Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for October 9, 2006 CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'...NIGHTMARE!

From the Los Angeles Daily News...

Classes bursting at the seams

BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer
LA Daily News

Jay Gussin is an idealistic, passionate teacher who, for more than two decades, has believed his is a noble profession and that educators can shape students' lives.

Until this year.

With nearly 40 students crowded into each of his science classes at Robert Frost Middle School in Granada Hills, Gussin fears he can do no better than perform "educational triage" - focusing only on the students with the best chance of success.

"What you have to do is make perfectly terrible choices on how you run the classroom and on who gets educated and who doesn't. I can't save everybody, so I just have to plow along," he said.

"It makes me want to stop working because it makes me feel I'm supporting something that is bad for kids."

Gussin's complaint is common among teachers in California, who average 40percent more students than their counterparts nationwide.

Officials fear the high student-to-teacher ratios will dramatically affect performance, especially in high schools, where students have to take college-preparatory classes and pass achievement tests to graduate.

Officials locally and nationally blame overcrowding on a lack of money to build and staff more classrooms. And crowding is even more critical in Los Angeles Unified, where a multibillion-dollar school construction program is finally beginning to ease a critical shortage of classroom space.

"In California education, the broad climate is framed by a climate of scarcity - when there just aren't enough resources to go around. That creates a context in which well-meaning educators have to engage in these triage responses, which directly contradict state and federal policies, which are calling for more attention to students who have greater needs," said John Rogers, associate director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.

"I think it's the responsibility of every elected official and every educator to speak truth in a system that is upholding high stakes for students," he said. "They need to name the fact that there's just not enough resources."

Set to take greater control over Los Angeles Unified beginning Jan.1, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sees class size as one of his greatest challenges in trying to improve achievement for the district's 727,000 students.

And while he will do what he can by reorganizing the nation's second-largest district, he also plans to turn to state lawmakers for help.

"It's one of the most important things we can do to raise achievement in our schools, and yet we have one of the largest class sizes in America," he said.

"Our hope is to focus on cutting bureaucratic waste and redirecting that money to teachers and classrooms. But ultimately, if you want to fundamentally impact the issue of class size, we've got to go to the Legislature for the funding to do that."

Nightmarish task

For now, the challenge of maintaining district-imposed class-size averages falls to assistant principals at each campus. It's a nightmarish task because the averages vary widely, depending on type of school, grade level and even the subject.

The district's 11th and 12th grades have the largest classes, with academic classes averaged or "normed" at 40.5 students in most schools.

Campuses in which racial minorities comprise more than 70percent of the student body generally have smaller classes than those in what the district calls "desegregated" schools, budget director Roger Rasmussen said.

For instance, elementary classes are normed at 30.5 students in heavily minority schools and 36 in desegregated campuses.

The state mandates that grades first through third have an average of 20 students.

"I think that the board and the district would prefer to be able to reduce class sizes, but it depends on two things - space and cost," Rasmussen said.

"We have to have enough classrooms built to reduce class sizes further, and class size competes with other issues in the budget for how we spend our money."

Los Angeles Unified is wrapping up a $19.2billion construction program. When it's completed in 2012, there will be enough additional space to reduce class size by two students in grades four through 12.

Gussin recalls when the district increased the middle school "norm" to 38.5 students in 2001 because the size of his classes spiked dramatically.

"Nobody wants to talk about that. It's the dirty little secret," Gussin said. "I want to see classes of 36. Thirty-six is a lot different from 39 and 40. It's the difference between being able to run a class and being able to handle a class."

Mayor has plans

Villaraigosa said that even though he's going to be held accountable for turning around the district's lowest-performing schools, he also has plans for those that fall in the middle of the pack.

Parents send their children to successful public elementary schools such as Colfax, Carpenter and Studio City, but then they put them in private schools or move from the area once they reach middle school because the quality of the secondary schools diminishes dramatically, Villaraigosa said.

"The schools in the middle - that's where this war's going to get fought. The lower-decile schools and higher-achieving schools we're going to put a lot of focus and effort on, but the real battle's going to get fought in the middle," he said.

"I want to put a plan together to reclaim the middle and high schools for these kids. We've got to bring middle-class students back."

But for now, teachers in the trenches are trying to achieve a modicum of success with more than three dozen students in each classroom.

Eric Gallagher, who teaches seventh-grade English at Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, said he has to plan every minute or his 38-student classes will spin out of control.

He also spends as much time as possible working with individual students during nutrition and lunch breaks and after school to compensate for the lack of one-on-one time in class. But Gallagher said if the administration did not support him, giving him resources when needed, his job would be impossible.

"If I didn't have that, I wouldn't be able to operate at all," he said.

A first-year teacher at Hamilton Middle School in Los Angeles, Sara-Jean Lipmen has 34 students in most of her history classes - although one has 37 - and two Spanish classes of 40 students each.

"It's impossible for me to keep track of which ones are the special-needs students, who're the seniors and the freshmen. I probably have dozens of kids who are having issues, and I haven't had time to sit down and talk to them about it," said Lipmen, 23, of Sherman Oaks.

"I've got 10 months to get to know 200 people really well, and I don't know if I'll be able to do it."

Not surprised

Lipmen wasn't surprised when she saw the size of the classes she had to teach because she's a product of LAUSD.

She remembers being in a calculus class with 54 other students at Van Nuys High - the only semester she ever failed a class, which she blamed on the class size.

Large classes affect how teachers provide instruction and assess student learning and development - everything from grading papers to providing a shoulder to lean on.

"The difference between 36 and 40 students may not sound like a lot, but that's an extra 11percent students, and hence each student is losing direct time with the teacher," said Rogers, the UCLA education expert. "And when you have huge class sizes, you make it difficult for new teachers and you undercut the ability of really outstanding teachers to have a powerful impact."

Rogers said he thinks the mayor may be able to leverage additional resources from philanthropic foundations, as well as the state Legislature.

"What's critical is to document how these additional resources are used and, hopefully, demonstrate those additional resources can make an impact on young people," Rogers said.

"The mayor has special relationships in Sacramento that gives him a sense of efficacy members of the school board may not have."

Gussin is looking forward to the mayor's expanded role as spelled out under Assembly Bill 1381, which was signed into law two weeks ago. But he thinks the class-size numbers will change only if the district is pressured to do so.

"It's going to be parents who change this. Even if they drop the norm by one, you would find teachers who'd be ecstatic about it.

"It would be a great way to change things," he said. "But nobody's talking about it."