Leonie Haimson has been fighting the battle to reduce class size for many years. She believes that the breaking point for teachers in Los Angeles was the outrageous numbers of children in many classes, in some cases approaching 50 students in a class. Haimson has the research to back up her contention. When students need extra attention, they will not get it if the class has large numbers.
She notes the popular refrain among reformers like Arne Duncan that one “great teacher” is more important than small classes, but there is no evidence that this is true, and it is very likely that the “great teacher” will no longer be great if there are 45 students in his or her class.
It is pathetic that not a single former or current Secretary of Education has supported the teachers in L.A. The public does, however. Polls in the city show overwhelming pubic support for their strike. For some reason, workaday folks understand what Secretaries of Education do not. The teachers are striking for their students’ learning conditions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They have no clue and don’t care. If they did, they’d be speaking out for lower class size, nurses at each school, paying teachers a living wage and providing after school programs for working families!
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It truly mystifies me how the LA school board has been getting away with not addressing class size for the past many years.
When I hear slimeball liars like Nick Melvoin saying “we have offered the UTLA teachers a committee that will talk about having a committee that will think about having a committee to discuss large class sizes” (my paraphrasing, obviously) and he isn’t immediately challenged by journalists with the question: why have you done nothing about large class sizes already – why did it take a strike to make you care?”, then I despair that these corrupt people will ever be called out on their lies. Which simply incentivizes them to continue to lie.
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Attempting to lower class size is nothing new in LAUSD.
Let me give you a little LAUSD history from five years ago:
Back in 2013, Steve Zimmer proposed and passed a motion to use the then-surplus to lower class size, giving this classic speech just before the vote:
It passed 5-2.
The two no votes came from Monica Garcia and Tamar Galatzan — who were elected with massive backing from privatizers and the charter school industry. Steve Zimmer, who was never militantly anti-charter, merely wanted the traditional public schools to have the same low class size — or a class size closer to that which charter school students enoyed — that Garcia and Galatzan’s backers have in the charter schools which they fund and/or operate.
(Again, those charteristas got Garcia and Galatzan elected.)
No dice. Carrying out there corporate masters’ marching orders, those two hypocrites Garcia and Galatzan dutifully voted against lowering class size (attempting to block it, much as Superintendent Beutner is acting now) … the only two who did in the 5-2 vote.
I mean, c’mon! Garcia & Galatzan’s thinking goes ..
If we lower public school class size to that of charters or closer to that of charters, more parents will choose to send their kids to public schools instead of charters, and we can’t have THAT now, can we? Furthermore, we need to have as many empty classrooms as possible to expand charters, and lower class sizes will mean those rooms will get used up by public schools instead of charters, and we can’t have THAT now, either. Can we??!!
This whole story is here:
http://laschoolreport.com/defiant-deasy-says-hell-continue-to-push-local-spending-plan/
and here:
http://laschoolreport.com/deasy-skirmish-with-board-members-a-long-time-coming/
In response to Steve’s speech and the motion passed ordering him to lower class size, then-Superintendent John Deasy then did what Garcia and Galatzan could not do with their minority vote.
He simply ignored his legal and constitutional obligations — which he affirmed when he was sworn in as Superintendant — and simply refused to lower the class size, defying the Board whose wishes he’s legally mandated to carry out.
To taunt the pro-lower-class-size folks, Deasy then made a derisive public statement clarifying why he would NOT carry out that motion lower class size.
On top of that, he said he’s going to push Board Member Tamar Galatzan’s motion to spend the money elsewhere, and this was AFTER that motion of Galantzan’s motion was defeated.
Got that so far, folks?
The Board voted 5-2 to spend money lowering class size. In response, Deasy — who works under the Board’s direction and is under legal obligation, that have been affirmed in court cases, MUST carry out the motions passed — ignore what the courts/law says and said, “Nope, I ain’t doin’ that.”
The actual quote was Deasy derisively calling the Zimmer motion “a directive to hire every human being on the West Coast” — in effect, using a strawman argument, characterizing a motion to hire a few thousand teachers the equivalent of hiring 40 million citizens of California … or something like that.
The Board voted 5-2 NOT to spend money on Galatzan’s motion. In response, Deasy — who works under the Board’s direction, and under legal obligation that has been affirmed in court cases that he MUST NOT carry out the motions that were NOT passed — said:
“Ya know what? I really don’t care what the Board said, or what the courts/law says about the Galatzan motion. I’m doing it anyway.”
In so many words, Deasy unambiguously said, “I’m not going to lower class size as directed, and I’m spending that money elsewhere, even though I was directed not to do THAT, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me.”
The actual quote was:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
L.A. SCHOOL REPORT:
“The Board voted down the directive to have me come and do it,” said Deasy, referring to Galatzan’s local spending resolution. “[But] they can’t stop me from doing it; we’re doing it anyway. If they had voted to prevent me from doing it… well, they didn’t think of that.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Read about all that here:
http://laschoolreport.com/defiant-deasy-says-hell-continue-to-push-local-spending-plan/
and here:
http://laschoolreport.com/deasy-skirmish-with-board-members-a-long-time-coming/
Incredulous and livid, the leaders of UTLA and LAUSD’s administrators’ union, AALA, both went public with their outrage over all this.
