WEEKEND QUOTABLES

A blue sign, reading “Veterans for Impeachment,” grabbed national audience views at the World Series last night, when the cameras trained on batters at Nationals Park. The sign also appeared on the Jumbotron in the stadium where Donald Trump watched the game. When the president and first lady appeared on the Jumbotron as well, the crowd booed him and chanted “lock him up.”

SEIU 73 Pres. Dian Palmer, celebrating union's agreement with the city.

“This is a victory for working people in Chicago and shows what is possible when we unite and take action,” the head of SEIU 73 said. -- Sun-Times

CPS Board Pres. Miguel del Valle to Parents and teachers of students with disabilities

Tentative agreement in SEIU 73 strike

 “We can’t deny we’ve been deficient as a system about it. We have to do something about it, and we have to do it now,” del Valle told the group Saturday. -- Block Club Chicago

 Curtis Black

 Lori Lightfoot is not actually Rahm 2.0, and demonizing her risks isolating progressive voices vital to Chicago's future. -- Chicago Reporter

Cassie Cresswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools

“One of the issues with having hard caps is that if your system overall is underfunded, as soon as you set requirements in one area, then other stuff gets cut... If you snapped your fingers and put class caps in place, the overall system is so underfunded still, you’d end up just pushing around the dollars that you have. So you’d end up with people cutting arts or libraries. Some things (would) improve but other things won’t.” -- Tribune

David Orr

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget shows leadership, equity, guts and a lot of smarts...Progressive change doesn’t happen overnight, and the mayor’s doing what she responsibly can with the limitations she has. -- Letter to Sun-Times

Columnist Laura Washington on today's anti-Trump protest

Chicago has not been a go-to stop for Trump. In March 2016, then-candidate Trump was virtually run out of Chi-Town in the wake of a highly-touted campaign event. -- Sun-Times

Jacky Grimshaw, former Harold Washington aide

“We’re inviting everyone to join the effort to help change the narrative and actions coming from President Trump and the White House that are endangering people’s lives, our democracy, and the survival of the planet.” said Jacky Grimshaw, who now chairs Chicago Women Take Action. -- Tribune

Fope Olaleye

Although the term “reverse racism” is waning in popularity, its rhetoric is still rife. Many people are still reluctant to truly understand what racism is, confining themselves to dictionary definitions, which speak abstractly about “prejudice” rather than discussing what that looks like in the real world. -- Guardian

Yes, that Eddie Burke...

Buyer's remorse on Rahm's financial recovery plan

Fran Spielman on Rahm/Rauner in Thursday's Sun-Times:

Emanuel and Rauner are friends, education reform allies and former business associates who made millions together. Their families have vacationed together and shared expensive bottles of wine. Given that history and Emanuel’s difficult relationship with former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, the mayor had good reason to believe that better days were ahead for needy Chicago when Rauner used his personal fortune to defeat Quinn. Instead, the mayor’s petty fights with Quinn while Chicago came out pretty much ahead are beginning to look like the good ol’ days.

Remember how voters were sold Rahm's 'smart' financial recovery plan for Chicago? Well, it hasn't taken long for buyer's remorse to set in.

More Spielman:

Instead of building, what he hopes will someday be a “firewall” between the city and CPS, Emanuel alone is wearing the jacket for $200 million in school budget cuts that are only the beginning.

She seems to buy the line that despite the loss of 1,400 teachers and staff, "schools will open on time and class size will not increase." The first part is questionable. Can teachers really be expected to work with no contract? The second -- ridiculous! Class size is already exploding and special ed is next on the cutting block.

And if the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund doesn’t agree to make a five-month, $500 million loan from next year’s pension payment, even more devastating cuts will be needed that could raise classes to 35 students, force more than 3,000 teacher layoffs and trigger system-wide furlough days.

She's right there. That's why the CTU has no other choice than to support the mayor's dubious don't-try-this-at home borrowing scheme.

I believe that most Chicagoans, including Rahm's big-money backers, would return the mayor, along with his financial plan, for a full refund if they could.

Class Size: The Common Sense Bus doesn't stop on School Reform Blvd.

Reformers say: "But there's no research on benefits of smaller class size."

I'm increasingly confronted by some local, self-described school reformers who minimize the effects of rising class sizes on effective teaching and learning. "There's no research supporting smaller class size", they tell me. Of course, they are wrong.

