Archives for category: Class size
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Class Size in L.A.: Out of Control?

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2013 //
19

A comment on the blog:

I’m an LAUSD middle school art teacher with class sizes reduced to 31, 32, 39, 44, 45 and 48. That averages almost 40/class. AVERAGE doesn’t make sense! With 48 students in a 50 minute class I have no time to actually help students. More students means more time on attendance, more time passing out and collecting supplies (for which I have no budget.) My class of 45 has a sped teacher’s entire class load of 6th graders mixed in with 7th and 8th. If it is based on average and the actual class size doesn’t matter, why not give me 250 in my first period??

Categories Class size, Los Angeles

Common Sense and Common Core: One of the Best Posts Ever

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2013 //
23

Red Queen in LA writes a snappy and irreverent blog.

This post is her best ever, or at least the best I have read.

In it, she decimates the decision by Los Angeles school officials to spend $500 million on iPads–using money from bonds that will be paid off in 25 years–and another $500 million to upgrade the schools for Internet connectivity, plus $38 million for keyboards, plus untold millions for professional development and other unforeseen needs, at a time when teachers are laid off, class sizes are huge, facilities are crumbling, and programs are cut.

This was not a wise decision for many reasons, she argues. For one thing,  “tablets” are no substitute for computers:

We all know this about tablet “computers”:  they are not real “working” machines.  When I proposed buying a tablet for my student the dude behind the counter told me: “Don’t do it.  You’ll have to buy a keyboard, it has way less memory and no ports, a smaller screen and slower speed:  it’s just not what a serious student needs.  By the time you’re done adding on, you’ll have a machine almost as expensive as a real computer with far less functionality”.

Any parent will have received that advice from just about any computer salesman.  And while there are a few serious students out there who no doubt feel otherwise, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that the word on the street is:  tablets are no substitute for a computer; students need computers.

But she is even more outraged that the district leaders pulled a bait and switch, first asking voters for permission to sell 25-year bonds to repair the schools, then using that money to buy tablets with a short lifespan. She writes:

“A fool and his money are soon parted”; common sense dictates a little skepticism be employed in warding off financial chicanery.  There are so many get-rich – excuse me, get-“smart”-quick schemes floating about EdReform/Common Core Land that their sheer volume belies legitimacy.

No one purchases a car with a 30-year loan.  Long-term financial “instruments” are intended for a more “durable” purchase like, say, a house.  Or a school building.  If you purchased your Honda Civic with a house mortgage, you would find yourself paying for that auto to the tune of several times its original worth, a dozen years or longer beyond when it was melted into candlesticks.  How does it make sense that LAUSD stakeholders should be purchasing ephemeral electronic equipment with long-term constructionbonds?  Where’s the common sense in hoodwinking tax-payers with such a scheme that doesn’t even seem legal?  When will the average voter ever agree again to finance any child’s public educational needs when there are only foxes in charge of the hen house?

And more:

Maybe this is all more complicated than it seems.  But since it was we taxpayers who invoked the common sense solution of approving bond money to maintain school facilities sufficiently, we deserve transparency regardingdecisions that reverse course on how this money is spent.  And we deserve legal redress should the caretakers of our money not spend it according to our wishes.

Our children need teachers — more teachers — who can conduct school within classrooms of a manageable, teachable size.  Our children need a village-worth of support staff to enable and assist those teachers to engage their learners.  Our children need to attend school in facilities that are clean, commodious, safe and stimulating.  Diverting funds from rank-bottom pedagogical necessities in favor of frivolous electronics in service of opaque commercial ends, just makes no Common Sense.

 

Categories Class size, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

What Are Class Sizes in LAUSD?

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2013 //
39

Are there large classes in Los Angeles Unified School
District? Some commenters say yes, some say no. The average for the
district does not answer the question, because students with
special needs may be in a class of 5 or have a teacher assigned
only to her because of the severity of her disability.

The LAUSD board recently passed a resolution directing Superintendent John
Deasy to reduce class size, but
he said on a radio program that he would ignore the
directive. Instead, he is buying iPads for all students and
spending more money on Common Core. Apparently the $1 billion
produced by Prop 30 will be used for Common Core, not for class
size reduction.