In so many words, the leaders of UTLA & AALA replied:
What’s the point of having a democratically elected school board, with the public voting to lower class size, via their election of the 5-2 pro-loweing-class-size majority, if the Superintendent Deasy — who is apparently beholden to the billionaires who had bankrolled a previous majority that voted in and appointed Deasy — can just say, “F— you! F— the voters! F— my legal obligations! F— lowering class size! I’m going to do whatever I (or rather, the billionaires) wanna do anyway.”?
Well, UTLA and AALA leaders put it more eloquently than that in an blistering open letter to the entire 7-member LAUSD board:
http://laschoolreport.com/deasy-skirmish-with-board-members-a-long-time-coming/
Here’s a pdf of that letter:
Click to access UTLA-AALA-Letter-to-Board-President-Vladovic.pdf
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
UTLA & AALA Presidents’s letter to the LAUSD Board:
“We wish to raise a concern about the recent statements by Superintendent Deasy related to his obligation abide by the policy positions and directives (i.e. including lowering class size) of the Board of Education …
(recap of Deasy’s public statements defying the order to lower class size)
“The Superintendent is an employee of the District, and is legally required to operate ‘under the control of the Board.’ (including carrying ot the Board’s directive to lower class size) The California courts have recognized that a superintendent does not ‘exercise independent powers.’ ” (Main VS. Claremont Unified School District . 161 CalApp 2d189, 204) … *we do expect that the Superintendent will, at all times, discharge his duties in a manner that is consistent with his role as the District’s role as the chief executive officer.
“California law clearly places both the power and responsibility for ultimate leadership of the District in the hands of its elected governing board. Regardless of Mr. Deasy’s motives or intentions, no district and no community is served when this democratic authority is undermined.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
As the above article indicates, Deasy simply refused comment on the letter about his defiance, and LAUSD class size has stayed the same right up last week’s strike.
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Though the class size caps are a bit smaller in NYC (25 in K, 32 in grades 1-5, 33 in MS and 34 in HS) they are still too large and haven’t been lowered in 50 years. Our schools aren’t doing so well either.
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There’s been zero interest in NYC for lowering class sizes. Some mayors (e.g. Bloomberg) have been overtly opposed to it, others (e.g. De Blasio) have paid lip service to it, but lower class sizes has simply has not been a priority of any Mayor.
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This is true, but I have friends and relatives in Los Angeles and I was shocked when they explained that their kids had class sizes of over 40 and sometimes closer to 50. I could not believe that the parents (and teachers) hadn’t walked out demanding something be done years ago.
It made the class sizes in NYC public schools seem reasonable even if they aren’t reasonable.
My own position on class size is that a selective school that requires extremely high academic proficiency to enter can be high but neighborhood elementary schools and all middle and high schools that can’t select the most well-behaved high achieving students should have hugely reduced class sizes. I don’t expect that simply cutting class size in half with a school with the most disadvantaged at-risk kids is going to turn them into high performing scholars. And it doesn’t matter if it does. What matters is if teachers have the resources and support to make these kids’ lives better for the time they spend in school.
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Bloomberg stated publicly that he preferred a “great teacher” with a class size of 48 rather than two average teachers with classes of 24 each.
It never occurred to him that the “great teacher” would no longer be great with 48 kids in his or her class and would probably quit.
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Minor correction NYCpsp: “It made the class sizes in NYC public schools seem reasonable. . . AND they aren’t reasonable.”
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And Diane, that shows just how completely out of touch Bloomberg is/was with the teaching and learning process. Pathetic.
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De Blasio spent hundreds of millions on Renewal schools—professional development and consultants—but not class size reduction.
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Sad. I wonder how much of that money eventually made its way back into De Blasio’s pockets?
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If Bloomberg ever decides to run for President, I hope people show up to protest that he had the chutzpah to say that classes of 48 were fine while sending his own daughters to private schools with classes that were probably fewer than 15 students. Presumably those privates had excellent teachers and yet Bloomberg no doubt subsidized them so that they could refuse to teach more students when according to Bloomberg himself, those privates didn’t need his money since they could have had another 50 students in every grade. It’s clear that Bloomberg knew that large class sizes were bad for the most privileged kids given everything since birth but not a problem for the most severely disadvantaged children because any good teacher would be easily able to handle it. Bloomberg should be constantly called out on such a blatant lie in which he happily subsidized for his own daughters what he insisted no poor kid deserved.
Duane — I agree that the class sizes now in NYC are not reasonable. I do have one caveat. If there is limited money, I don’t have a problem with large class sizes in extremely selective public schools like Stuy, where teachers have only the most motivated students already overachieving academically. That is, while I prefer small class size for all students, I know that public schools that take all students are the ones who need small class sizes the most, and the public schools that have primarily at-risk students who are academically struggling should have the smallest class sizes of all.