But even showing them a pile of evidence, including the famous STAR study, doesn't seem to do much good. Actually, I don't think they are really into "looking at the data." Evidence seems to confuse or bore them. Instead they seem content to merely repeat what they hear from teacher-bashing, budget-slashing politicians like Mitt Romney or corporate-style reformers like Bill Gates and Secretary Arne Duncan, who claim that fewer, higher-paid teachers teaching larger classes is the solution to the budget crisis.

Higher teacher pay does sound nice. But, as you might expect in these difficult times, what we really end up with are massive increases in class size, downward pressure on teacher pay and our best, most experienced teachers being replaced by cheaper newbies or TFAers.

Kindergarten class with 51 children 

My argument now has been reduced to an appeal to common sense. I say, just try teaching a kindergarten class with 51 children or a first-grade room with 48 kids likes the ones at Avalon Park Elementary, a school with nearly all African-American kids from low-income families on Chicago's south side. I don't care how accomplished an early-childhood teacher you are, you are being set up to fail.

Unfortunately, the common sense bus no longer stops on School Reform Blvd.

The numbers cited above are not isolated examples but typify the conditions for thousands of CPS students who started this year in grossly overcrowded classrooms and will likely face even worse conditions in the coming school year. They come from a new report from Sarah Karp at the Better Government Association (BGA) who writes:

System-wide, about 1,600 elementary classrooms – or about 20 percent of the nearly 8,500 non-charter elementary classrooms in the 2014-2015 school year – exceeded CPS’ own standards, the BGA found. Two-thirds of those overcrowded classrooms are on the South and West sides. About half have 90 percent or more low-income students.

There are no formal penalties for exceeding classroom size standards.

Even though the teachers union is technically barred under recent legislation from negotiating down class size, you can bet that it’s an issue at the center of current contract negotiations.

CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey says,

"We are worried about [CPS] devastating class sizes. We are worried about them herding students into classes, like animals into stockyards. We are looking for some assurances, especially in the lower levels."

At some point, I'm hoping the reformers will be forced to come to their senses. More research probably won't do it. But maybe growing community anger will.

After all, even the neo-confederates in South Carolina have now agreed to take down that flag.

More unqualified teachers assigned to schools serving poor and minority students

Harvard students are calling for and end to the university's ties with TFA.

MORE STUFF WE ALREADY KNEW…The feds are telling us once again that there's a huge disparity in children’s access to fully qualified and experienced teachers. The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights has begun collecting data on student enrollment by race and ethnicity and teacher characteristics. Their data indicates that 1) black students are more likely to be taught by a first-year teacher than white students, 2) their teachers are more likely to be paid less and 3) they are more likely to have an uncertified or unlicensed teacher.

In states like Pennsylvania, with wild charter school expansion, more than 20% of teachers are unlicensed in the schools with the largest concentration of minority students. In largely white schools, just 0.2% of teachers lack a license.

In southern, so-called right-to-work states like Louisiana, with weakened teacher unions, 20% of classes in the most impoverished schools are taught by teachers who don’t meet the federal definition of “highly qualified” — which generally means they lack a bachelor’s degree, are unlicensed or don’t have a strong academic background in the subject they’re teaching. In the wealthier schools, fewer than 8% of classes are led by a teacher who’s not highly qualified.

As I pointed out in yesterday's post, in response to the Southern Poverty Center's lawsuit, Louisiana has admitted that the state under-served special-needs students and those with disabilities.

OK, interesting, but why and what to do about it? Conservatives and corporate-style reformers are calling for more Vergara-type suits aimed at getting rid of teacher tenure  and collective-bargaining agreements which they claim, serve only to protect incompetent teachers who too often end up assigned to teach the neediest students in the most impoverished schools.

But their argument has been debunked simply by looking at the widening gap between no-union states like Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, on the one hand,  and union-strong states like Massachusetts where tenure rights are protected, on the other. Isn't it obvious that you don't get rid of inequality by eliminating the teaching standards that lead to tenure and other means of attracting keeping experienced, qualified teachers in the profession?

A better approach would target the regulation of the conduct and the expansion of privately-run charters schools which are often allowed and encouraged to hire uncertified teachers and teachers teaching outside of their field.

Another would be to take a long, hard look at corporate-reform groups like Teach for America (TFA) which receive an obscene about of funding from school districts, charter operators and power philanthropists  for placing hundreds of unqualified or under-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students.

ANOTHER SUGGESTION
USE supplemental Title I funding to disadvantaged schools to boost salaries to attract and retain top teachers. According to a report in POLITICO, in nearly every state, teachers of minority students and students from low-income families earn significantly less than teachers in wealthier schools, even after adjusting for the local cost of living.

