The Obama administration has proposed that in next year's education budget, 25 percent of the funds to reduce class size or keep teachers on staff be diverted to a competitive grant program to create and expand "new pathways" to teaching -- e.g. to help fund organizations like Teach For America.
That would mean a cut of more than $600 million that, if approved, would lead to even larger classes in schools throughout the country next year. Senate Appropriations Committee will have its say on this issue next week when it considers the FY13 Labor, Health and Education funding bill. Recently, a group of corporate education reform groups, let by 50-CAN and joined by other organizations including Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst and Teach for America, sent a letter to Senate leaders, urging them to adopt the president's proposal.
Over two-thirds of school districts have already seen significant increases in class size in recent years because of state budget cuts, and thousands of teachers have been laid off -- despite the fact that providing smaller classes is one of the top priorities of parents for their children, year after year, in national polls and surveys.
In states like New York and California, this could mean from $50 to $68 million slashed from the Title II funds now available that districts can use, at their own discretion, either for class size reduction or for professional development. (See the NEA's chart, showing how many millions your state will lose, if the president's proposal is adopted.)
Not only is class size reduction one of the top priorities of parents and educators as shown in numerous surveys and polls, it is one of only a handful of reforms cited by the Institute of Education Sciences that have been proven to work through "rigorous evidence."
Right now, districts use almost half of these Title II funds to keep class sizes as low as possible. Cutting these funds to create yet another competitive grant program that will be judged by the U.S. Department of Education will restrict the ability of districts to use resources to best suit their own needs and priorities. This appears to contradict the oft-claimed goal of both the president and Secretary Duncan to maximize local "flexibility" in revising NCLB, and their ostensible desire to get the federal government "out of the way" in mandating the use of federal education funds.
As had been pointed out previously, President Obama sends his own daughters to a private school, Sidwell Friends, that features small classes and very little standardized testing. It is unfortunate that he appears not to respect the desire of public school parents to provide some of the same advantages for their own children.
In New Zealand, when the federal government recently proposed an initiative to increase class size and re-allocate the funds towards unspecified "teacher quality" programs, the public outrage was immediate. As a result, the Prime Minister John Key just announced that he would not make this change. Why? As he put it, it had become "blindingly obvious" parents would not stand the policy.
Key added: "The government has listened to parents. What's been fairly obvious over the last ten days is that parents are not comfortable in funding any increase in professional training for teachers through any increase in class sizes."
Let me repeat that: they "listened to parents." What an original idea. Perhaps it's time for our federal government to start doing the same.
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I performed calculations using mean NAEP 8th grade math scores and average class sizes for departmentalized instruction in secondary education according to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS).
The correlation between larger classes and higher mean scores was -.16 which is a small negative correlation which is not still statistically insignificant.
Table 8. Average class size for public school teachers
http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_2009324_t1s_08.asp
NAEP 8th grade math scores:
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/statecomparisontable.aspx?sbj=MAT&gr=8&yr=2011&sample=R3&jur=DC&st=MN
Perhaps separate classes for males and females would be better. They have been proven to increase academic performance for both males and females and wouldn't cost any more money.
Percentage of students scoring proficient on the FCAT
boys in coed classes: 37% scored proficient
girls in coed classes: 59% scored proficient
girls in single-sex classes: 75% scored proficient
boys in single-sex classes: 86% scored proficient.
http://www.singlesexschools.org/evidence.html
it's obvious you are a PR flack setting up a false he-said-she-said scenario so our gullible press will think there is disagreement in the field. The reality is there is NO disagreement in the education field re: class size.
Let it be known, there are YEARS of replicated, independent research that shows smaller class sizes increase achievement across all grade levels. Period.
Bill Gates, Bill Frist, Arne Duncan, Barak Obama, Jeb Bush, Davis Guggenheim and their ilk send their kids to schools with class ratios of 10:1.
(e.g., Montgomery Bell Academy, Frist class of '70 (link...))
MBA has:
1. Small class sizes- ratio 8:1
2. Enriched Curriculum, including art, PE, music, athletics, award winning theater program
3. A library that houses a state-of-the-art digital language lab
4. NO standardized tests except for entrance to college and for scholarships
5. Experienced teachers, highly trained with advanced degrees, evaluated 1 time/year by the principal.
You disagree with my use of statistics but they do show an insignificant correlation between small class sizes and increased scores on a national level.
The studies that I've seen do show an improvement for persons who participated in studies on small class sizes but they weren't completely random and they weren't controlled.
Parents petitioned to get their children included in these classes so that increased the number of students with motivated parents in these classes. Children with motivated parent perform better than those without motivated parents.
Even excluding those pupils there would probably still be a benefit of smaller class sizes but we need to look at a cost benefit analysis.
How much would it cost to reduce the class size from 20 students down to 15 students?
Would it add another 30% to the cost of education?
Where would that money come from and is there a more cost effective way to achieve the same level of improvement that smaller class sizes would achieve while spending less money?
I think single-sex classes would have a much bigger improvement at a lower cost.