Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  CHAPTER 25

  Class Size Matters for Teaching and Learning

  SOLUTION NO. 4 Reduce class sizes to improve student achievement and behavior.

  Most teachers and parents agree about the importance of small classes. Parents care about class size because they know that the amount of individual attention their child will receive depends on the size of the class. When Scholastic and the Gates Foundation surveyed teachers in 2012, 90 percent said that having fewer students in their classes would have a strong or very strong impact on academic achievement. The desire for smaller classes was greatest among teachers in the elementary grades. A large majority of teachers—ranging from 83 percent in high school to 94 percent in the elementary grades—agreed that reducing class size would have a strong or very strong impact on student achievement. In contrast, only 26 percent of teachers responded that performance pay would make a strong or very strong impact on student achievement. Teachers said that having a smaller class meant more to them than the chance to earn extra money.1

  In another Gates-funded survey, only 4 percent of veteran teachers and 6 percent of newer teachers (less than ten years’ experience) said they would be willing to accept larger classes in exchange for a higher salary.2

  Although most parents and teachers are enthusiastic about class size reduction, policy makers and elected officials sometimes argue against it because it is seen as too costly. Some make the case that when they attended school, classes were larger, and yet they succeeded. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City has said that when he went to school, there were forty students in each class, and if it was in his power to redesign the school system, he would cut the number of teachers in half, “weed out all the bad ones,” double class size, and double the pay of the remaining teachers. He maintained that to “double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”3

  However, when older people remember the supposedly “good old days” of forty or more students in a class, they are evoking a different time in American history. They are recalling a time when most schools had classes of homogeneous students. They are remembering a time before court decisions and federal legislation ended legal segregation. They are remembering a time before students with disabilities were included in public schools and before all but the most severely disabled were mainstreamed into regular classes. They are remembering a time before massive immigration from non-English-speaking nations in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. Many of those who fondly remember the “good old days” were in classrooms that included few, if any, students who did not speak English, had disabilities, or were of a race different from their own. Moreover, even in those supposedly good old days, the schools with many poor or immigrant children had low achievement (far lower than now) and high dropout rates (far higher than now), but this wasn’t seen as consequential, because there were jobs available for those who did not graduate.

  It is a different world now. Teachers may have students in their classes who have mental or emotional disabilities or behavioral problems, who speak little or no English, or who live in extreme poverty and may be homeless. Classes are seldom homogeneous and are more likely to have children with a range of backgrounds and achievement levels. Students in need of substantial individual attention are unlikely to get it when they are in large classes. Because of budget cuts, class sizes have increased in many districts, with teachers reporting classes as large as forty or more, especially in the large urban districts with the highest-need students.

  The Scholastic-Gates survey asked teachers who had been teaching in the same school for at least five years about the changes they observed in their classes. Nearly two-thirds said they now had more students with behavioral problems; about half said they have more students living in poverty, more who were English-language learners, and more who arrived at school hungry. Thirty-six percent reported an increase in homeless students. These are not the sorts of students that many of the old-timers recall from their childhoods. The increased numbers of at-risk students make it especially difficult to teach large classes.4

  When the Scholastic-Gates survey asked teachers what they considered the ideal class size, elementary teachers estimated eighteen to nineteen students; middle school teachers of grades 6–8 estimated twenty to twenty-one students; and high school teachers estimated twenty to twenty-one students. Teachers who were working in urban districts had significantly larger classes on average. Because of sharp state and local budget cuts, most teachers today have larger classes than before the economic recession. In New York City, for example, class sizes in grades K–3 are now the largest in fourteen years. Class sizes have risen sharply in all grades, and nearly half of middle school students and more than half of high school students are in classes that average thirty or more. In some urban districts, classes are closer to forty. In California, Michigan, and Oregon, some classes hold close to fifty students.5

  One of the high school teachers surveyed for the Scholastic-Gates report unknowingly answered Mayor Bloomberg’s comment about doubling class size: “I could teach larger numbers of students. But which class would you prefer to have your kid in?” No parent would prefer to have her child in a class of forty-eight if she could choose a class of twenty-four. And the teacher who is rated “highly effective” with twenty-four children would likely have a far lower value-added rating if the class size doubled. Yet the growth score models used to evaluate teachers rarely if ever take the critical factor of class size into account.

  In response to the Scholastic-Gates survey, an elementary school teacher said, “I am a general education teacher but at least 50 percent of my class each year has special needs. At least 25 percent of these students have extreme behavior problems which interfere with teaching the other students to learn.”