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Duane,
Although the right wing would like to convince Americans that de Blasio is a crook, as a NYC resident I have seen no sign that he has ever used public funds to line his pocket. I certainly want to know why renewal funds weren’t used to lower class sizes in renewal schools, but I suspect the answer is not because de Blasio did something corrupt. I seem to recall once reading that the DOE was having a terrible time getting teachers to teach in renewal schools, but I would like to read an unbiased, comprehensive report with both sides having their say. I have certainly seen that it is very hard to change a school culture, and as much as I understand that there is nothing more frustrating for an experienced teacher than someone without historical knowledge coming in from outside who thinks they know best, I also know that there are teachers who insist that should be able to do exactly what they have always done because they are being asked to make changes that require more work. It makes for a bad situation all around and sometimes 75% of the teachers are interested in trying new things but a few veteran teachers who don’t can be very loud and the rest of them don’t want to rock the boat. The Mayor may have run the renewal program the wrong way, but some of it was because he did not demonize the teachers in the school and simply clean house and start fresh, but thought he could make changes without that kind of wholesale disruption of the staff. I’m sure there could have been a better way but hindsight is 20/20 and I don’t believe the intentions were anything but to help improve those schools.
de Blasio has certainly made mistakes and he is, like all politicians, willing to give donors access that some guy off the street isn’t likely to get. But there was a concerted propaganda effort against him that began his first month in office when he dared to put a halt to a very tiny number of charter schools that Mayor Bloomberg’s DOE had decided to reward (with taxpayer dollars) as they were walking out the door. It was rather shocking that Bloomberg got away with that, thanks to billionaires and their mega dollars and the PR hacks who did their bidding. So when you read the innuendos about how corrupt he is, remember some of things he did that made him the object of this right wing hatred:
Block charter school expansion and publicly state that he would not continue Bloomberg’s unilateral policy of taking public school space away from the students in public school and allow charters to move in, free of charge, entirely subsidized by those public school students whose space they were stealing.
Willingness to speak out and say “Stop and Frisk is wrong and the NYC police will not continue it” which naysayers insisted would lead to high crime and sky high murder rates. (It did not). That, along with the fact that Mayor de Blasio dared to stand up to the police when improper police tactics killed African-Americans instead of insisting the police could do no wrong, made him a permanent enemy of the NYPD despite the fact that he is made every effort to support GOOD police and not demonize all of them just because he was willing to call out the ones who were bad.
Campaign for One New York. It is bits and pieces that people hear about this that are supposed to be some of the prime evidence of his corruption. I wish progressives would pay more attention because this entire campaign was de Blasio’s attempt to elect PROGRESSIVE Democrats to Albany, where a handful of right wing Democrats were helping Cuomo to block all progressive legislation — especially any legislation that would help NYC be more progressive. Here is the “crime” — de Blasio raised money for this and people with a lot of money thought it would be good for business if they donated. And de Blasio – in exchange for this gave those people “meetings”. That’s about it. “Meetings”. Compared to the corruption that went on under both Giuliani and Bloomberg, where tons of city dollars went to their cronies, the donors to de Blasio’s campaign to elect progressive politicians to Albany to make NY State and NYC more progressive got pretty much nothing. Which is why, as much as they tried, the prosecutors couldn’t really find that any donor benefited (unless just getting to have a meeting is a benefit), but of course, with progressive Democrats even the appearance of impropriety is a far worse crime than Republicans actually giving away the store to their donors.
Universal pre-k (which charters fought because it was “too expensive” and they wanted money to go to charters instead) and the lowering of the speed limit to save lives.
de Blasio’s pitch perfect response to the Ebola scare when a NYC doctor back from helping care for patients in Guinea was diagnosed with Ebola. While Governors Cuomo and Christie were trying to up one another to look “strong” by quarantining a nurse who showed no sign of illness and scaring the public, Mayor de Blasio and his wife spent an entire day visiting EVERY place the doctor had gone the previous day — the restaurant, the bowling alley, etc. — to show by example that they weren’t hives of Ebola germs ready to infect passers by. It was one of the most impressive actions of REAL leadership — taken at a time when there was almost no political mileage to be had from it and a huge amount of risk — by a politician who did it because it was the right thing to do.
Finally, I want to make it clear that I know that the Mayor is far from perfect. He has made big mistakes and small mistakes. He sometimes acts like a politician and puts the interests of groups with more power — like real estate or Amazon — over the interests of those with less power. But – in my opinion — he does this far less than most Mayors and Governors who actually have to balance competing interests. For example, de Blasio is far better than Jerry Brown in taking the side of the voiceless over those in power. But it is de Blasio who is perceived as corrupt while Brown just makes decisions that are sometimes wrong. That’s the kind of propaganda progressives face.
I would rather have a Mayor who runs late, who can sound arrogant, who spends his mornings at his Brooklyn Y working out, who makes mistakes and sometimes is on the wrong side but for the vast majority of the time is on the right side, than I would have a Jerry Brown or pretty much any other Mayor or Governor I have seen. It’s easy to be a Congressman or Senator because you don’t actually have to run anything. Governing is hard. The Mayor is not perfect. He takes positions that are too political. But neither have I seen signs that he is corrupt and I believe he is in politics for the right reason — to promote the progressive agenda. Not as a power grab for himself, but because he believes in the progressive agenda and that is what he has always believed for many decades. I suspect that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would say the same thing about him. The thing I like best about Ocasio-Cortez is that she isn’t fooled by the right wing propaganda designed to demonize any politician who is a danger to them. de Blasio got demonized from his first weeks in office because he was a danger to the privatization efforts directed at the NYC public school system. And I believe if any other Democrat had been in office, NYC would look a lot more like LA right now, with public school class sizes of 40 and charters picking off the 30% or 35% of students who they want to teach.
