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Star Ledger ‘N.J. schools struggle with increasing class sizes as budgets, teachers are cut’ GROWING CONCERN "At the Garden State Coalition of Schools, an education advocacy group that represents about 100 suburban districts, Executive Director Lynne Strickland said many "agonized" over enlarging classes.She said small classes allow teachers to tailor instruction to different ways of learning..."
Education Week ‘Class-Size Limits Targeted for Cuts; Class Sizes Show Signs of Growing’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. schools struggle with increasing class sizes as budgets, teachers are cut’
Education Week ‘Class-Size Limits Targeted for Cuts; Class Sizes Show Signs of Growing’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. schools struggle with increasing class sizes as budgets, teachers are cut’
Published: Sunday, November 28, 2010, 9:00 AM Updated: Sunday, November 28, 2010, 9:08 AM
Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger
EDISON — The gymnasium at Herbert Hoover Middle School in Edison was bouncing with energy one recent morning as 120 seventh-graders, dressed in shorts, T-shirts and sneakers, lined up and began doing calisthenics.
Teachers Phil Bouchard and Kim Baldassare walked along the rows, each taking attendance of the 60 students in their classes. Last year, before state aid cuts led Edison to reduce teaching staff, phys ed classes at Herbert Hoover numbered around 40 kids.
"Most of the time is devoted to organization, not instruction," Bouchard said, pausing as he checked off names. "It’s very difficult."
Edison eliminated 150 teaching positions, including 6½ at Herbert Hoover, after the school budget was cut by more than $16 million. Herbert Hoover now has math classes of 25 or 26 students, up from last year’s average of 22; foreign language classes of 29 students; and one social studies class with an enrollment of 30.
The school’s dilemma marks a statewide trend as districts say aid cuts have meant staff reductions that in turn have led to larger class sizes. A survey by the New Jersey School Boards Association last summer, conducted after Gov. Chris Christie slashed school aid by $820 million, found 81 percent of responding districts said they intended to reduce teaching staff. Of those, 42 percent expected class size to rise as a result.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
• After marathon hearing, Edison school board cuts 131 jobs, hikes taxes
• Local school boards scramble with new funding reality
• N.J. school officials are cautious of spending federal funds
While the effect of larger classes on students’ ability to learn has been the subject of some debate, most school administrators, teachers and parents say they believe bigger is not better.
With a 2 percent cap on property tax increases coming next year, class size may increase further, West Orange School Superintendent Anthony Cavanna said.
"Given the magnitude of what the 2 percent cap means, I think we’ll have to make cuts that will affect class size. I don’t see a way around it," he said.
West Orange already has lost $9 million between state aid cuts and its defeated budget, and it eliminated 40 teachers. Some elementary classes rose from 20 to 24 students, and high school classes that once hovered between 20 and 25 students may now have up to 30.
Small classes have long been popular with both parents and educators, because they allow teachers to spend more time with each student.
The average elementary class size in the U.S. dropped from 24 pupils in 1993-94, to 20 in the 2007-08 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In New Jersey, in 2008-09 — the most recent data available from the Department of Education — the average class size statewide was 18.8 students in first grade; 20.6 in fifth grade; and 20.0 in ninth grade.
Some studies have shown smaller classes improve learning. One of the most well-known, Project STAR, was conducted in Tennessee in the 1980s and found smaller classes improved academic achievement for children in primary grades. A follow-up of the STAR kids in 10th grade found they had higher grade-point averages and were more likely to graduate and pursue higher education.
But other experts say it’s not that clear-cut.
Small classes matter more for low-achieving kids in early grades, according to Douglas D. Ready, an assistant professor at Columbia University Teachers College. Ready, who conducted a review of class-size research, said most studies compared very small classes — less than 17, for example — with so-called large classes of around 22.
"That is considered small to most people," he said. "For a place like Newark, people would love to have 22."
Virtually all class-size research focused on elementary education, and little is known about the impact in middle or high school, he added.
Smaller classes can improve student learning in lower grades, but "there is some question as to whether the effects are large enough to be cost-effective," said William Firestone, associate dean for academic affairs at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
"At some point ... the instructor has trouble grading all the papers. They tend to give fewer essays and more multiple choice. It’s just harder to keep track of 29 kids," Firestone said.
"Reducing from 20 to 15 will do more to increase student learning, but it costs a lot of money," he said.
GROWING CONCERN
At the Garden State Coalition of Schools, an education advocacy group that represents about 100 suburban districts, Executive Director Lynne Strickland said many "agonized" over enlarging classes.
She said small classes allow teachers to tailor instruction to different ways of learning.
West Orange mom Jennifer Winning, president of the St. Cloud Elementary School PTA, said her daughter’s third-grade class, with 22 students, has not seen a noticeable change. But she’s heard talk of middle school increases.
"The more kids you put in the classroom, it’s just got to make it that much harder for the teacher, or for kids to get that individualized attention," she said. "It concerns me as my daughter grows older."