  A middle school teacher pointed out, “We have larger classes, more behavioral problems, increased numbers of special education students, limited technology, and no teacher aides. It’s not easy, but I do it. I’m not sure how much longer I can do it, though.”6

  As classes become more diverse, students require more time. Teachers can’t give them the time they need if the classes are unmanageable. A salient finding of the class size research is that children tend to be more engaged and less disruptive when they are enrolled in a smaller class.

  If a teacher has a large class, his or her job becomes an exercise in management and control rather than instruction. If the same teacher has twenty students in a class, he or she has more time to know each of them and give them the help they need, and they are less likely to act out and become problems for the teacher and the rest of the class.

  Reducing class size is costly. It is an expensive intervention because it means hiring more teachers for the same number of students. But the benefits of class size reduction are so large that the cost is well worth it, in terms of higher achievement levels, higher graduation rates, and lower special education referrals, especially if the reductions are targeted to the students who need it most. Schools and districts have a choice: they can reduce class sizes now and reap the benefits for years; or they can increase class sizes and pay the cost of remediation, disruptive behavior, and failure for many years. Both routes are costly, but one involves spending to produce early and lasting success, and the other involves spending to compensate for failure.

  The research on class size is extensive. Some researchers argue against it, but they are in a minority. The Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education has identified class size reduction as one of the few evidence-based reforms that has been proven effective.7

  Class size reduction has many beneficial effects. Large-scale experiments have demonstrated that it has a significant positive effect on minority children in the early grades. Children who are in smaller classes in the early grades get higher test scores and better grades, behave better in school, are more likely to graduate from high school, and are more likely to go to college. Longitudinal research
shows that the benefits of having smaller classes in elementary school last into adulthood.8

  Not surprisingly, attending smaller classes helps to develop the noncognitive skills that the economist James Heckman says are so important to success in work, in college, and later in life, like persistence, motivation, and self-esteem. Smaller classes offer more opportunities for social cooperation, participating in discussion and debate, and developing the sort of critical thinking that is increasingly recognized to be essential in college and most careers. The smaller group promotes positive behaviors and interactions, as compared with the larger classes, where the emphasis is likely to be on order and compliance.9

  Experiments in class size reduction have been conducted in the early grades, but not in middle school or high school. However, controlled studies in middle school and high school have reported that reduced class sizes there make a positive difference and that students in smaller classes had higher test scores and were less likely to drop out of school than their peers in larger classes. A study of 2,561 schools released by the U.S. Department of Education found that student achievement was closely linked to class size, even in the upper grades.10

  Class size reduction has been shown to have a significant impact on the black-white achievement gap. Low-income students who spend four years in a smaller class in the early grades are far more likely to graduate from high school on time. In addition, black students who were in small classes eventually get higher scores on their college-entrance tests than those who were not. Paul Barton of the Educational Testing Service has speculated that national decreases in class size during the 1970s and 1980s may have been a major factor in the significant narrowing of the achievement gap that occurred at that time.11

  Students are not the only ones to benefit by having smaller classes. Teachers also benefit. They are less likely to leave teaching or to change schools if they have small, manageable classes.12 With smaller classes, they are able to devote more time to reading and commenting on essays and other student work. Reducing teacher turnover—or churn—is important, because experienced teachers are more effective and because students and schools function best when there is a strong collaborative culture and a stable staff.

  It is odd that so many prominent business, political, and foundation leaders think that class size is not an important element in school reform. When they select a public or private school for their own children, they invariably demand schools with small class sizes. The catalogs of the best private schools seldom fail to mention their 12:1 ratio of students to teachers, or even 8:1. The best suburban public schools seldom have classes larger than eighteen. And yet those who would accept nothing less for their own children find it hard to imagine the same conditions for poor and minority children.

  Critics complain about the cost of reducing class size. But it is even more expensive to continue to have large classes, especially for disadvantaged and at-risk students who benefit the most from class size reduction. Whatever may be saved today by laying off teachers and increasing class sizes will be offset many times by the costs of remediation and special services for children who fall behind and suffer the consequences of high dropout rates and unemployment that result. If as a society we really want our schools to improve and all children to succeed, we will guarantee that they are provided with the benefits of small classes that are now reserved primarily for the children of the wealthy.

  CHAPTER 26

  Make Charters Work for All

  SOLUTION NO. 5 Ban for-profit charters and charter chains and ensure that charter schools collaborate with public schools to support better education for all children.

