Comments on: Teachers union, district hit another wall

By: oak261

oak261 — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:18:26 +0000

I think it works out to be about $1000 extra per student/year in the reduced class sizes. The benefit is clearly debatable from the previous posts and links.

Whatever improvement in academic performance might be imparted in a 20 vs 32 student class is probably it concentrated on a fraction of the students in the smaller classes.

By: Union Supporter-But

Union Supporter-But — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:24:11 +0000

To get the results in the studies on class size reduction, class sizes need to be reduced to 15 students. Reducing from 32 to 20 does not have any significant impact on learning. We have neither the money nor the building space to have ratios of 15 to 1.

I do agree with Gordon that to be able to correct and turn around student papers/work and have the same number of students per class the teacher needs to be given another prep period or work a longer day.

At the elementary level, the reduction from 31 to 20 made the union feel good, made the teachers feel good too, but it did not help students meet the higher demands of the state standards. When the union helps teachers get “feel good” items rather than solid researched based (California for California teacher’s union, not a Tennessee study for a California teacher’s union/classroom) the union appears to be protecting teachers interests at the expense of the tax payers and the students who would best be served by research proven teaching methods.

I believe that many, many teachers are capably, bright, hard-working people who have found a way to reach the vast majority of their students under very adverse situations. When the union dumbs that down to class size or a single prep period or 15 minutes here or there per day, they are making clerks of professionals and they are saying that their small measures account for the same depth of work that teachers do when they analyze their teaching to meet the far-reaching needs of students. They are not the same – not equal and teachers should not be treated like hourly clerks.

By: Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:14:48 +0000

A number of scholars have disputed the data on class size reduction that Oak261 referred to and the interpretation Hanushek placed on it. This link is to a book where both Hanushek and his leading critic Professor Krueger have submitted chapters. Krueger maintains that when Hanushek’s own data is interpreted more carefully, it yields evidence of the effectiveness of smaller class sizes. http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/classsizedebate.full%20volume.pdf

By: Gordon Danning

Gordon Danning — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:32:55 +0000

Walton Barnaby:

When I hear people advocate “doing away with tenure entirely,” I wonder whether they know what that means. In California, a teacher without tenure can be dismissed at the end of the school year for any reason at all, or even for no reason. So, every teacher would live in fear of pissing off the principal, or a district higher-up. Why would anyone take such a job, unless he or she was otherwise unemployable? If you want to make it easier to dismiss teachers for legitimate cause, but to allow dismissal without cause would be counterproductive.

By: Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:52:11 +0000

One reason we do not have good data for the effect of class size reduction in California is that when it was enacted it was so popular that it was impossible to establish a control group. When the QEIA program was created several years ago, there was an attempt to create a control group by allowing 1500 schools to qualify for the program and then selecting only 500 to participate so that the other 1000 could act as the control. If QEIA survives the state budget crisis, we might have some firm results.
It is also interesting to see that even the reduced class sizes in California, 20 students in grades K-3, would be normal class sizes in most other states. For my entire 40 year teaching career, California was noted for its large class sizes.

By: walton barnaby

walton barnaby — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:50:55 +0000

Simple solution:

-Give pay raises of $10,000 to every teacher in the district

-Remove tenure completely so that no one owns their jobs

That way, we can get rid of the ineffective teachers and hire go-getter teachers who can actually teach our kids

By: oak261

oak261 — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:55:24 +0000

Steven and Let’s Get Real (#30 and #32): I see that you don’t dispute the data in the report I posted on class size reduction (CSR) itself, except perhaps the emphasis in the executive summary.
Also, I’ll ignore your ad hominem attack on the source of the data.

A few things are clear: parents like smaller class sizes (yes, rich parents too), and teachers like smaller class sizes. That appears to satisfy many. I too, like so many others, feel that smaller class sizes are better. But that is a fuzzy rationale, and not enough to justify $2 billion per year outlay given how broke we are.

For something that so many individuals feel in their gut is the right thing to do, because they believe that students will perform better as a result, where is the evidence? I agree with Let’s get Real’s hypothesis, but If it’s going to be a dramatic winner, It should be a no-brainer to prove. Steven, yes, the Tennessee study appears to have shown a cause and effect, but it has not been reproduced in California.

How much of the recent test score improvements in California are caused by CSR? It is surprising that California embarked on CSR in 1996, and now we’ve spent $10-20 Billion dollars on class size reduction, but the state never spent the small fraction of a percent to determine if the California implementation delivers on the promise of higher academic achievement. Remember, correlation does not imply causation. As far as I can tell, (and despite my personal preference for smaller class size), the correlation is weak at best.

By: Chauncey

Chauncey — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:40:19 +0000

5 weeks of workshops? Cmon!! all unpaid and paid by you. Well then you did it to move up a payscale.

Teacher schedules are fluff! We all take work home! Most of us HAVE to work year round with 2 weeks of vacation.

Dont tell me that your schedules arent cake!

By: Let's Get Real

Let's Get Real — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:31:56 +0000

Let me make a few common sense points (backed up by personal experience, not research) about class size reduction. 1) A teacher can give more attention to each student when she/he has fewer students, thereby boosting each student’s achievement. 2) In a district like Oakland, where many students come to school with major issues, fewer students generate fewer distractions in the classroom each day, thereby allowing for countless additional hours of instruction over the course of the year. As an elementary teacher who started 21 years ago with 31 students in my class, and who now has 20, I can attest to these differences, and I cannot believe there is an educator out there (who has had recent experience in a public school) who would disagree. I’m sorry, but I cannot take seriously any “expert’s” data who has either not taught under both circumstances, or whose data has not been generated from teachers who have. I’m getting really tired of theorists (often more accurately defined as corporatists) trying to define and establish education policy.

Also, let’s not forget that academic standards in CA have consistently risen over the last few decades while in some states they have been purposely lowered to meet the demands of NCLB. Looking at test scores alone with no knowledge of the content denies students credit for maintaining–and in some cases even increasing–their scores when presented with tougher material. I’m not saying we should be satisfied with static scores, but we do need to look at the whole picture.

By: oakland resident

oakland resident — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:02:51 +0000

Oakland’s Port allows Billions’ worth of merchandise to flow through. The cancer and asthma rates near the ports are higher than almost any part of the country. Truckers and ships endanger mostly African American neighborhoods daily (and the truckers suffer too). Shouldn’t this ton of money at least help make the city’s schools and conditions better? Should the state really burden teachers and students with paying for administrative blunders in budgeting? Is this fair to minority students and committed teachers? How do you justify lowering the bar for educators in one of the hardest places to teach?