More importantly, stop debasing teachers and rating them on the basis of student scores on standardized tests and other test-and-punish "accountability" systems which only discourages teachers from working in the very communities that need them the most.

Finally, we need to look at the inequities in the distribution of qualified teachers as but one component of an apartheid-like, highly-segregated education system that systematically denies poor students and students of color, access to a range of resources including equitable funding, newer and better equipped facilities and learning environments,  a rich curriculum, small class sizes and up-to-date technology.

FINAL NOTE… Pres. Obama tried to push the issue by proposing $300 million in competitive grants to push new strategies for getting high-quality teachers in front of needy kids. But Republicans scrapped the program in the Omnibus budget agreement (which many Democrats then supported and Obama signed into law).

Go figure.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Bethlehem, Pa. NAACP President Esther Lee 

"We could end up with segregation in another form," [Esther Lee] said of charter schools. "It's not 1909, but it's close." -- Express Times

Chicago principal, Troy LaRaviere

The [custodial] cuts mean “residents of Chicago lose out, and the corporations profit from our losses." -- Chicago Public Schools to lay off 476 custodians

Karen Lewis meets Ras Baraka.

Karen Lewis

Lewis, a former chemistry teacher, pointed to Newark as a learning lab for the right formula for political victory. "Money doesn't vote, people do. I believe a lot of hedge fund folks dumped money into [Newark mayoral candidate] Shavar Jeffries' campaign. Baraka was outspent, but he won," Lewis said. "The key is how do you connect with people and the others that are important to them. That's what elections are about, ultimately." -- Chicago teachers union leader and mayoral hopeful comes to Newark to learn from Mayor Baraka

Bob Fioretti

“Our current mayor promised so much, and like many of us, I hoped he would deliver. But our schools are being gutted, our streets are not safer and so many are missing out on economic opportunities and jobs.” Fioretti promised to listen to teachers and make CPS class sizes smaller while striking against school closures that were “against the will of our citizens.” -- Ald. Bob Fioretti announces run for mayor, attacks Emanuel

The politics of water and schooling in Detroit

A SMALL VICTORY -- Ongoing protests against Detroit's massive water shut-off to the city's poorest have forced a restructuring in the city's already bankrupt government. The so-called Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr has handed over control of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to elected mayor, Mike Duggan.

Jason Stanley writes in yesterday's New York Times:

Orr’s actions are a result of sustained and heroic activism by Detroit citizens, and a concomitant international outcry. Still, any victory they may be tempted to claim remains tenuous. Clause 6 of the order reads, “The EM may modify, amend, rescind, replace, supplement, or otherwise revise this Order at any time.” ("Detroit's Drought of Democracy")

And the reshuffling begs the question -- why is it that thousands of city residents can't afford drinking water?

Detroit photo-op for Duncan and T-Party pal Synder.

The state takeover, led by Tea Party Gov. Rick Snyder has been a disaster for the state's poor and low-income workers.  Snyder had disbanded local elected governments and school boards, placing them in the hands of corporate managers.

Detroiters haven't been the only targets of water shut-offs. Across the state Hamtramck, Warren, Pontiac, Eastpointe, Romulus and other cities have shut off delinquent customers.

Writing for The Guardian, Martin Lukacs argues that Orr’s focus on privatizing the water utility, “a prized resource worth billions,” turns the shut-offs into “a way to make the balance-sheet more attractive in the lead up to its privatization.” 

FOREIGN AID...W. Virginia environmental activists expressed solidarity in the form of more than 1,000 gallons of bottled water trucked into Detroit where more than 15,000 of the city’s poorest people have already had their water shut off — for being unable to pay their bill.

W.V. recently suffered its own water woes, with 300,000 people in its capital, Charleston, and surrounding areas told not to drink their water for several days after a January coal processing chemical spill.

As for the schools, Detroit's black community has also become the laboratory for class-size experiments like this one where 100 kindergartners are taught in one class. I suppose the aim is to prove Arne Duncan's thesis that class size doesn't matter. 

They're packing 50 students into L.A. high school classes

Arne Duncan green-lighted it. Remember?

"Class size has been a sacred cow and I think we need to take it on," Duncan told his pals at the American Enterprise Institute over croissants back in 2009.

 Now fast forward. Here's what's become of the "sacred cow."