(apologies for the long post)
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NYC parent – Have you ever taught a large class ? …in a low income area … with a few kids in it that should really be in special day or who were not retained or have big time emotional issues ?
Yes, when I was a kid, we did all sit there quietly and listen and did our talking at recess … not today.
My niece who is also a teacher says…Would you drop your child off at a birthday party with 32 kids there and just one mom was watching the whole group ?
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“My niece who is also a teacher says…Would you drop your child off at a birthday party with 32 kids there and just one mom was watching the whole group ?” Love it! I defy anyone to claim it wouldn’t bother them. I wonder what a “great children’s birthday party giver” looks like since that is obviously what you need, right?
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Caligirl and speduktr,
It is clear my far too wordy writing gets an F because all my points were lost.
I am a big fan of small class sizes. I think it is a crime that public school teachers are expected to teach disadvantaged students in large class sizes while the most privileged children get very small class sizes in privates. If anything it should be the opposite.
Maybe what got you confused is that I said that if I had to choose, I would keep large class sizes in specialized public high schools and the academically selective middle schools that serve a highly curated student population of academically advanced students who are extremely motivated to learn. And I would prioritize small class sizes in the public schools that teach all students with a range of abilities and especially in the public schools that teach the most disadvantaged academically struggling students.
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speduktr, I’m adding your niece’s comment to my file of plagiarize-able quotes. Brilliant for its brevity and imagery.
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NYCPSP, I am curious about this: “a selective school that requires extremely high academic proficiency can be high.” Why is less 1-1 w/teacher, fewer ops to speak in a discussion, fewer meaty assnts due to less teacher-correcting time OK just for the gifted?
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bethree5,
I am not sure if we disagree about anything. It is always preferable to have a smaller class size for all students. But I was referring to highly selective schools that are exclusively for students who are strong academically and highly motivated to succeed (not “gifted” per se although there may very well be gifted students there).
In NYC, those schools often have class sizes of 34. It isn’t ideal, but students are able to learn and even discuss things in classes of 34 in those types of very selective schools. I absolutely agree with you that it is BETTER for those students to be in classes of 20 or 23 instead of classes of 34. It is better for all students to have smaller class sizes.
But I think it is important to acknowledge that schools that are able to limit themselves to highly motivated learners can be okay — not ideal but okay — with larger class sizes. While small class sizes in schools where there is a far more diverse set of abilities or a high concentration of struggling students are not just better but necessary.
I’m not a teacher so perhaps one can chime in, but I always assumed it was possible (while not ideal) to teach an AP class of 34 highly motivated academically advanced students, but teaching a class of 25 students with a range of motivation and academic strengths, with a majority of those students at risk and struggling to learn while a few others are at or above grade level presents a much tougher challenge. Even though the second scenario has a smaller class size, it still isn’t small enough to address the difficulties that come with a class of students that isn’t cherry picked for their academic motivation and ability.
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I would love you to come out to Utah sometime, Leonie. I have a student load of 282 students (junior high social studies) and I have colleagues that have class loads over 300 students. Many of our classes are over 40 students per class, and we don’t have the room to truly put everyone. California and Utah usually battle it out for largest class sizes in the nation. There are NO class size regulations in Utah at all, and we spend about $6700 per student per year, the lowest in the country.
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282 students? That’s nuts! I just did an estimate and I probably taught no more than 420 students (a handful of them twice) in seven years. Also, reading Diane’s comments above about Bloomberg, does anyone know where he attended K-12? I would guess that he never had a class with more than a dozen students.
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Bloomberg grew up and went to public school in the Boston suburbs. Med-fahd, I mean Medford, Mass.
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I stand corrected. Thanks, FLERP! In that case, he should know better.
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Yep, GregB, 282. Not a type-o. The only thing good about the ridiculous sizes is to see fellow teachers nearly faint when I got to national conferences and things. The rest of it is awful. And Utah does almost complete inclusion of students with disabilities.
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Bloomberg may have attended public schools, but I believe he sent his daughters to private schools with very small class sizes.
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Absolutely, positively, true.
Teaching (and learning) have become much more complicated in recent years. Forget decades. In just five years there’s been a quantum jump in what’s happening in my classroom. Think of all the people (young, old, whoever!) carrying around smart phones nowadays. Only old farts like Arne Duncan would go around defending the crappy, bogus status quo of packing classrooms to the gills. Duncan is not just wrong, he’s existentially uncool. (And, people who read this blog know I am no mindless cheerleader for technology, that’s for sure.)
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“Teaching and learning have become much more complicated”?
“a quantum jump in what’s happening in my classroom”?
Yes a seismic shift in classroom dynamics over the last five years is as real as it is challenging. Unfortunately teachers seem very hesitant to describe the specifics. The “quantum leap” that John writes about are disturbing levels of indifference to instruction, social distraction and teen drama; students devoid of outside interests (beyond their phones and video games), and the almost complete disappearance of curiosity ( a primary driver of learning).
