Woody Guthrie informed us during our other great depression that “California’s a Garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see, but believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot if you ain’t got the do re mi.”

This article from Bakersfield’s paper Monday highlights how the average district class size of 37 predicted for this year stands in stark contrast to local private schools. “Private schools, which charge thousands of dollars in tuition, continue to make low class size a priority.” I highlight in my book how class and school size are the only real advantages of private schools.

Juxtapose this with the same paper’s article from the day before that interviews “can do” teachers who say it won’t be a big deal to have bigger classes. “Sure, they’d rather teach fewer kids, they say, but they’ll make it work.” “It’s just going to take more time and preparation on my part,” says one.  Oh. I guess I don’t get where the no big deal part comes in then. It will be as simple as just more and harder work!

Here is some more “make it work” testimony:

“The key to success in a bigger class is organization and creativity, like dividing students into small groups and inviting parents or other teachers to help with the rotating stations.” Oh, just get unpaid adults to help you do the “same” job.

“I just feel that teachers are so resourceful and so proactive and so caring about their students — they will find a way, regardless of circumstances, to meet the needs of their pupils.” The martyrdom argument.

“They still got the one-on-one (individual attention), they just didn’t get as much.” Um, yeah, that’s the point.

“Maberry said there actually are advantages to larger classes: more diversity and more opportunity for parent volunteers.” Is there more diversity in a one pound bag of M&Ms as opposed to a vending-machine-sized bag? And the parent thing is brilliant: reduce the number of adults with the kids so more adults will come to be with the kids.

I have a class of 42 right now, so I’m entitled to a little sarcasm. Ain’t I?

FYI - I recently posted on Temple University Press’s blog about the origins of my book project.

This is the school year that Florida’s voter-initiative-driven constitutional amendment of 2002 goes into full force.

The amendment requires that by the start of the 2010 school year, core classes not exceed 18 students in prekindergarten through third grades, 22 in grades 4-8 and 25 in high school. Until now, districts were in compliance if they met those limits on a schoolwide average. But next year, they must meet them classroom by classroom.

(Pinellas school superintendent backs more fundamentals, but not the class size amendment. Ron Matus, St Petersburg Times, Friday, August 14, 2009)

This is a unique event because most states have comparable limits for grades K-3 only, if they have limits this low, or have limits at all. (Many states didn’t need such a law to get small classes.) Ron Matus starts this article with a glib summary: “Give the people what they want. Unless research suggests you shouldn’t.” But how do we interpret what “the people” want when what they want is smaller classes? What end are they thinking it will be a means to?

The superintendent of the Pinellas County Schools, where St. Petersburg, Florida sits, thinks she knows what the people want from smaller classes, higher test scores: “I’m not sure there are any statistics out there that says 25 students in the class yields much higher student success than 30 students in the class.” But is it really what’s foremost on the agenda of the 70% of Florida voters that appear to favor paying for smaller classes across grade levels? (http://www.sptimes.com/2006/04/06/State/Smaller_classes_popul.shtml)

Maybe voters think smaller classes are simply more ethical no matter what their outcomes but there is no readily available rhetorical frame in the public sphere that they can use to express that gut feeling. It’s sad that public education spending is so narrowly constrained to questions of efficiency at the expense of ethics.

Take the analogy of road budgets. One might argue that they should be justified only on whether they keep traffic flowing as efficiently as possible. But there is still vast room for spending that is justified on ethics and not efficiency. Crosswalks, speed limit signs, bike lanes and the like are not subjected to protests claiming they are a wasted expenditure that doesn’t increase traffic flow. No one doubts they are necessary ethical measures to limit the negative impacts of vehicular travel.

No one claims these ethical concerns are tangential. Furthermore, there is no pretense to a goal of ever-faster commutes. Nor is there constant rhetoric about how much faster we’d get to work if the city could only find enough competent civil engineers (like in the good old days? like in the countries that are “beating us”?). On the contrary, people accept logically that commutes will get longer as their city gets bigger.

With education the issues are framed so that none of this line of thinking holds true: The mainstream frame of public education spending is that ethical concerns get in the way of the prime concern of seeking ever-increasing efficiency. And, unlike with traffic in cities, big is equated with efficiency from the get-go!

This is partly made possible by the discourse of “schools in crisis,” “failing schools,” and the like. If it’s going to hell in a hand basket, then we’ve got no time for ethical concerns, right?