In Marlboro, where budget cuts meant about 15 fewer classroom teachers this year, Assistant Superintendent Marc Gadswirth said elementary class size rose by two or three students.
First-grade classes are around 23 students; fifth grade, about 28.
"We weren’t happy about it," Gadswirth said. "We will have to see what effect, if any, it has on student performance."
THE EFFECT OF STAFF
At Herbert Hoover in Edison, Principal Louis Figueroa will be watching student performance closely, too. His school last year failed to make "adequate yearly progress," a federal benchmark, because of low test scores in special education — after he had requested, but didn’t get, more staff.
He said class disruptions have increased this year.
Edison interim Superintendent Ron Bolandi said primary class size would have increased there, too, but teachers union salary givebacks allowed him to save 16 teaching jobs.
Many teachers are coming in early or staying late to give students extra help, or they are adapting in other ways.
Edison social studies teacher Jeff Shanker taught a lesson on the American Revolution recently, weaving between rows of desks as he tossed out questions. With 30 eighth-graders enrolled, even with a special education teacher sharing the room, Shanker said he has to circulate more.
"When I’m on one side of the room, the left side may say, ‘Mr. Shanker can’t hear me.’ So they will start talking," he said. "Some days it feels crowded."
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Class-Size Limits Targeted for Cuts; Class Sizes Show Signs of Growing
Published Online: November 24, 2010
Published in Print: December 1, 2010, as
After dropping for decades, average class sizes in American schools may be growing again as schools cope with budget shortfalls.
Although some educators see the rising numbers as a worrisome trend, others see an opportunity for innovation.
“Yes, small class sizes do help, but it’s not the only way. What we need to focus on is how schools are becoming more flexible to meet the different needs of kids,” said Thomas Starratt, the principal of Boynton Middle School in New Ipswich, N.H., where the average class size at the school has crept up from 18 to 22 since the recent economic recession took its toll.
The national ratio of students to their teachers fell between 1980 and 2008, from 17.6 to 15.8 students per public school teacher, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Because the statistics count special education and other specialized teachers who normally have much smaller classes than regular teachers do, the U.S. Department of Education estimates the current average class size at more like 25 students. That number is likely to rise, given states’ and districts’ financial constraints, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said last week at a Washington forum.
Nearly all the states that have changed their class-size laws since 2008 have relaxed restrictions, in many cases specifically to ease districts’ budget burdens, according to the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.
“I anticipate that a number of districts may be asked next year to weigh targeted class-size increases against the loss of music, arts, and after-school programming,” Mr. Duncan said at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute meeting. “It’s difficult to talk about class size, … but we owe it to the country’s children to have those conversations. … We support shifting away from class-size-based reduction that is not evidence-based.”
Remove to Improve
Yet what constitutes “evidence-based” reduction has been at the crux of the class-size debate for more than a quarter-century. Proponents of reducing class size argue that it is the simplest, most direct way to improve student achievement, while skeptics argue that the small, generalized reductions that result from most state policies don’t provide enough improvement to justify their cost.
Most education researchers agree on the importance of one “gold standard” study: Tennessee’s Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio, or STAR, project, a four-year, longitudinal, randomized controlled study that began in 1984 and tracked more than 7,000 students in 79 schools. Researchers compared the achievement of pupils in kindergarten through grade 3 who were randomly assigned to small classes, of 13 to 17 children, or to regular classes, of 22 to 25 with either a teacher alone or a teacher with a full-time aide.
At the end of the first study on the project, researchers found children in the smaller classes performed a tenth of a standard deviation better than youngsters in either of the regular-size classes, a significant improvement; poor and minority pupils showed greater effects. Follow-up studies through the years have found the students who had been in small classes in their early years had better academic and personal outcomes throughout their school years and beyond.
Interactive Map
A majority of states have at least one policy that limits the number of students that may be in a general education classroom, according to the Education Commission of the States, and several have relaxed those class-size policies since 2008.
SOURCES: Education Commission of the States; Education Week Library Director Kathryn Dorko and Library Intern Ruth Lincoln
“The kids are almost 30, and we have been able to get some of their life outcomes,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an associate professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., and one of the researchers on Project STAR follow-up studies.
“We do find they do better on all these life measures; they go to college at a higher rate, they get married, they buy houses at a higher rate.”
Ms. Schanzenbach and STAR principal investigator Helen Bain say over time, STAR and other studies have shown the improvement is linear: Every student removed from class improves the outcomes for those remaining.
By the same token, attempts in other states, such as California and Florida, to replicate Tennessee’s success have yielded more mixed research findings.
As a result, while class size has remained popular with parents and teachers, it has gained critics among some researchers and policymakers. The federal class-size-reduction program, which had provided more than $4 billion in the 1990s, was eliminated from the No Child Left Behind Act, the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Critics argue most class-size-reduction programs are too general, and improvements aren’t substantial enough, to balance the cost of shrinking class sizes, which is one of the most expensive education improvement strategies. For example, Florida estimates its class-size program, which state voters decided Nov. 2 to keep in place, will cost $40 billion in the next decade.