John,
Please correct if I’m wrong and be specific if you can.
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Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, Rage. My wife was stuck on a snowy back road, around the corner from here. And, as soon as we got her car freed up and she walked in the door, the power went out. It just came on a few minutes ago. Life in Upstate New York during the winter.
To answer your question, um…yeah. Students’ ability to focus sure has changed. But so has mine and everyone else I know who is looking at these screens all day. I guess the difference is that I spent more than half my life without the internet, a cellphone and a computer in my house. Some of the kids I teach have been immersed in this technology from the earliest possible age.
My 12th graders (who mostly did not have smart phones until they were outside elementary school) were telling me the other day they notice a difference in the younger kids. But, of course, seniors always complain to a certain extent about the junior high students.
I teach all 12th graders except for one 8th grade section of U.S. History. Those 8th graders this year are absolutely wonderful….one of the best groups I’ve ever spent time with in a classroom. Humane, thoughtful, polite and willing to help me all the time. But I do see how their lives are much more complicated than mine was at their age….and I think those complications sometimes hurt them. Yeah, their lives are much more diverse and exciting and just plain colorful. (Converse sneakers came in just black and white when I was their age.) But at what price?
One usually very happy girl was suddenly in the middle of a some sort of online problem this past week and tears were literally falling out of her eyes (This was after school, when a group of junior high kids visit in my room.) The issue -whatever it was- emerged so quickly, seemingly out of nowhere, that it kind of shocked me. Like a storm suddenly appearing on a sunny day. There’s this constant, unseen digital ether that is swirling around and inside of us all day long. And, because I’m a bit of an old timer at this point, I don’t think I even perceive the half of it.
I was stretched out on the couch just now waiting for the power to come back on. I was catching up on one of my unread New Yorkers. I have this back up, propane heater that makes the room cozy. It was actually very relaxing, being in this 150 year old house the way it was for so many decades. (It didn’t have any power until 1970.) . But I was still laying there, waiting, waiting, waiting for the electricity to kick back in. To get back online.
I think I’d make a pretty crummy Thoreau living out by a pond. But, then again, wasn’t Thoreau not that good at it, either?
Bottom line: the kids don’t disappoint me as much as so many of the adults. Kids after all are…. kids. And, I was a messed up kid once upon a time.
But what’s the excuse for all these whacked out adults?
How in God’s name did we end up with a “President Trump” and that 30% of the nation’s so-called adults who enable this clown? All our children deserve much better.
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As a science teacher, the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of curiosity and very limited interest in, what used to be, very interesting topics for youngsters. Even the serious students seem much more concerned about grades and much less concerned about learning. Screen time is just a part of it, but I lay a huge amount of the blame on the last two decades of testing and the implicit message that its all about scores. As far as the “whacked out adults” go, remember that they are/will be raising the next generation.
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Dear John,
I think parents and school admin/ teachers need to acknowledge the issues and take a stronger hand here.
Your depiction of the kid suddenly melting in tears during an after-school gathering reminded me of the pernicious “slam-books” passed surreptitiously lap-to-lap in early-’60’s jrhi classes, where you tried to keep equilibrium having just learned a “friend” called you a jerk for all to see. It took a while but slam-books were banned, it was enforced, & they faded away.
The current sit is far more widespread & invasive, but we are still the adults in the room: it must be addressed & countered. I’ve edited out details of how my fam & friends successfully shepherded our now-millennial kids thro the invasion of the digital body-snatchers (which started w/hand-held vidgames when they were ’90’s toddlers), because it all boils down to recognizing the invasion upon arrival, & countering it doggedly w/ family values & policy decisions.
That we did so when it mattered (ages 3-18) carved out time for our kids to develop their own individual hands-on pursuits, & learn to view the digital world as a tool to use as needed. Today, they use their smartphones to manage multiple PT jobs, band gigs & social life– but would no more interrupt our conversation w/screen-scanning/texting than fart in church.
The invasion is commercial & virtually unregulated, & disguises itself via “everybody’s-doing-it” faux-normalization [via virtually-instant, vast market penetration, always miles ahead of regulation]. It can only be met by an equal & opposite force: this is our family [/ school/ society]; this is how we act & why, & here’s how we’re going to eliminate this invasion from our space.
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Small class sizes* with the appropriate number of certified personnel should be the goal of every teacher, parent, administrator and school board member. Anything less is just a BS distraction that wastes time, effort and monies.
*K-5-15 student max, 2 properly certified adults and a SpEd teacher as needed. 6-12-20 student max (except certain classes like band, choir, etc. . ., 2 properly certified adults and a SpEd teacher as needed.
This country has more than enough wealth to accomplish those simple REAL reforms.
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I would pay serious money just to have classes of 20, Duane–never mind the other certified adults. I could actually get some real teaching done with classes that size.
Oh, to dream…
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I’ve taught French with thirty-five in a class and ESL with about seventeen. The smaller classes I had with ESL students made a world of difference as these students required so much attention. I was better able to help these ELLs make up for all their educational gaps with the smaller classes. They got a lot of individual attention . A lot more time is wasted in transitions with larger groups.