What do teachers and parents say? Here is a comment
by a parent who is also a teacher: My son’s sixth grade
academic classes at Hale Charter Academy (an affiliated LAUSD
charter) have 44 students in them. Yes, I said 44. In math,
English, social studies, and science. He is in the School for
Advanced Studies and the school does not turn away any qualified
SAS students. I am not arguing with their policy, because they are
doing the best they can. But that class size is RIDICULOUS! He is
not allowed to bring his backpack to classes because there is not
enough room. I also would like to see
statistics at the individual class level, because so many factors
mask these large class sizes. For example, we have at least six
certificated teachers who are out of classroom. A Title I
coordinator, two discipline deans who are elected from the staff, a
bilingual coordinator, a college counselor, a career counselor and
now, a “Core” math coach (Common Core? I haven’t found out yet).
Though most of these people do not teach at all (I think one of
them teaches one class) they are still counted in our student to
teacher ratios, which makes class sizes look small.
Another extenuating factor is that we have small learning
communities, and that creates some smaller classes. That means
other classes have to be bigger. We are
co-located with a great magnet program. Magnets have a “norm” of 34
to 1, while the rest of us have 42.5-1. So the magnet hired a
teacher this year, while we lost one, and our class sizes are
already huge. Administrators have to make very
difficult decisions, but there should be an actual cap on
individual class sizes. Teachers who speak out are not popular on
campus. The governor’s budget, I believe, does away completely with
any class size mandates, leaving that to “local control.” Trust me,
that can and will be abused. Do you want YOUR kid in classes with
40-50 students, and more? None of us do. I,
too, would like to see some real numbers on class size. And I don’t
think we will get that from LAUSD or the UTLA. So I think there
needs to be a place where teachers can post their actual,
individual class sizes. I had a journalism
class with 55 students last year and complained to no avail. It’s
even worse with electives…they can have 55 students, according to
my school. And they often do.

Categories Class size, Los Angeles

Los Angeles Teacher: We Don’t Need iPads, We Need Help

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2013 //
15

A letter from a teacher in Los Angeles about the decision to spend $1 billion to buy iPads.

“How could the bond oversight committee actually approve this deal when we (a specific school in LAUSD) still have classrooms with chalkboards, desks from the 1950s, an internet infrastructure that constantly lets us down – we can NEVER play video because there is never enough bandwidth, a library with a book collection that has an average copyright date of 1989, only 4 library books per pupil, 10 computers in the library with an average age of 2006, 48 students in a 10th grade English class, 45 students in a biology class, no art classes, no vocal music classes. What we could use instead of ipads is every classroom is a smart classroom, new desks that kids can actually fit into, multiple computer labs, a new, larger, tech friendly library with at least 14 books per pupil, art classes, wood shop, computer labs, the list goes on. What is going to happen is before the entire roll out of ipads, LAUSD is going to realize either by their own admission or a lawsuit that this experiment is not going to work. Also, voters within the boundaries of LAUSD are never going to vote for another bond measure. Therefore, this specific school will not be getting ipads nor new construction, new books, new desktop computers anytime soon.”

Categories Class size, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Is New York Paying Too Much for Education?

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2013 //
17

Governor Cuomo likes to complain that New York spends too much for education. That was one of his reasons for wanting a “death penalty” for schools with low test scores.

Instead of doing anything to help them improve, like expanding Pre-K or reducing class sizes, he wants to “kill” those schools by eliminating democratic control of education–that is, by state takeover, mayoral control, or privatization. None of these three measures will help the kids. They just wipe out local control. Where is the logic?

Makes no sense, but that’s his story and he is sticking to it.

This reader has a different take on the Governor’s use of data:

 

Governor Cuomo complains that New York spends more per child than any other state.

He advocates data driven instruction.

Here are two pieces of data that our esteemed governor should consider before he “executes” failing schools and fires teachers based on unproven standardized tests.

Average cost per year to educate a child in New York State – $18,618.

Average cost per year to incarcerate a prisoner in New York State – $60,000.

http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/21/which-places-spent-most-per-student-on-education/

http://shnny.org/research/the-price-of-prisons-what-incarceration-costs-taxpayers/

 

Categories Class size, Cuomo, Andrew, New York

Do Civil Rights Groups Want More High-Stakes Testing?