What this translates to, to return to the analogy, is no space to discuss speed limits or crosswalks, only the fast lane. After all, if it’s an emergency, who’s worried about the speed limit? People should know damn well to stay out of the crosswalks when the ambulance of public education comes screaming down the street of civic discussion.

This framing of educational expenditures is so pervasive that even sincere advocates of class size reduction feel compelled to justify their arguments around increased learning rather than ethical checks on the negative impacts of schooling. This is how rhetorical frames work on us: they orient us to an issue with a certain set of assumptions that we never think to question.

Let’s have the courage to argue for smaller classes on non-”educational” grounds.

Some K-3 teachers in this California district are even saying they’re receiving materials in sets of 32 for the coming year!

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_13112563?nclick_check=1

Perusing recent class-size related news I ran across an interesting example of an intervention for low-achieving, low-income kids that doesn’t pin hope on novel method, technology or extraordinary teaching. What it highlights is the radical old idea that kids spending time with adults who have time to spend with them are likely to learn what those adults want them to.

This program in South Carolina capitalizes on two aspects of what I describe in my book as relationship load reduction: class size and continuity (keeping students and teachers together longer).

[T]he students in their summer classes will be the same students they work with this school year. They will have substantially smaller classes.

Williams, who taught one of the Quick Start classes at James Simons, will have 10 students in her third-grade class this year, compared with 18 last year. The smaller class will ensure her students receive more one-on-one attention, she said.

She agreed to participate in the program because it gave her the chance to develop relationships with her students and learn their academic strengths and weaknesses before the school year began.

“I couldn’t turn that down,” she said.

She wished she could’ve had more time with her students this summer, but she feels confident that they will be reading on or above their grade level by the end of this school year.

(“Failing our students series: Fast Forward Summer programs bolster students’ reading, math skills.” Diette Courrégé. The Post and Courier. Thursday, August 6, 2009)

More time with the same, fewer students. Radical.

Garrett Delavan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/education/20schools.html

http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S1045787.shtml?cat=565

Checking the recent news coverage of how smaller budgets are affecting class size, I came across an article from North Carolina that nicely avoids bringing up the test score issue at all. It quotes a high school student:

“It’s easier to learn in my opinion,” said Aubrey Gibson. “I just feel like teachers can relate more to the students.” Gibson said she fears that connection between teachers and students will be lost if class sizes increase into the high 20s. (wxii12.com/news/20293343/detail.html)

A recent AP piece also frames the issue pretty well by not allowing the issue of achievement to eclipse all else. It begins:

Like a seesaw on the school playground, falling state budgets are pushing class sizes higher.

The recession is forcing districts to lay off teachers even as the economic stimulus pumps billions of dollars into schools. As a result, classrooms across the country will be more crowded when school starts in the fall.

Patti Hathorn, a fifth-grade teacher in rural Pinson, Ala., is expecting 29 or 30 students, making it the biggest class she’s taught. Many of her students at Kermit Johnson Elementary are learning English or are in special education.

“You may have a child that needs you, that needs that adult figure, to spend the extra five minutes with them. If you have five or six extra kids, that five minutes is gone,” Hathorn said.

(HARD TIMES: School budgets dip, class sizes grow, LIBBY QUAID (AP) – Jul 26, 2009)

The quagmire of trying to justify class size reduction (beyond third grade, at least) by test scores is buried nicely near the end of the article where it belongs.

Quaid references a report by the American Assocation of School Administrators from March that finds the percentage of districts planning to increase class size went up from 13% to 44% this year. Follow this link to the report, or the pdf: Looking Back, Looking Forward: How the Economic Downturn Continues to Impact School Districts.

In lean times or fat the issue is the same: Smaller classes are an issue of (e)quality of life not quantity of test scores. I spell out this argument in my book, see also garrettdelavan.com. I’ll try to elaborate on the “(e)” in a future post. For now I’ll just say that while we ought to equalize outcomes across class and race, that shouldn’t simply mean to assimilate more people and affirm that those getting the higher scores should be the standard or the norm around which all else revolves. We need to spend our energies on equalizing the outcomes that matter. Test scores are not that.

A focus on test scores leads us away from acknowledging the most important aspect of public, K-12 class size: It currently amounts to child neglect.

Garrett Delavan