Secretary Duncan pointed to statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group representing major industrialized countries, showing that several high-performing Asian countries have higher average class sizes: 33 in Japan and 36 in South Korea, compared with the estimated 25 students in the United States.
“I think all else being equal, smaller classes are better, and Tennessee STAR shows the potential impact of class sizes,” said Dan Goldhaber, a research professor at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington, who has studied the issue. “The problem is all else is not equal most of the time.”
Part of the difficulty, Mr. Goldhaber said, is that states haven’t implemented class-size-reduction policies in ways that are consistent with the research. For instance, they often trim one or two students per class, rather than cut classes down to 13 to 17 students, as Tennessee schools did.
Other researchers, such as Eric A. Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, have argued schools should spend money to improve their current teachers, rather than hiring more of them.
That sentiment was echoed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a co-chairman of the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in a talk last week to state education chiefs gathered in Louisville, Ky.
“It’s just another thing that has to be looked at, because we have to free some money up for the things that really do work,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Duncan urged schools to use tightening budgets as an opportunity to experiment with “modest but smartly targeted increases in class size,” such as varying class sizes by teacher expertise or bringing in part-time staff members to reduce class sizes in core areas.
‘All Hands on Deck’
Many schools already have begun such efforts. The New American Academy, which opened this fall in New York City, might look like a nightmare to class-size-reduction advocates: Instead of four 1st grade classes with 15 pupils each, 60 learn together in a class with four teachers.
“You need to commit to it fully,” said Nick Ackerman, the academy’s communication director. “If you don’t buy into that, 40 to 60 kids in a classroom is going to be chaos.”
Each class is assigned two general and two special education teachers, each of whom is bilingual and at least one of whom is a master teacher. Each team gets an hour and a half to plan at the start of each day and can change groupings with the flow of the content—large groups for reading together, small teams moving among stations for projects, and so on. The teachers train for five weeks before school starts, and they progress with their children from kindergarten through 5th grade. Salaries for individual teachers range from $50,000 for a novice to $120,000 for a master teacher.
The school saves money overall, Mr. Ackerman said, because it does not have to hire separate specialists for students with special educational needs.
Other schools have created more-flexible class groupings by enlisting more instructors and volunteers to reduce the size of core classes.
New York’s Generation Schools Network, for example, hired instructors who also run most of the administration. In the morning, nearly every adult in the building teaches 90-minute blocks of reading, math, science, social studies, and foreign language. The afternoon includes electives with larger class sizes that build on topics from the morning, such as an art class that incorporates geometry.
“By having this all-hands-on-deck approach in the morning. We get class sizes below that magic number of 16 that the Tennessee STAR study says is really good for student achievement,” said Generation Schools co-founder Jonathan Spear. He said that the school costs slightly less than other New York City peers, but “we’re able to reduce the teacher load, so teachers are teaching less than 50 kids at a time.”
Getting By With More
Some schools have purposely traded smaller class sizes for other reform ideas. Codington Elementary School in Wilmington, N.C., didn’t ask for enrollment increases or budget cuts, according to Principal Budd A. Dingwall, but it did find a way to make larger class sizes work for the school. Because North Carolina provides personnel funding based on the student-teacher ratio, not class size, Mr. Dingwall allowed class sizes to max out at 24 pupils in grades K-3 and at 26 in grades 4 and 5, and created a floating position for a master teacher, who can help individual teachers.
In the meantime, classroom teachers each get an aide and a trained parent volunteer to help shoulder the load.
“The combination of the economic crisis and the [federal] stimulus [aid] has forced a lot of us to take a look at our practices,” said Shawn Arévalo McCollough, the superintendent of the Nogales Unified School District in Arizona. Class sizes there have grown from 18 to 20 students three years ago to 28 to 30 today.
Yet, Mr. McCollough said, the district has raised test scores every year. He notes that the district added more math and reading specialists as class sizes rose.
“If you are spending the money and you’re not getting results,” he said, “then cutting those dollars and redeploying them in more-effective ways is the morally and professionally responsible thing we’ve got to do for kids.”
Leonie Haimson, the executive director of the New York City advocacy group Class Size Matters, said, however, that districts should implement small classes properly—at 15 students per teacher—before writing the approach off to try out other changes.
“I have no doubt the increase in class size we are experiencing in New York and California and other states will have an extremely damaging effect on students,” she said, “not only in achievement, but in their later success in life.”
Vol. 30, Issue 13, Pages 1,16
Related Stories
- "Hard Choices Ahead for Florida over Class Size Limits," (State EdWatch Blog) November 9, 2010.
- "Court Rejects Challenge to Fla. Class-Size Measure," (The School Law Blog) October 7, 2010.
"NYC Schools Sued Over Class Size," (District Dossier Blog) January 6, 2010.