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2013 //
66

A group called the Campaign for High School Equity made
news the other day when it criticized Arne Duncan’s NCLB waivers
and complained that the waivers might reduce the amount of
high-stakes testing for poor and minority students. Mike Petrilli
at the conservative think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute
challenged me to admit that the civil rights groups were leading
the charge to protect high-stakes testing. I accepted his
challenge. It didn’t make sense, on the face of it, that civil
rights groups would want more testing. Every standardized test in
the world reflects socioeconomic status, family education and
income. Testing measures advantage and disadvantage. Some kids defy
the odds, but the odds strongly predict that the have-not kids will
be at the bottom of the bell curve. They will be labeled as
failures. They may get help, they may not. But one thing is sure:
standardized testing is not a tool to advance civil rights. Testing
is not teaching. Low scores do not produce more resources or higher
achievement. More testing does not improve learning. It increase
rote learning, teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, and
sometimes, cheating. So who is this group and why does it want more
testing. First,
the article that Mike forwarded to me. It says that the
waivers are allowing too many schools to avoid the consequences of
being low-performing. In other words, the Campaign for High School
Equity prefers the draconian consequences of No Child Left Behind
and the punitive labels attached to schools based on high-stakes
testing. Of course, their statement also makes it appear that Arne
Duncan is trying to water down punishments and high-stakes testing,
when nothing could be further from the truth. Who is part of the
Campaign for High School Equity? It includes the following groups:
National
Urban League • National
Council of La Raza • National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People • The
Leadership Conference Education Fund • Mexican
American Legal Defense and Educational Fund • League
of United Latin American Citizens •National
Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational
Fund • Alliance
for Excellent Education • National
Indian Education Association • Southeast
Asia Resource Action Center Why are they in favor of
high-stakes testing, even though the evidence is overwhelming that
NCLB has failed the children they represent? I can’t say for sure,
but this I do know. The Campaign for High School Equity is funded
by the Gates Foundation. It received a grant of nearly $500,000.
Some if not all of its members have also received grants from Gates
to support the CHSE. The NAACP
received $1 million from Gates to do so. LULAC
received $600,000 to support the CHSE. The Alliance
for Excellent Education received $2.6 million “to promote
public will for effective high school reform.” The Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights Fund received
$375,000 from the Gates Foundation to support CHSE. The
National
Association of Latino Appointed and Elected Officials is
Gates-funded, though not for this specific program. The National
Indian Education Fund received
Gates funding to participate in CHSE. The Southeast Asia
Resource
Action Center was funded by Gates to participate in CHSE. The others are not Gates-funded.

When CHSE demands more high-stakes testing,
more labeling of schools as “failed,” more public school closings,
more sanctions, more punishments, they are not speaking for communities
of color. They are speaking for the Gates Foundation.

Whoever is actually speaking for minority communities and children of color is
advocating for more pre-school education, smaller class sizes,
equitable resources, more funding of special education, more
funding for children who are learning English, experienced
teachers, restoration of budget cuts, the hiring of social workers
and guidance counselors where they are needed, after-school
programs, and access to medical care for children and their
families.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty, Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

LA Times: Charter Schools Should Not Hurt Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2013 //
10

The Los Angeles Times has generally been very supportive of
privately managed charter schools, but in an editorial today it
dares to suggest that charter schools should not expand at the
expense of public schools.

In areferendum passed in 2000, intended to make it easier to pass bonds to support public schools,
charter advocates slipped in a little noticed proviso that required
public schools to provide space for charters. As we know, charters
are not governed by the rules and regulations that govern public
schools. But charter schools end up getting more space than public
schools, and causing overcrowding in public schools, where most of
the children are. “That’s because charter schools, which
are often subsidized through foundation grants, tend to have much
smaller class sizes. The charter schools contend that they should
be given a room for each class, even if that class has 15 students
while a classroom of the same size at the traditional public school
might have 30. They also claim that preschool classrooms and parent
centers should be counted in the formula under which charter space
is allocated.”

The Times is quick to note that some
charter schools get high test scores, not noting that the small
class sizes might have something to do with it.

Is it fair to compare a school where classes are 15 to a school where classes are
30?

Is it fair to compare an underfunded public school to a
well-resourced charter school that is backed by billionaires and
their foundations? At some point, even the Los Angeles Times
editorial board will recognize that the billionaires have no
intention of providing equality of educational opportunity for all
the children of Los Angeles. They like having little showcases,
underwritten by the public, pretending to be public schools, but
limited to the children they choose. It is a vanity project, but
its long-term effect will be to damage public education and to harm the great majority of
children, whom the charter advocates don’t want and don’t care
about.