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I have had ELL kids who speak no English, and kids with all varieties of special needs, in these classes of 40. It breaks my hear, because I know that I am barely helping those kids who so need help, and there is nothing I can do about it in classes of 40. I do my best, but I know I’m failing.
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When I started teaching in the mid 90s we were appalled by having more than 20 in a class (I tought Spanish). Over the years those class sizes increased to 30, even 35. I finally told the admin that 30 was the absolute limit.
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Don’t forget to blame former California Governor Ronald Reagan along with the billionaire funded school board and its Superintendent Austin Beutner. Here’s a little history of public school funding in California (in 1997 I did a classroom observation in San Diego Unified — over 40 4th graders). https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/19/california-school-funding-los-angeles-strike-what-went-wrong
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I believe that Jerry Brown should get a lot of the blame. Like Andrew Cuomo, he embraced the privatization of public schools. Even Ronald Reagan didn’t go that far (not that he probably wouldn’t have liked to).
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Class size matters very much, and its importance increases in poor communities. Grading is a necessary activity for teachers and with so many papers to mark teachers are unable to do a proper job of grading. It is even worse when the teacher has to return to class and provide feedback to students. The result is that learning is minimized and students suffer severely. Teachers have been asked to – in an effort to avoid the need for reducing class size – to get students to pass tests. Their performance on these tests are used to lull parents into a feeling of contentment on their children’s performance.
Performance on tests are not a true indication of the student’s state of affairs. Many of the students fail when in college.
But the truth is coming out and in fact the problem of overloaded classes affects more cities than Los Angeles. We need a national discussion which will find solutions to this problem, and give all our children a fighting chance at a good life. They deserve much more.
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During the recession we made a reasonable concession: that the District could insert language into the contract that allowed them to increase class sizes if it declares a “fiscal emergency”. Of course, nobody thought that the DIstrict would proceed to declare fiscal emergencies for the next ten years.
What they have been doing over the last ten years is to set up ludicrous budgets that project continuous deficit spending. At the end of each year all we get an “oops”. That’s it!
WHy has this persisted? Because our efforts over that time have gone toward:
Fixing California’s poliical landscape (accomplished 2008-2010)
Fighting Villaraigosa’s attempt to wrest control of the District
Fighting several very expensive Board elections
FIghing over charter schools
Fighting agaisnt Marshall Tuck
Internal bickering as two factions within the union faced off
Fighting several more very expensive Board elections
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When you see the lines of the fourth and fifth grades at my school of 32 children walking to lunch – it always gives me pause…the line is so long !
One time I subbed at a school and the fifth grade class was in a bungalow instead of a regular classroom and it was not a regular size bungalow…It was smaller and the students were just wall to wall with desks right up to the side walls – the students were pretty good, except one real defiant girl. I left after that day with this yucky sad feeling. How do these kids sit in there all day, wall to wall desks, hardly any room to move?Whenever I think back to that day in that room, I felt like, well, who knows about this or who cares?
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It’s training for future office jobs. All in their cubicle space.
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That’s quite a different thing.
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Warehousing 25, 30, or more high needs students in a classroom makes proper teaching and learning virtually impossible. Given a combination of students who create the “class from hell” chemistry, these classes become unteachable, even if an experienced, HQ teacher is in charge.
The real negative impact of having enrollments that exceed 100 – 200+ is the way in which teachers are forced to dilute the quality of their programs. When TOW collects her 282 tests or 282 papers, she (?) is looking at 12 to 20+ hours of grading if she spends just 3, 4 0r 5 minutes per. The typical marking period might include 10 or more graded requirements meaning 120 to 200+ hours of grading, on top of all the other responsibilities. The only recourse for teachers in such untenable situations is to speed up grading by simplifying the requirements.
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This is such simple math, one knows the policy-makers can do it too. So any talk trying to paint it otherwise reveals itself: education is not what they’re talking about.
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Here is NPR’s take on the strike. Too bad they don’t have a comment section. I’d blast them.
…………………………………..
Striking teachers in L.A. are focused on one demand: shrinking the district’s high class sizes. But is that the best use of money?
It’s a logical idea that’s popular with parents: Put fewer kids in classes, and they each get more teacher attention. But it’s also an expensive improvement, requiring a lot of hiring. Research has shown definitively that smaller class sizes lead to better outcomes, which few alternatives can claim. But administrators wonder:
Would achievable goals, like giving more schools their own nurse and librarian, be better than spending $130 million to shrink classes by a couple of students?…Still, smaller class sizes means hiring more teachers, which is costly.
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This is why, in NYC at least, class sizes will never be meaningfully (if at all) reduced. Everybody (except Michael Bloomberg) says lowering class size is important. A large portion say it’s the most important thing of all. But every time school spending goes up (which is every year), a whole bunch of other things scurry to the front of the line.
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The premise of the NPR piece is everything that is wrong with America.
Public schools should have small class sizes AND nurses.
We have become a country where the rich have convinced the middle class and poor that they need to choose which necessities to have and which to forego.
“I’m sorry, we can either give you chemotherapy for your cancer, or give your child his asthma medication. We can either give you clean water or make sure your bridges don’t collapse.”
