Kathleen Cashin has been a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent in New York City in high-needs districts. She is currently a member of the New York State Board of Regents, which sets policy for the state.
In this article, which appeared in the New York Daily News, she explains her hope that school district will use their new money to invest in most successful school reform that works: reduced class size. (Mayor de Blasio, by contrast, says he wants to pour $500 million of the city’s windfall into more testing and tutoring.)
Cashin writes:
In 1999, when I was superintendent of the city’s District 23 in Ocean Hill Brownsville, fourth graders had to take a multi-faceted standardized state test for the first time, which included reading, writing and listening. The first thing I did was to reduce class size as much as possible.
The results were astounding. Not only were there significant gains in test scores the following year, but I noticed a stunning development: Students were able to forge closer relationships with their teachers, and their teachers had their morale lifted because no longer did they have an overwhelming number of students with high needs to address.
Most disciplinary problems vanished overnight, even among students who were most prone to act up. Teachers were now keeping their doors open, and welcoming administrators and other teachers to visit, because their classes were running smoothly, and it was evident how much learning was going on. They were no longer fearful that someone would notice chaotic classrooms and blame it on them. They began to enthusiastically collaborate with each other, and this collaboration helped to further sharpen their skills and fostered a strong sense of professionalism.
In 2003, I was appointed Superintendent of Region Five, encompassing Districts 19 and 23 in Brooklyn and District 27 in Queens, including some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Aided by a state program that helped fund class size reduction, I lowered class sizes in as many schools as I could. Over the next three years, our elementary and middle schools achieved the greatest test score gains of any region in the city.
It was a revelation. And now for the first time, NYC has the opportunity to transform all our schools and classrooms in a similar fashion.
New York City will receive about $7 billion from the federal government over the next three years to help our schools reopen to in-person learning safely, with additional support students will need to recover from more than a year of disrupted learning and the losses that so many suffered due to the pandemic. President Biden has also proposed to more than double Title I funding, which could mean an additional $700 million annually to the city’s schools.
In addition, after many years of reneging on their promise, the state has now pledged to provide the city with full Foundation Aid, starting at $530 million and increasing over three years to about $1.3 billion in annual funding. This is the result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, in which the excessive class sizes in our schools were central to the judgment of the state’s highest court that students were deprived of an equitable opportunity to learn. In 2003, the New York Court of Appeals wrote: “[T]ens of thousands of students are placed in overcrowded classrooms…and provided with inadequate facilities and equipment. The number of children in these straits is large enough to represent a systemic failure.”
Unfortunately, class sizes have only increased since then, particularly in the early grades. More than 300,000 students were in classes of 30 or more last year, with average class sizes 15% to 30% larger than those in the rest of the state.
Research shows that while all children benefit from smaller classes, those who make the greatest gainsare students of color, those who are economically disadvantaged, English Language Learners and those with special needs. These students collectively make up the majority of students in the NYC public schools.
The City Council has now proposed that $250 millionbe spent on a targeted program to lower class size next year. This is a good beginning. I hope Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Meisha Porter will enthusiastically accept this proposal, so that class size reduction can begin to be phased citywide over the next three to four years.
We have a crisis in teaching, with high teacher attrition rates, particularly in those schools with the most disadvantaged students. This emanates in part from these teachers having class sizes too large. Educators are not being provided with the opportunity they need to succeed in their jobs.
It’s simply too difficult for one person to handle 30 young students and know all their abilities and disabilities, no less be able to address them effectively. But if you have 20 students or fewer, and in the upper grades 25 or fewer, suddenly what was impossible before becomes possible.
Poverty drains everyone it comes in contact with. But when children are provided the chance to have the close personal attention and connection with their teachers, made possible by a small class, it can change their lives. We believe they deserve that chance.
Cashin represents the borough of Brooklyn on the state Board of Regents.
I totally get it! Being a retired educator, I can attest to the benefits of smaller classroom sizes. Excellent and relevant discussion!
however, in my experience I found that large class sizes where the administration left me to my own devices were so much more fulfilling and effective than the smaller class sizes which came with “reform” and an endless administrative micro-management
Check out the the link in paragraph 4: “achieved the greatest test score gains” for a 2006 NYTimes report on her style of “administrative micro-management.”
I’ve been fulfilled on both sides–micro-managed by competent administrators and left to my own devices by other administrators–some of whom did so BECAUSE of their competence!.
At one point in my career I was on the board of NYSTESOL, a professional group for ESL/ENL teachers. When we had the convention in NYC, I sometimes took teachers on a tour of ESL classes in NYC. I often describe the experience as a trip to East Berlin before the wall came down. I was from West Berlin, a mostly middle class suburban school district, where I had classes in the range of 15-17 ELL students. I had lots of resources in my classroom to provide students with a variety materials.