Categories Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles

The Biggest Fallacy of the Common Core Standards: No Evidence

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
100

Lately, I have noticed that defenders of the Common Core are smearing critics as Tea Party fanatics and extremists. That is what Arne Duncan said to the nation’s newspaper editors last month, when he claimed that opponents of the Common Core are members of “fringe groups,” people who don’t care about poor kids, and people who falsely accuse the federal government of having something to do with the Common Core. When interviewed on PBS, New York State Commissioner John King also said that the Tea Party was behind the criticism of the new standards.

They would like the public to believe that there is no responsible, non-political, non-ideological opposition to the Common Core standards.

This is not true, and I wrote this piece to explain why reasonable people have good reason to be concerned about the overhyping of the Common Core.

I understand that there are good elements to the standards.

In many states, they may be better than existing standards. In others, they may not.

But I don’t see why they are being rushed into production without a fair trial of their strengths and weaknesses.

No set of standards, no new product, emerges straight from the minds of its creators without seeing how it works in the real world of fallible human beings.

Until we see what happens to real children in real classrooms, the “standards” are words on paper without meaning.

It is only when they are tried out by real teachers in real classrooms with real children, when they are improved through trial and error, that we will know how they work and whether they can be called “standards.”

I cross-posted this piece on Huffington Post so it would reach many more readers.

I print it here for your reaction and comment.

I invite you to open the link and leave comments on Huffington Post.

Testing

Boosters of the Common Core national standards have acclaimed them as the most revolutionary advance in the history of American education.

As a historian of American education, I do not agree.

Forty-five states have adopted the Common Core national standards, and they are being implemented this year.

Why did 45 states agree to do this? Because the Obama administration had $4.35 billion of Race to the Top federal funds, and states had to adopt “college-and-career ready standards” if they wanted to be eligible to compete for those funds. Some states, like Massachusetts, dropped their own well-tested and successful standards and replaced them with the Common Core, in order to win millions in new federal funds.

Is this a good development or not?

If you listen to the promoters of the Common Core standards, you will hear them say that the Common Core is absolutely necessary to prepare students for careers and college.

They say, if we don’t have the Common Core, students won’t be college-ready or career-ready.

Major corporations have published full-page advertisements in the New York Times and paid for television commercials, warning that our economy will be in serious trouble unless every school and every district and every state adopts the Common Core standards.

A report from the Council on Foreign Relations last year (chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice) warned that our national security was at risk unless we adopt the Common Core standards.

The Common Core standards, its boosters insist, are all that stand between us and economic and military catastrophe.

All of this is simply nonsense.

How does anyone know that the Common Core standards will prepare everyone for college and careers since they are now being adopted for the very first time?

How can anyone predict that they will do what their boosters claim?

There is no evidence for any of these claims.

There is no evidence that the Common Core standards will enhance equity. Indeed, the Common Core tests in New York caused a collapse in test scores, causing test scores across the state to plummet. Only 31 percent “passed” the Common Core tests. The failure rates were dramatic among the neediest students. Only 3.2 percent of English language learned were able to pass the new tests, along with only 5 percent of students with disabilities, and 17 percent of black students. Faced with tests that are so far beyond their reach, many of these students may give up instead of trying harder.

There is no evidence that those who study these standards will be prepared for careers, because there is nothing in them that bears any relationship to careers.

There is no evidence that the Common Core standards will enhance our national security.

How do we know that it will cause many more students to study math and science? With the collapse in test scores that Common Core brings, maybe students will doubt their ability and opt for less demanding courses.

Why so many promises and ungrounded predictions? It is a mystery.

Even more mysterious is why the nation’s major corporations and chambers of commerce now swear by standards that they have very likely never read.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for high standards. I am opposed to standards that are beyond reach. They discourage, they do not encourage.

But the odd thing about these standards is that they seem to be written in stone. Who is in charge of revising them? No one knows.

When I testified by Skype to the Michigan legislative committee debating the Common Core a couple of weeks ago, I told them to listen to their teachers and be prepared to revise the standards to make them better. Someone asked if states were “allowed” to change the standards. I asked, why not? Michigan is a sovereign state. If they rewrite the standards to fit the needs of their students, who can stop them? The federal government says it doesn’t “own” the standards. And that is true. The federal government is forbidden by law from interfering with curriculum and instruction.