In Dennis Danziger’s English class at Venice High, they play musical chairs every day; if you come in late, you don’t get a desk and have to sit in a chair on the sidelines. Unfortunately, they’re not playing for fun. They’re playing because his class of 50 students is so overcrowded the students can barely fit into the room. Cynthia Castillo, at Augustus Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles, is luckier; she has enough desk space for the 44 students enrolled in her first-period English class. -- L.A. School Report

School closings could do educational harm to thousands of students

Stockton Elementary School on the North Side is one of 129 CPS grade schools still being considered for closing. (Jose M. Osorio, Chicago Tribune)

Despite the claims by some Chicago education and political leaders that mass school closings will boost student learning outcomes, closing schools usually does little to raise so-called "student achievement" levels and in many cases actually causes great harm.

That's true for three reasons. First, closing thousands of schools, as mandated under Race To The Top, increases mobility rates, causes even greater instability in children's lives, especially in the lives of the poorest and neediest. Children need a stable, nurturing learning environment in which to study and learn.

According to a 2009 study, " Does Closing Schools Cause Educational Harm?" by Sunderman & Payne:

The negative effect of mobility is not just confined to the student who has changed schools; the entire school is impacted, affecting the achievement level of the non-mobile students as well. Teachers from classrooms with a high number of mobile students report that the constant student turnover disrupts the functioning of their classroom. Mobile students are typically already performing below grade level and require more review and attention from teachers. As a result, the pace of instruction is slower and the test scores of both mobile students and non-mobile students tend to be lower in highly mobile schools. One study comparing the curricular pace of stable schools and highly mobile schools in Chicago found that highly mobile schools lagged behind stable schools by one grade level on average.

Second:   Students are generally shipped across the city to schools that perform little or no better than the one that was closed. Take for example the mass school closings now being planned in Philadelphia. Those schools slated for closing have performed similarly, by most measures of academic achievement, to those of the potential receiving schools. This according to a study done by the group Research for Action. Their study compared state test scores and yearly progress benchmarks of the 29 schools slated for closure with those of the 48 receiving schools. Of the receiving schools, 44 exhibited similar scores in reading, and 36 were similar in math on last year's state exam known as the PSSA.

Elaine Simon is co-director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She has studied and written about Philadelphia school reform for almost three decades She calls school closings the "new urban renewal" and warns that students in schools slated for closing "are likely to wind up in schools much like the ones they were in before."

A 2009 study by Marisa de la Torre and Julia Gwynne for the Consortium on Chicago School Research,  revealed that 8 in 10 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students displaced by school closings transferred to schools ranking in the bottom half of system schools on standardized tests.

The third reason that closing schools actually does no good and usually does harm is that school closings will often make things even worse for student learning in the receiving schools. A Michigan State University study found that "while the closing of low-performing schools may generate some achievement gains for displaced students, part of these gains will likely be offset by spillover effects onto receiving schools." For one thing, closings will lead to increased class sizes and overcrowding.  Exploding class sizes are already a major negative factor because of continuing budget cuts and reduction in the teaching force. But now, school closing proponents are suggesting that even extremely high class sizes can produce better results.

In Chicago, for example, where the mayor has autocratic control over the schools, Rahm Emanuel's PR squad has launched a "bigger-is-better" class size media campaign, to justify his closing of possibly hundreds of neighborhood schools, primarily in black and Latino neighborhoods.

According to this morning's Tribune:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's push to close dozens of schools hinges on a vision of the "ideal" size for kindergarten through eighth-grade classes as 30 students, far larger than is the case now in the typical Chicago classroom.

Actually, many schools already have classrooms with more than 30 students in them. The problem here is that Rahm and CEO Byrd-Bennett are using the  number 30 to assess whether a school is "underutilized" or not. Schools with averages below the magical 30 number are being slated for closure without any research-based consideration of impact on student learning or on the out-of-school lives of students and their families.

Rahm's flack Becky Carroll takes it from ridiculous to farcical with her comments today, supporting class sizes of 40.

"It's the quality of teaching in that classroom," Carroll said. "You could have a teacher that is high-quality that could take 40 kids in a class and help them succeed."

Here she is just repeating claims made by Arne Duncan at a recent American Enterprise Institute conference, posing the false choice between a good teacher or a rational class size -- a choice wealthy suburban or private school parents never have to make.

I doubt that either Becky Carroll, Duncan, nor the mayor would ever send their own children to a school that had class sizes above 30. I'm also not sure what Carroll knows about "high-quality" teaching. She surely isn't speaking with the benefit of any valid or reliable research base on class size. But I can tell her one thing. There's no evidence that packing 40 children into a kindergarten or first grade class is anything but murderous to the learning process, no matter the skill of any particular teacher.

