Posted on 02/23/2006 10:03:29 PM PST by Coleus
A group of Tewksbury parents and educators may be well-intentioned, but its idea to cap the public school system's teacher-student ratio does little but place another financial burden on the struggling town. The group is pushing a proposal to limit the number of students per class to 25. To do so, the town would have to hire an additional 20 schoolteachers, at a conservative cost estimate of nearly $800,000 annually in salaries and benefits.
In all likelihood the proposal would translate into a huge tax increase for fiscal 2007, since the Tewksbury School Department is already facing a multimillion dollar deficit in its proposed budget -- one that the School Committee has shown little inclination to reduce despite overtures from the town's Finance Committee.
Quite simply, Tewksbury can't afford the luxury of imposing a class-size mandate throughout the school system. And even if tax dollars were plentiful, the proposal offers little guarantee that it would be either effective for students or efficient in raising academic excellence.
Recent U.S. studies on the value of class size have produced mixed results. There are about as many experts advocating a lower student-teacher ratio as there are those saying it doesn't measurably improve performance.
If anything, reduced class sizes seem to work best in kindergarten through grade four where young, impressionable students need greater teacher attention. In the latter school years, studies have shown, there is little appreciable positive effect on students. (A good book to read is author Joel Turtel's Public Schools, Public Menace, which analyzes 277 published studies on the effect of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement. According to Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist, only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement in achievement with smaller class size, 72 percent found no statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a negative effect on achievement.)
Class size has long been a "magic bullet" used by parents and teachers' unions to get the public's attention about the perceived deteriorating conditions in school systems. Certainly, Tewksbury schools have been challenged financially since the local aid bust of 2001, but they aren't showing any major reversal of academic results.
In reality, a blanket class-size mandate amounts to nothing more than a status-quo solution that drains vital taxpayers' dollars from other education resources where they might do the most good.
We are not advocating that class sizes be allowed to grow exponentially. What we are advocating is the establishment of priorities. A better proposal for the parents' group would be to endorse a study that would investigate where reduced class sizes might have the best impact on helping students learn. If it is in the younger grades, petition the School Department to set up a pilot program to serve as a "research and development" arm. With documented results in hand, it would be easier to enlist townspeople into expanding the program should more funding become available.
Of course, there are other creative ways to reduce class sizes that don't involve spending money. Progressive school systems across the nation have set up online courses for exceptional students as well as those who must work to sustain their families. In both cases, students who show promise for independent study are given the chance to succeed beyond classroom borders, thus reducing the overall student population. Why can't Massachusetts schools be so forward thinking?
It's a question Tewksbury parents should be asking before they discuss another tax increase to pay for a class-size mandate that isn't a proven winner.
I attended smaller colleges (universities) because of where I lived. I was married with children, and it was not an option for me to go away to school. :)
There are some options to parents nowadays, and in fact in the rural school district where I taught, parents routinely switched their kids from district to district (usually if they got into trouble in one, they switched to another). In addition, home schooling is an excellent option, as are some private or religious schools. And yes, I know you end up getting double *taxed* however when it's your kids education on the line, I think sometimes you have to suck it up and realize that while it's not fair, you're doing the right thing for your child.
susie
I'd love to see a push back to allowing kids to concentrate on a real life skill rather than all college prep classes.
I have a picture of the class and the teachers used discipline.
In regards to your second paragraph, I agree whith what you say to a point; however, it's not an argument for the article I posted.
Ping!
(Thanks for the alert, Coleus).
Yes, the issue is complex and multilayered. Here's what I observed in the classes I taught:
1. Complete failure of discipline. Students were not held to ANY behavorial standard and the teachers had no authority to enforce any (and the students knew it!). For every infraction, the only solution was to send the student to the discipline dean who often did very little.
2. Students were not required to achieve any minimum standards of either appearance or academia. They knew that if they flunked a year, they would still be advanced to the next year - failure wasn't an issue.
3. Students were not motivated toward any real world career. Most of the students I encountered had career goals of either becoming music stars or pro-athletes. None of these kids had any real-world view of life outside of school.
4. The kids were woefully ignorant of the basic survival skills they would need once they graduated in 2 - 3 years. They had no comprehension of money, economics, budgeting, taxes, government, geography - anything. It was difficult for me to comprehend how these kids were spending so much time in school and learning nothing.