Americans need to stop playing those games of the rich in which everyone else must choose between necessities so that they can accumulate more riches than they and their families could spend in a thousand years.
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I copy/pasted the article and sent it to a retired teacher. Here was my full comment.
……
How about deciding that education is the most important thing that has to be done correctly. This is a STUPID article. Teachers can’t do a good job with 35-45 kids in a room. Shrinking by one or two isn’t enough. Getting a nurse for each school and a librarian who can order books is essential. Fund the arts. Many schools need a lot of social workers because the kids have severe problems from being poor. Kids need medical care and food. What is wrong with this country to bash teachers because they want better for their students? GRRRRR. Too bad NPR doesn’t have a comment section. I’d rant.
These teachers are focusing on caping the number charters and vouchers that are taking away funding from public schools. Where is the outrage?
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Can’t find article. Link?
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NPR doesn’t send a link. They send a thing which doesn’t copy/paste. Maybe someone else knows how to get a link but I haven’t seen it.
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I just had NPR send me an article. I copy/pasted it and got this, minus the colored background. There is no link.
________@gmail.com has sent you the following story: Poll: Trump Approval Down, Slips With Base
NPR
Carol Ring thought you would be interested in this story
Poll: Trump Approval Down, Slips With Base
During the longest shutdown in history, key parts of Trump’s base — from suburban men to white evangelicals to white men without a college degree — have slipped in their support for the president.
Read this story
This email was sent by: NPR,1111 N. Capitol St. NE Washington, DC, 20002, United States. This message was sent to __________@gmail.com.
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Opps. I just checked and there is an embed. Sorry, I’ve never see it before. In the future I’ll look for the embed.
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I got this audio with the embed.
Striking teachers in L.A. are focused on one demand: shrinking the district’s high class sizes. But is that the best use of money?
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/685116971/686330338
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Notice in that NPR story that he doesn’t look at the research or rationale for reducing class size
Just “it costs too much.”
Using a successful approach costs less than trying a dozen that don’t make a difference
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It really bothers me that ‘it costs too much’ is being said when educating children is the most important thing that this country can do. I’m tired of the trillions spent on wars that never end and the hidden amounts that go into spying on everyone. There is always money for certain pet projects but NOT for education. There was money to give big tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations even though ‘trickle down’ has been proven to never work.
Can you imagine Trump pulling a governmental shutdown to fund education?
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“It is pathetic that not a single former or current Secretary of Education has supported the teachers in L.A. ”
Public schools should give up on help or support from the federal government. Work on maintaining current levels of federal funding, but other than that it’s a lost cause.
They are anti-public schools. They have made this abundantly clear the last twenty years, and it’s an echo chamber. You couldn’t break it down with a pickax and a crowbar. It’s a pipeline- they all arrive there completely marinated in ed reform ideology. DeVos isn’t a one-off- she’s the inexorable end result of a national government that doesn’t value public schools.
Focus on state and local government. The feds are either irrelevant or actively harmful to existing public schools. Take the funding if you can get it – it’s a smaller and smaller share of total funding anyway- but leave the rest. They’re not your allies. They add zero value to your schools and they bring HUGE downside.
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Large class sizes are quite manageable IF students are fully cooperative, attend school daily, and are academically prepared (grade level readiness). When one or more of these requisites is removed, things go south pretty quickly. If a BOE refuses to reduce class sizes through funding AND contract language they must provide an alternate learning program so that the chronically disruptive can be removed from the mainstream.
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With 40 students, even compliant classes are tricky. There’s always something bubbling under the surface with junior high kids.
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Just posted below — I agree that 40 are not ideal, nor is 30. It’s not good for students or teachers. It certainly doesn’t allow a teacher to address emotional issues. I just think it is important to clarify that there is a big difference between teaching 40 above average highly compliant students and 30 or even 25 severely at-risk struggling students. And the charter movement has had a concerted propaganda effort to convince the public that there is no difference and as long as they demonstrate that they can get results with large class sizes, public schools teaching the most at-risk disadvantaged students should be grateful if they have “only” 28 students per class.
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Forty middle schoolers per class is criminal. Even if cooperative, the time required for grading 280 papers or tests is an absurd burden.
The taxpayers of Utah are getting what they pay for: warehousing and crowd control. I hope no one asks you to improve test scores.
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Thanks for that clarification, Rage. I was thinking, large classes (i.e., 30-40) given all those caveats may be “quite manageable” behavior-wise, but to do what with? Lecture-style + limited-participation Q&A discussion, hw w/ minimal teacher feedback, few full-fledged written assnts. Fine for classes in selective 4-yr college & maybe gifted honors hisch groups. If the bureaubrats cared about ed quality, they’d dub this “not scaleable.”
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“Large class sizes are quite manageable IF students are fully cooperative, attend school daily, and are academically prepared…”
I agree and it is one of the reasons I despise charter CEOs like Eva Moskowitz who insist that everything you wrote is an absolute lie and instead uses the millions the right wing billionaires give her to convince as many politicians as possible that huge class sizes are absolutely unnecessary.
