizes are probably far larger than 26 in every grade but K-3, with averages of more than 30 students per class in grades 4 through 8, and more than 40 in high school classes.
She adds:
The argument currently between the union and the district is not about average class sizes but maximum class sizes — and more specifically, whether the district should adhere to any limits on class size at all.
There is a waiver in the current contract that allows the district to ignore any and all class size caps, as long as they claim financial necessity — and the administration has take advantage of this waiver every single year since the great recession in 2009. That year, the district issued massive teacher layoffs, which increased class sizes in nearly every school. Since then, the administration has continued to use this loophole in the contract to unilaterally decide to violate previously agreed-upon contractual caps, despite the fact that the district has experienced budget surpluses for many years in a row.
Haimson is founder of a group called Class Size Matters, and she knows the research better than anyone else I know.
This is one of those common occurrences when teachers know what their students need. And they know it better than the non-educator/equity investor who now is in charge of the Los Angeles schools or the basketball player who used to be Secretary of Education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I just read this on our local parents supporting teachers site. I fully know as a parent, class size in LAUSD is ridiculous. My son used to sit on an overturned waste basket in one of his classes in high school. My granddaughter had 38 in her 4th grade class. Teachers have ditched their own desks to make room for the kids. The most eye opening point for me was a concept I hadn’t even thought of…lower class size means more classroom space to the public schools, maybe impacting charter schools who get dibs on unused classroom space in California. This has to be a concern for the pro-charter majority on the LAUSD school board. It is another reason for the board to not do the right thing here.
I support the teachers 100%!!!
I appreciate the mental image of a conventional classroom space with desks or tables, whiteboard, and so on for many subjects, but let’s remember the varieties of instruction and intended learning–a high school orchestra rehersal room, a proper theater space for rehersals in high schools, a safe architectural space and class size for a chemistry lab, some multi-purpose rooms with flexible seating. Class size, curriculum, and architectural considerations go together, especially for new construction and major rehabs.
Hello Diane: Below is a related link to a recent article in AEON Newsletter–related because it talks about the neo-liberal market model and its history of encroachment on a model that has built-in safeguards for the professions, including educational professions. I like this article also because it gives a dialectical-based critique of the history of such movements–things change, and models of the past had their problems and issues also. CBK
“WHY A MARKET MODEL IS DESTROYING THE SAFEGUARDS OF THE PROFESSIONS”
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-a-market-model-is-destroying-the-safeguards-of-the-professions?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=fe87bfb538-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_07_05_45&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-fe87bfb538-70395829
About the above AEON article: to read to the end of the right margins, cut and paste the article into another document. CBK
Thanks for this interesting link. “Responsible professionalism imagines work-life as a series of relationships with individuals who are entrusted to you, along with the ethical standards and commitments you uphold as a member of a professional community. But marketisation threatens this collegiality, by introducing competitiveness among workers and undermining the trust that’s needed to do a good job.”
Marketplace values such as competition and increased productivity are being imposed on medicine and education, even though the business model does not work. Privatization is not superior, and fake test based “accountability,” does not improve education.
retired teacher Yes–the diverging point is two different criteria for what constitutes the good.
For teachers, the good is children becoming optimally educated in their developmental framework, e.g.,
kindergarten or first grade, etc. (generally); and by contexts and sequenced arenas of inquiry, aka: curricula, like math and literature, but also including setting the long-term conditions for comprehensive development of citizens in a democracy.
On the other hand, a market model has as its fundamental criterion: money-making for CEOs and for stockholders, and MAYBE a hat-tip to the question of what’s really worthwhile for students and teachers. If it doesn’t produce for the CEO and stockholders, however, it’s a failure.
Also, there are those like Betsy Devos and the Koch’s whose market-model is mixed with ideologies of every stripe; in these two cases, from what I can tell, it’s religious (Devos) and political (the Koch’s). But even in those cases, I doubt the market model is far down the list of motivations.
In my view, the most virulent form of this kind of thinking is that which, on the principle of the market model, seeks to destroy the competition on principle; and guess who the competition in this case is: PUBLIC EDUCATION who, also by definition, don’t “play on the same playing field” as business. Duh. CBK
Thank you for this article. I have long been thinking a lot of what it’s says, but wondered if I might have a point.
Two pieces I’ve read in the last two days.
Today, I read that conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson on Fox attacked the wealthiest, most power elite and agreed somewhat, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And even Ann Coulter was quoted as agreeing with Alexandria that the rich, Coulter Tweeted, “starting with the Koch Bros”. should be taxed 70-80 percent.