5. With few exceptions, the majority of the kids I encountered were unprepared to leave school. They were ignorant of business and were equally ignorant of college. Most thought they would go to college, but couldn't give a good explanation of what they would do there. The one time I actually was able to obtain and keep the students' attention, it was to teach them about college. They were in a college prep school and complained that the school hadn't told them anything about college. By the time I was done, the expressions on their faces was sheer shock. It was, perhaps, their first introduction to life in the real world and that college was not going to play games with them.
All of these are not problems caused by teachers. Some are problems created by administrators, some are created by government intervention in the schools, some are created by lack of parental involvement. But, I would say that most of the problems are caused by teachers and teachers unions. Let's face it, when the team doesn't play well, the coach gets fired. Students are not meeting any level of achievement. In FloriDUH (as you should know), everything is based on the FCAT scores. To graduate, the FCAT is fixed at the 10th grade level and the students have 5 chances to pass it with a 40%. While the students and their parents complain about the FCAT, the schools have never bothered to tell them that for virtually any career choice they make, there will be a standard test involved for certification or licensing. Since the kids think they will all be rock stars or pro-athletes, they aren't concerned about minimum standards of achievement. I would just hate to be there when reality hits their world - it is going to be a devastating impact. They deserve better than to be deceived by their teachers into believing in - nothing.
As long as teachers believe that merit raises and performance standards don't work (an odd position to take since they work exceptionally well in private business) and that competition is evil, education standards will continue to plummet. I have been, among my careers, a technical writer. When I first started working as a technical writer, we wrote to an average 10th grade education level. Today, with reading levels at all time lows (estimates are that 40% of the population are illiterate and, of the remainder, an additional 40% are functionally illiterate), the standard lexile level for technical writing has plunged to the 5th grade. Those are not statistics that support the notion that the schools (and by extension, the teachers) are doing aanything approaching what would be considered a good job.
perhaps it's because teachers and administrators today have less authority over their students... they are not able to discipline their students like teachers did years before... and students today, in general, come to school with less discipline than years gone by...
there were some pretty lazy teachers back in my day too... i have to say that out of the 30-35 teachers i had during my 13 years in government school, 4 of them were excellent, the majority were okay... 3-4 were not so good at all...
That's scary that your technical writing is targeting an audience that can read at a fifth grade level these days! Now, why aren't facts like this published and made widely known? (A rhetorical question, since we know who controls the media!). Same reason why the outcomes of the international math and science studies aren't widely reported either. All of these facts should scare the heck out of everyone in the U.S.!
Hate to break it to you, but STUDENTS are different today - far less focused and far less disciplined. What the class size debate fails to address is DISCIPLINE in the school.
Most modern students have no discipline at home, which makes it very difficult to teach them in a public school that can be sued for even thinking about disciplining a student.
I found exactly the same thing. I actually tried to walk some students thru the whole scenario. (Me: "How many pro athletes have ever come from our particular school?" Student: "One." Me: "So, what are the odds you will be a pro athlete?" Student: "I'm good enough.") I've got to throw in here that the culture/media is also partically at fault for that attitude. And I'm not very well versed on education in FL (the particulars of the FCAT for instance) as I have not taught since we moved here almost 2 years ago. I think I'll become a secretary or something.... susie
Most of my students would have told me they WERE better than one in twenty (even tho most of them never even got a college scholarship). It was amazing how good they were at ignoring and denying reality. I think there are going to be a large number of very bitter people in the next 20 years who were told they could be anything, do anything, etc. When they discover it wasn't true, they're going to hate those who told them it was....
susie
Its an entirely different world today,Coleus.My suburban town had up to forty students per class and we DID learn with minimal disruption.Yet this was in 1959 when kids respected teachers and parents made sure that nonsense was kept to a minimum.
Lets jump ahead to 2006 and hone in on my big city school district.Most kids have one parent at home and sometimes she"ain't doin' right".Gangs are ubiquitous.The culture of the hood dominates.Youngsters "ain't takin' no s---,ya feel me?"
So I go out to Eastside High tomorrow and the class roll says thirty officially enrolled.Thank God probably ten will be absent or cutting and those ten will probably be the ones most likely doing major damage to the classroom ambiance.Five of the remaining twenty will"talk s---"most of the period and try to test my cool.At least five others will bump music on their CD players and just"kick it" all period but not act like total jackasses.The five remaining kids MIGHT do the assignment left by the regular teacher and it is those five who might make the period productive for themselves.
Now what if ALL THIRTY kids show up?Chaos city,thats what.Complete anarchy will reign and you will get no backup from administrators if you try to enforce the decorum dominant back in the day when my dinosaur self was in school!
To sum it up for me,the smaller the class size the better it will be for all concerned.Thats reality in 2006 urban America.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.