After years of rallying, protesting, and demanding class size reductions, the parents and teachers of New York won! The legislature passed a bill mandating a reduction in class sizes.
This is the single most powerful reform that will help students, especially the neediest students, who will benefit from smaller classes and more teacher attention.
Class size reduction matters more than school choice or teacher evaluation or other expensive but ineffective fads.
A special shout out to Leonie Haimson, the unpaid executive director of Class Size matters, who has fought this battle with all her time and energy for years.
I’m proud to say that I am a board member of Class Size Matters and Leonie is a board member of the Network for Public Education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you always for your support Diane! I couldn’t have done it without you!
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You rock, Ms. Haimson!!!
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Wishing you all you wish for,
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Class Size Matters and the Network for Public Education deserve the gratitude of all New Yorkers. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands, one day millions of lives will be improved because of your work. I’m proud just knowing you through this blog.
So, Leonie, any chance you might think about coming to work here in California? Sure would love to have you here. Just consider this an open forever invitation. I’ll keep the porch light on for you.
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In my experience, class size was crucial to how I taught. With small classes, it was a discussion, a give and take. Above a certain size, it was a lecture.
Without student input, there’s no way to address the ‘learning style’ of the individual student and, hence, less learning takes place (both by the student and by the ‘teacher’).
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This could create some interesting budget effects in NYC. The cost estimates I’ve seen range between a half-billion to a billion per year. Assuming there aren’t big tax increases, that’s going to result in cuts somewhere.
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Might have to cut some charter schools and funding for testing companies, huh. Might have to get Michael Bloomberg to pay some taxes, huh! Cry me a river.
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Perhaps a good place to start the cuts would be the NYPD
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It may! Here are the class sizes in my Long Island District . Even with this proposal the children in NYC would still have larger class sizes than many suburban districts. The answer may be in allocation of State funding .
Or perhaps a few less tax incentives for developers that would have proceeded with Projects anyway. Example Bezos was to be given close to 4 billion in incentives to proceed with HQ2 . The question is not how much revenue the project would have generated . It is whether the bribe was needed. Jersey offered 7 billion . Word has it Pittsburgh 11billion. Yet Va. only 750 million , NY and the DC Suburbs were chosen because of the existing tech workforce and the future pipe line of workers plus the desirable location of those cities. Multiply this by a plethora of other developments where tax dollars are squandered.
https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000037344
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