Was I hallucinating?
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/10/18171912/tucker-carlson-fox-news-populism-conservatism-trump-gop
And on Thursday, I read this from CNBC: “Inside Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time”
This piece reveals/explains why ‘Suck-er-Berg’ has become allied with Bill Gates. They think the same way. ‘Suck-er-Berg’ believes in Stack Ranking Systems to the extreme.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-performance-review-process-blamed.html
Recall that Fox News has become a tin horn for Trump. Socialism, be it Marxist or Nazi, is populist at its base. Progressive tax rates were seen by their purveyors as an antidote to socialism by FDR and like-minded thinkers.
Fox commentators are seeking to rive off populist votes from the democrats by coopting some of their talking points. Carleson, for example laid out the perfect case for supporting progressive democrats, then pulled an about face and said that, since no one in their right mind would support a democrat, Trump was the answer.
So Carlson is playing a false-logic word game to trick easy to fool people?
Lloyd Lofthouse No–you’re not hallucinating. It’s a stated method in the fascist playbook: to “mirror” your opponents’ arguments to glean as many one-dimensional people as you can from doing so. (Need I mention again Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism.”)
I don’t know where to post this but it is an informative email that just came from state Senator Niemeyer [R-IN]. I’m in no sense a mathematician but to declare that Indiana has a ‘higher percentage of its budget on education than all but two other states’ is misleading. If the state is red and has a tiny budget due to low taxes it would be easy to have a high percentage that barely scrapes the bottom of the needed barrel. Teachers are making less now that in 1999. The current governor has stated that there will be no money for increases in teachers’ salaries until 2021. This is a completely false ‘strong commitment to students, teachers and schools.” Niemeyer is selling a rotten product.
‘School safety improvements’ means no gun control laws.
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Support education
With more than half of the state’s General Fund devoted to K-12 education, Indiana spends a higher percentage of its budget on education than all but two other states. We will maintain that strong commitment to students, teachers and schools in the next budget.
Improve school safety
Protecting schools from violence takes vigilance on the part of every Hoosier. At the Statehouse, Senate Republicans will work on school-safety improvements based on the recommendations made to Gov. Holcomb last year, including allowing Secured School Safety Grants to be used for mental and behavioral health services.
As I have often commented here, I wasn’t a real teacher. When I had that title, I taught at exclusive independent schools for seven years and, with one or two exceptions, I taught four classes a year with no more than 15 students. I got to know each of my students, had the freedom to teach as I saw fit, and could even make exceptions and special rules for each of them. Reading what many real teachers have to go through in this blog, I could not agree more that small class sizes are essential conditions to have true teacher autonomy. Small class sizes should be an inalienable civil right for teachers and students.
GregB: I agree totally. When I worked at the International School of Kuala Lumpur, it was considered an overload to have 18 kids in a room. This was a very expensive American school that charged high fees for parents to have their kids attend. Classes for four year olds had 10 students with an aide.
The art department had more supplies than I’d ever seen before. The music department had an active band program. There was a complete supply of Orff Schulwerk xylophones. There were tech rooms with computers for the upper and lower elementary. Foreign languages were taught. The gym department had a swimming pool and lots of equipment for all types of activities. I was on the elementary campus but know that the higher grades had tremendous resources for all sorts of departments. They had a fantastic band program, drama, art and dance groups.
Why can’t American’s invest in their schools so that all kids can learn? I find it disgusting that we can spend trillions to fight wars and argue over building a worthless wall on our southern border but funding public schools is too expensive. We will pay a heavy price for not educating our young.
“Why can’t American’s invest in their schools so that all kids can learn?”
The answer may be found among corporate Democrats and the GOP electing Trump to the White House. With these people found in both parties, arrogance, ignorance and profits rule.
Wealth acquisition by the few and the power that money buys is more important than saving the planet and improving lifestyles around the globe.
Their thinking goes like this: “I don’t care what happens in the future. I only care about how much wealth and power ‘I’ have now.”
Trump the Toxic Tramp sums it up best with all his endless boasting and lies about how popular he is, what a great business man he is, and how he is a stable genius.
And about a third of the adult population, mostly old white men, supports this freak.
“There is a waiver in the current contract that allows the district to ignore any and all class size caps, ”
It’s is hard to believe that such a waiver exists in the richest state in the richest country.
in its very wording one might read “the district has little interest in actually educating students”
The most expensive private schools in my community advertise the class size: 8 students per teacher except for orchestra and some other performing and athletic programs.