The rest of us paying attention understand that charters who claim class size doesn’t matter are exactly the same ones who limit themselves to the most cooperative and academically successful students and ruthlessly — and I mean RUTHLESSLY — shed every student who does not meet that criteria.
And then they lie about it and claim that the children that they ruthlessly humiliated and punished and targeted so that they felt as worthless as the charter CEO taught her teachers to believe that they are — that those children only left because their stupid, stupid parents “chose” to pull their child from the best school in the state because those stupid, stupid parents just don’t care about education.
Shameful. The fact that these people get any taxpayer money to do that to children is truly one of the great crimes of the 21st century.
And the lies that charter leaders like Eva Moskowitz have spent every effort to promote — that large class size is perfectly fine no matter how underprivileged the group of students are — have hurt every single student in a public school in America. When you wonder why so many politicians have done nothing to lower class size, remember that Eva Moskowitz did everything in her power to convince them that large class sizes were perfectly fine.
It is certainly not surprising that Mayor Bloomberg — the guy who gave Eva Moskowitz the keys to the DOE and made sure her charters were given free space that he took from the public school students’ budgets — is the same guy that insists that classes of 48 kids are fine as long as those kids h ave a “good teacher”.
after all, Bloomberg’s very favorite charter leader Eva Moskowitz told him it was so. And why wouldn’t he believe the woman who told us all that Betsy DeVos was a fantastic choice who would be great for all students? If you can’t believe the woman who told us all that Betsy DeVos must be confirmed for the good of children everywhere, then you can’t believe the guy who adores her, Trump. And it is truly astonishing how similar Moskowitz and Trump are when it comes to blatantly lying to get what they want for themselves.
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^^sorry, a typo in the second paragraph that ruins my point!
It should read:
“I agree and it is one of the reasons I despise charter CEOs like Eva Moskowitz who insist that everything you wrote is an absolute lie and instead uses the millions the right wing billionaires give her to convince as many politicians as possible that SMALL [not “huge”] class sizes are absolutely unnecessary.”
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The readers of this blog would rather die than to admit this reality: massive immigration of non-English speaking, poorly educated adults and their children is a major reason for overcrowding of classrooms in many areas of the country, and is the primary reason for huge class sizes in Los Angeles. The new California Governor recently announced a pro-open borders policy: everyone is welcome to come in and take advantage of public services. Democratic politicians pre-2008 publicly stated that there were major downsides to massive immigration of low-skilled, minimally educated people, but political correctness now requires them to claim that unlimited immigration is a net benefit to America. Those of us in the reality based world know that that claim is mathematically/economically impossible.
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Kim,
Somehow NYC is able to have much smaller class sizes (still too large) while teaching many, many immigrants. In fact, children of immigrants are more often than not some of the top performing students in K-12 and universities. Those “immigrants” you hate include scientists and researchers whose discoveries probably saved the lives of a child who is close to you.
Given that California ranks among the lowest of any state in supporting public education, it’s odd that you would insist — without one bit of evidence — that it is immigration.
I also find it odd that you believe that if America is more like Russia and we become a place that hardworking and honest people want to leave because it is such a thoroughly unpleasant country to live in, that America would be better. Although I’m sure Putin would love turning America into as nasty a country to live in as his beloved Russia.
Don’t you agree with me about Russia? Or are you not allowed to say anything negative about that country?
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My immigrant students are FAR easier to teach in many ways than my native-born students. Immigrant students work extremely hard and try to wring every bit they can out of their educations. Other native born students couldn’t care less about their educations.
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In other words, I would far prefer many of my immigrant students to some of my native born students. Your nativism, Kim, is sickening.
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TOW, you’re in Utah? Where do most of your immigrant students come from?
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Even if I bought into your fact-free rant, riddle me this: if you could wave a wand, change the law, & allow only documented residents into public K12, how would that change immigration politics& laws, border security, surge of asylum-seekers, flow of trafficked drugs/ lo-pd laborers?
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What’s Next for Public Education in 2019
Sabrina Joy Stevens, Truthout
PUBLISHED
January 19, 2019
..Decades-long efforts to undermine unions and related efforts by corporate interests to privatize and profit off of schools and students began long before Trump took office and will continue to be a major point of struggle for public education advocates in 2019. Groups like the DeVos-funded Mackinac Center for Public Policy are still hard at work trying to convince teachers and other public employees to abandon their unions post-Janus, while groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the so-called Fairness Center are continuing to push anti-union legislation in state legislatures and challenge pro-union laws in state courts. Meanwhile, DeVos has continued to direct taxpayer money to charter schools with spotty records, and is preparing to issue regulations that would further eviscerate Obama-era protections against for-profit colleges that defraud students.
But none of this will go down without a fight in 2019. As Seth Frotman, who previously served as the top student loan officer in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before DeVos’s actions led him to resign in protest, said to POLITICO, “Betsy DeVos has brought a special mix of incompetence and malevolence to Washington — and that’s rocket fuel for every committee in a new Congress that will finally provide oversight.” Now in the majority, several Democrats in the House of Representatives have pledged to investigate and hold DeVos accountable on this and several other issues, including civil rights issues…
https://truthout.org/articles/whats-next-for-public-education-in-2019/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=mashshare&utm_campaign=mashshare
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