WILL LOWERING CLASS SIZES IMPROVE EDUCATION? MAYBE NOT

Here’s a modern myth: lowering class sizes will improve your child’s education. This is supported by the American Federation of Teachers. The A.F.T., one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, quotes a research study in support of lowering class sizes:
http://www.aft.org/topics/classsize/index.htm

Reducing class sizes, the A.F.T. claims, will give teachers a chance to know the children better and will reduce the number of disciplinary problems. The problem is, there’s no guarantee that the teachers will make the effort to know individual children better; and many teachers are lousy classroom managers. There’d be pandemonium in their classrooms even if the class size was reduced to ten.

Now I’m not opposed to reducing class sizes, but this alone won’t improve children’s education. And the STAR Project, the study quoted on the A.F.T.’s website is flawed. There have been many criticisms of its imperfections. Among these is the fact that some parents put extreme pressure on the district to place their kids in the smaller classes. The teachers who conducted these classes were often those considered strongest by the district. Additionally, class sizes seem to matter less beyond the third grade. Some educators recommend (rightly, I believe) that the quality of instruction is as important as the size of the class. Here’s where the canker gnaws.

The A.F.T., while supporting smaller classes, has also elected Randi Weingarten, an apologist for incompetent teachers, as its new president. In her last job as president of the U.F.T., New York City’s union, Weingarten staged mass demonstrations against the city when it tried to standardize the quality of instruction. I’m not saying that New York’s Department of Education managed the changes well (they didn’t), but Weingarten’s response was telling. “Let teachers teach!” she would stridently shout as demonstrators took up the chant. “Let teachers teach,” was Weingarten’s clever way of demanding that accountability be rolled back.

I personally heard Weingarten urge teachers to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid because: “We have to get rid of No Child Left Behind.” NCLB, while flawed and poorly funded, is still our government’s greatest attempt to improve the quality of instruction nationwide. Weingarten didn’t call for the government to refine NCLB. She wanted it GONE. Her job, along with improving teachers’ benefits is to shield them from accountability. The A.F.T.’s demand that class sizes be reduced is a joke unless our nation also does the following:

• Eliminate lifelong tenure
• Develop nationwide guidelines for assessing teachers in each grade.
• Develop national guidelines for due process: When should a teacher get fired?
• Lower class sizes in grades K-3 and buy EVERY SCHOOL one of the well-researched reading programs. Demand that teachers learn these programs well or be fired.
• Lower class sizes in grades K-3 and buy EVERY SCHOOL one of the well-researched math programs. Demand that teachers learn these programs well or be fired.
• Require that every teacher spend longer hours learning these new programs, but pay them well for their time.
• Pay for short term individualized tutoring FOR EVERY CHILD WHO NEEDS IT.
• Buy every secondary school the best researched programs in reading and math. Demand that teachers learn these programs well or be fired.
• Require that every secondary-level teacher spend longer hours learning these new programs, but pay them well for their time.
• Do not hire someone as a principal or assistant (vice) principal until they’ve spent a year, under close scrutiny, demonstrating their ability to teach using the reading and math programs their district has chosen.

Teachers should be highly paid and receive incredible benefits packages, but they must prove their worth every year or be fired. As long as education is held hostage by teachers’ unions, we’ll continue to hear a phrase that I’ve heard scores of times: “I have tenure; you can’t make me do this.” As long as this is allowed to continue, lowering class sizes won’t mean a damn.