  In the world of contemporary school reform, charters are considered the silver-bullet solution for children who live in poverty, but the results have been mixed and disappointing. Numerous studies by independent researchers have found that the achievement levels of charters vary widely, when judged by test scores, from highly successful at one extreme to highly unsuccessful at the other.1

  Typically, in most states and districts, charters on average do not get different test scores from public schools if they enroll the same kinds of students. Many studies show that charters enroll a disproportionately small share of students who are English-language learners or who have disabilities, as compared with their home district. A survey of expulsion rates in the District of Columbia found that the charters—which enroll nearly half the student population of the district—expel large numbers of children; the charters’ expulsion rate is seventy-two times the expulsion rate in the public schools. The students who are kicked out of the charters return to the public schools. As the charters shun these students, the local district gets a disproportionately large number of the students who are most expensive and most challenging to educate; when public students leave for charters, the budget of the public schools shrinks, leaving them less able to provide a quality education to the vast majority of students. In effect, a cycle of decline is set in motion: the charter school enrolls the most motivated students, avoids the students with high needs, and boasts of its higher scores; the test scores in the public school decline as some of its best students leave for the charter, and the proportion of needy students increases.2

  Meanwhile, there is a growing for-profit charter sector and a proliferation of charter chains, which are akin to chain stores that open in malls and either thrive or close. For-profit online charter schools are booming, even though they get poor results, whether judged by test scores, graduation rates, or attrition. And yet they are very profitable for investors because of their low costs. The for-profit charter chains are doing what businesses do in a competitive environment: they are practicing risk management, keeping the winners and discarding the losers. That may work in business, where the goal is profitability. But it is wrong in education, where public schools are expected to educate all children, not just the easiest to teach.

  Charters have become very controversial as they expand because the few that have high test scores tend to be boastful of their superiority, which does not create goodwill among educators. Further, in districts that place charters into existing public schools, there is usually hostility and jostling for space between an underfunded public school and a richly endowed charter school, which enjoys abundant financial support from its private board of trustees and exhibits an air of condescension toward its host school. Co-locations, as they are called in New York City, have been especially contentious because of the predatory practices of some of the aggressive charter chains that enter as tenants but do not hesitate to monopolize facilities and eventually try to push out the host school. Many of these charters are staffed by young college graduates who work unusually long hours, burn out, and leave for other careers, which creates constant teacher turnover.

  With two million students now attending charter schools, charters are here to stay. Is it possible to make them a productive part of American public education, rather than a disruptive force? The problem with charters as currently configured is that they have strayed so far from the original intention of their founding fathers, Ray Budde and Albert Shanker. These men, who did not know each other, both envisioned the charter idea in 1988. They saw charters as a way to empower public school teachers to devise their own innovative curricula and methods and to free them from excessive regulation and bureaucracy. Neither man thought of charters as a way to transfer control of public schools to private hands or to create profit-making enterprises for stockholders or to destroy teachers’ rights and their unions. Their good ideas were distorted by quirks of fate and the entrepreneurial drive to expand and make money.

  If charters continue to expand aggressively in districts across the nation, there is a risk of reverting to a publicly funded dual school system, especially in our nation’s cities. Instead of being based solely on racial lines, this dual school system would be based on both racial and class lines. Charter schools would recruit and enroll students who are motivated and willing, while public schools wo
uld serve the rejects, the students who didn’t make it into a charter school, those who were unwanted by charters because they didn’t speak English, had disabilities, or threatened in some other way to lower the charter’s test scores. A dual school system is inherently discriminatory, especially when one sector is privately run, deregulated, unsupervised, and free to write its own rules and avoid or eject students it does not want, and the other must take all students and abide by all state laws and regulations, no matter how burdensome and costly. At present, the most successful of the charters spend substantially more than the public schools, while the public schools enroll the students that are most costly to educate.3 When fully evolved, such a system would turn the public schools into schools of last resort rather than institutions that reflect and serve their communities.

  Charters could become a positive force in American education if the conditions under which they are authorized are changed. Given the money and political power of the charter movement, it will be difficult politically to alter the authorizing laws. But as charters move into affluent districts, putting admired public schools in jeopardy, there is a chance that public resistance will increase and make political changes possible. To make such changes will require leadership and legislative majorities that recognize the importance of public education as a basic democratic institution. Charters should become collaborators with public schools in a shared mission to serve the needs of all children. But to understand where they should go, we need to understand their original purpose, which is now long forgotten.

  Ray Budde, a University of Massachusetts professor, envisioned charters as a way to reorganize district management and free teachers from unnecessary bureaucracy. He thought of them as self-governing schools, liberated to find new solutions to pedagogical problems. He did not imagine them as for-profit enterprises operating chains across the nation, nor as organizations aggressively entering districts to build market share. He did not see them as a way to extinguish teachers’ unions or to regiment children with rigid discipline codes.