This Tuesday on June 11 at noon at City Hall, Network for Public Education is co-sponsoring a rally with Class Size Matters and many other organizations to urge NYC to allocate specific funding in next year’s budget towards reducing class size; please come if you can and bring your kids; they have the day off from school.
Smaller classes have been linked with more learning and better student outcomes in every way that can be measured – students in smaller classes get better grades and better test scores, have fewer disciplinary problems, and graduate from high school and college at higher rates.
Meanwhile, NYC public schools have the largest class sizes in the state – and suffer from class sizes 15-30% bigger than students in the rest of the state on average. More than 330,000 NYC students were in crammed into classes of 30 or more this fall.
Here is a flyer with more information; please post it in your school and share it with others. And please attend the rally on Tuesday if you can!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every time the issue of class size arises, I think of two things:
Taking home the equivalent of two novels worth of material to read and respond to every time I give my 204 students one paper to write.
Reading a piece about how class size doesn’t matter penned by Mike Petrilli, of the Fordham Institute for Education Deform Sycophancy–Petrilli, who bills himself, in his online vita, as an education “thought leader.” Thought leader. ROFLMAO!!!! Oh Lord. HAA HAAA HAA HEEE HEE. Oh, please, make it stop. HAA HAA HAAA HAAAA!!!!
Of course, every teacher knows how much class size matters. If someone tells you that it doesn’t or that high-stakes standardized tests are valid and are essential for accountability or that the Common [sic] Core [sic] “standards” are “higher,” then that’s a pretty accurate measure of what he or she knows about education. Such a person is clueless. Completely, utterly clueless.
cx: The bit about being a “thought leader” is not from a vita but from a brief online bio. So many of these “thought leaders” these days! Wow! We must be in the midst of a freaking Renaissance.
Clueless is correct. As Bob’s example illustrates, class sizes matters differently for teachers of one class and grade level and teachers who meet five or more classes a day and very likely at different grade levels. Add teaching assignments that encompass preparation and understanding how students are faring in different courses, multiple grades and not on a daily schedule. Class size matters all of the time.
Rally at NYC City Hall? Outstanding!
That there even have to be advocates for reasonable class size– that there are actually “studies” claiming it’s unimportant– is testimony to the looniness of the ed-reform era. This issue is discussed at our town Bd of Ed meetings every single year. “Class size doesn’t matter” said no parent ever.