States should do what works best for them. I also urged Michigan legislators to delay any Common Core testing until they were confident that teachers had the professional development and resources to teach them and students had had adequate time to learn what would be tested.

Do we need national standards to compare the performance of children in Mississippi to children in New York and Iowa? We already have the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been making these comparisons for 20 years.

Maybe I am missing something. Can anyone explain how the nation can adopt national standards without any evidence whatever that they will improve achievement, enrich education, and actually help to prepare young people — not for the jobs of the future, which are unknown and unknowable — but for the challenges of citizenship and life? Thebiggest fallacy of the Common Core standards is that they have been sold to the nation without any evidence that they will accomplish what their boosters claim.

Across the nation, our schools are suffering from budget cuts.

Because of budget cuts, there are larger class sizes and fewer guidance counselors, social workers, teachers’ assistants, and librarians.

Because of budget cuts, many schools have less time and resources for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, and other subjects crucial for a real education.

As more money is allocated to testing and accountability, less money is available for the essential programs and services that all schools should provide.

Our priorities are confused.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Common Core, Education Reform

What’s Not to Like About Exeter? Sidwell? Lakeside? Dalton?

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2013 //
133

The folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are struggling to come to terms with the New York testing disaster. They certainly will not retreat from their deep faith in standardized testing, and they insist that there must be more parent choice, even though parents are sick of the excessive testing and most continue to choose their neighborhood school, if they still have one.

This is my favorite line:

“Reform critics like Diane Ravitch often question why we don’t push reforms that would create a “Sidwell Friends” for every student. Putting aside where we would find the extra $1.6 trillion it would take to make that possible, there is a simpler answer: some of us don’t want Sidwell Friends. And just because some believe the elite culture of the top 1 percent is what’s best for all children, doesn’t mean all parents share that belief.”

I can’t say where that $1.6 trillion number comes from. I went to ordinary public schools that did not face annual budget crisis, that did not squander millions on standardized testing, that provided arts programming and daily physical education and foreign languages, that did not fire teachers if students got low test scores. But people who did not go to ordinary public schools may not know that.

What I want to challenge here is the assertion that “some of us don’t want” what the best private schools have to offer.

Who wouldn’t want what Sidwell offers? Or Exeter? Or Lakeside Academy in Seattle?

Who wouldn’t want classes of 12-15 instead of 35-40?

Who wouldn’t want a beautiful campus?

Who wouldn’t want experienced, respected teachers?

Who wouldn’t want a rich curriculum with science labs, history projects, drama and music, and lots of sports every day?

Who wouldn’t want to go to a school that never gave standardized tests and didn’t judge teachers by students test scores?

Maybe there are such people. I have never met them. Maybe they work at Fordham or the Gates Foundation, but I doubt it.

Categories Class size, Curriculum, Parents, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Advice for the “Charitable-Industrial Complex”

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2013 //
35

Peter Buffett, son of billionaire Warren Buffett, is not happy with the philanthropic giants that have decided to save the world.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Peter Buffett writes what he has learned about Philanthropic Colonialism:

“People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms.”

Now he realizes that philanthropy has become a vehicle to assuage the guilt of the super-rich, who can “give back” instead of actually doing anything to change the structural income inequality that creates the problems the rich want to solve:

“Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.

Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups.

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over.”

I don’t think that any reader of this blog knows Peter Buffett.

But if you do, please tell him that his father added $30 billion to Bill Gates’ $30 billion, and that this money is being used to privatize American public education and to dismantle the teaching profession.

Tell him this money is being used to tell states that teachers should not be paid more for extra degrees or experience.

Please tell him that this money is being used to impose Bill Gates’ wrong ideas about how teachers should be evaluated.

Please tell him that this money is being used to reduce everyone to a data point.

If we could get just one intelligent billionaire on our side, we could stop the other ones in their tracks.

Why? Because they are doing exactly what Peter Buffett described in this article. Engaging in Philanthropic Colonialism. Imposing their idea of what works in institutions about which they know nothing and where they have little or no experience. Furthermore, they are using “education reform” to claim that poverty doesn’t matter. They are “conscience laundering” and hurting the children of the poor by denying them the very real reforms they need: small classes, experienced teachers, a full curriculum with arts, physical education, and all the other studies that belong in schools, and a genuine national effort to reduce poverty and segregation.

Categories Class size, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Poverty
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