I escorted teachers to visitations of classrooms in NYC. After going through the metal detectors, we took our tour. One class had 33 beginning ELLs in it! The teacher had one grammar text and about a dozen threadbare dictionaries to teach his very needy students. The difference in the resources I had compared to those of the teachers in NYC was startling, and the class size differential was enormous. When we left the visitations, teachers from all over the state noticed that the classes were enormous and the student needs were tremendous. When we left the school, we walked outside and looked at all the shiny, new skyscrapers around the school and wondered what happened to the taxes collected from these buildings.
The city students deserve better, particularly those with many needs. NYC often gives those shiny skyscrapers generous tax abatements for up to 25 years. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-31/for-schools-corporate-tax-breaks-can-take-a-toll
Ah…. but a “good, effective, high qualified teacher” should be all that is needed in those overcrowded city classes you visited. Charter schools to the rescue! (wink).
Utah, which has some of the largest class sizes in the country, has put most of the money from the feds into more technology. I am SO sick of more reliance on tech and less reliance on personal relationships, as if tech will make up for relationships. And the kids HATE the overuse of tech. They are so sick of tech that I may go very old-school non-tech next year.
Someone is probably getting a kickback. This isn’t about the administration understanding the needs of students – this is about a relationship has been built with someone who benefits from the funding for tech. Then the narrative or mantra about what is best for students is built around this relationship.
Do it! Go non-tech. The kids will thank you.
The best technology is no technology. The kids won’t just thank you. They and their parents will cheer you. I get standing ovations at back to school night when I map out my old school ways.
Oh yeah, I’m sure people are getting kickbacks.
And I was pretty low-tech before this year, but had to go with a lot of tech because of people being in and out of school all the time.
One of my colleagues polled his classes about what they liked and didn’t like about class (I need to do the same thing) and found that the students MUCH preferred tactile activities instead of tech. No surprise there.
I will use tech for research and such, but I’m going back to writing by hand for essays and such and as few tech bells and whistles as I can get away with. We are evaluated on our tech use, so I am going to have to have something on our platform (SO MUCH WORK), but most of the things we do in-class won’t be tech.
Nice piece with the added bonus of a link on the Daily News site to an article, “Teen accidentally moves into retirement community, finds herself loving life in the senior lane”
I’ll try to put the link to that one below. Now….back to mowing the lawn. (Beats shoveling.) Happy May to you all.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-teen-age-19-accidental-move-retirement-community-likes-old-neighbors-20210429-4lbtydm7lnbs5cnaaxivyzr25e-story.html#rt=chartbeat-flt
“Trickle-down [education reform] has never worked.”
“It’s time to grow [education] from the bottom and the middle out.”
It’s time to stop closing public schools. It’s time to stop cutting teachers. It’s time.
“Mayor de Blasio, by contrast, says he wants to pour $500 million of the city’s windfall into more testing and tutoring.”
I read that and thought, “What an ignorannt, foolish, little, self serving idiot, a sell out, a traitor to the common good.”
I’m sure de Biasio wants to spend more money on the tutoring that will be all test prep BS!
As a parent, I am all for smaller class sizes. As a parent who supports the union, I also know that it isn’t that simple.
No one wants to hire uncertified teachers. It can be a cumbersome process to be licensed. There are workarounds, but they aren’t always simple for the typical person who isn’t familiar with the bureaucracy to understand.
And there isn’t classroom space in many schools to allow smaller class sizes. Do 1/3 of the students get sent to less crowded schools to cut the number? Are facilities at underused schools renovated and upgraded?
Are teachers flexible? Would they support a 2nd adult (co-teacher or aide) required to be in every classroom? (I have known some truly amazing teachers who preferred to be the sole teaching voice in their classroom). Would they move schools along with 1/3 of the students from an overcrowded schools?
Are union workers who are non-teachers flexible? Why does it take so long for rewiring and building improvements? Where does that money come from?
One problem in NYC is that there are many very old schools. And it’s not like adding a wing to a building to expand classroom space — it’s very complicated to expand existing schools. And there are some truly gorgeous old buildings that are barely used because it ends up being incredibly expensive to renovate and upgrade a beautiful 100 year old plus building.
Class size depends. The popularity of the specialized high schools — which have very large class sizes — remains high. Parents would love smaller class sizes. They wouldn’t necessarily love that if they were told that the number of students who could enroll would be significantly reduced.
But in elementary school, and especially elementary schools serving the most at-risk students, smaller classes is a no-brainer. But a teacher with 15 at-risk kids isn’t going to suddenly be able to perform miracles that would be impossible with 24 at-risk kids. That teacher also needs significantly expanded non-teaching support to address the far more complicated needs of children who live in poverty that are much less prevalent when teaching affluent children whose parents have the resources to give them anything necessary to support their learning.
Everyone should click on the link in paragraph 4: “achieved the greatest test score gains” for more details of her methods (New York Times article, 2006). These included using the Core Knowledge program to give more depth to the “story-based” NYC reading curriculum, and having Kaplan design a testing program to her specifications.
Thanks for the update. I walk twice a day and am convinced it saves me, at least for awhile. And a great big YES! about Medicare. CBK