Ironically, some of the best research summaries on the benefits of smaller class size can be found right on the D.O.E.'s own website. Other resources include:

The National Class Size data base
Heros, Inc.
The NEA
Class Size Matters

In conclusion, if you were to design a foolproof plan to ensure that the most disadvantaged students continued to do poorly in schools, that they didn't perform up to and beyond their capacity, and to guarantee a widening of the so-called "achievement gap," you could do no better than to close neighborhood schools and send those children to schools that are ill-equipped to receive them, schools where they were removed from their own learning communities where they were known well by their teachers. If you then stuffed them into classrooms of 30-40 or more students, their fate would be sealed.

The view from right-field on class size

Checker Finn (right) and his Fordham Foundation crew are upset at White House report.

“So it should concern everyone that right now – all across America – tens of thousands of teachers are getting laid off....Think about what that means for our country. When there are fewer teachers in our schools, class sizes start climbing up. Our students start falling behind. And our economy takes a hit.” -- President Obama

Finn, Petrilli & Co. (pictured above) over at the right-wing Fordham Institute are freaking out over a recent White House report, Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom, which they describe as"decrying lost teaching jobs that will allegedly swell classes around the country." In the latest edition of Fordham's Flypaper, TFAer (of course) Tyson Eberhardt goes off on Obama for his apparent flip on the question of class size. 

As the election heats up, the Obama camp clearly sees class size and teacher layoffs as promising lines of political attack and important ways to energize powerful labor allies less than thrilled with many of the White House’s education priorities over the last four years. Unfortunately for the Dems, however, strident infomercials and gloomy white papers can’t undo the now-awkward but still-sound remarks of Mr. Obama’s education secretary on the issue. “Class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on,” Arne Duncan correctly said in 2011, a year after arguing that “districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in class size.”

Eberhardt has a point. Why has it taken until election time for the Dems to say the right thing on this crucial ed issue? Is this a real break from Duncan's blathering about the benefits of larger class size or just a bone being thrown to bring union voters back into the fold?

Either way, the fact remains that Obama has finally responded to Romney on an important issue of education. Will the Dems actually come up with a convention education plank?

With the loss of 300,000 teaching jobs in the past two years, resulting from budget cuts as well as from  the administration's own Race To The Top policies, class sizes in urban districts (not where Duncan or Obama send their children to school) have swelled to crisis proportions.  According to the report, "the national student-teacher ratio increased by 4.6 percent from 2008 to 2010, rolling back all the gains made since 2000." But that doesn't even begin to tell the real story.

In urban districts with high concentrations of children of color, like Detroit and Los Angeles, class sizes are now reaching 45-60 students. Duncan, along with his pals on the right -- remember, Duncan first made ridiculous bigger-is-better comments at an American Enterprise Institute conference -- continue to pose the false choice between a good teacher or a rational class size -- a choice wealthy suburban or private school parents never have to make.

Whatever his motives, Obama has taken a meaningful step forward in this report. It's no wonder he has the flies at Flypaper buzzing. I'm sure the boys at DFER aren't too happy either.

For more info and the latest research on class size, go to Class Size Matters.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Jesse Sharkey, CTU vice-president

"We've said to our teachers that we want fair compensation. We've also said we want a better (school) day and we want to make sure class sizes don't spike. (Our members) know that we simply don't have a wage demand." -- Chicago Tribune

Jacky Grimshaw

“If he [Rahm] ignores the community, if he ignores the aldermen, if he continues to be driven by what comes out of his brain and those of his advisors to the exclusion of the community, that’s a problem for him. Then, it becomes a charade that you really don’t want public input.” -- Sun-Times, "Crime, schools and race all hound Rahm Emanuel"

Penny Pritzker

Jodi Kantor and Nicholas Confessore

"For Ms. Pritzker, her high-profile backing of Mr. Obama came at an unexpectedly bitter cost. Their relationship made her a punching bag for the labor movement, which targeted her for what union officials call exploitative practices toward housekeepers by the Hyatt hotels." -- NYT

Andy Spahn, Democratic consultant

“Donors have asked, ‘Where’s Penny?’ We have called her and not gotten callbacks.” -- NYT

Shania

"Mommy, I want to change," Shania said a week into the school year, according to her mother, Laynory Loaiza. "There are too many kids in my class, and when I try to talk to the teacher, she doesn't pay attention to me." -- Huffington

Romney throws a right. Obama ducks.

I must admit, I was glad when Mitt Romney fired the first education salvo across the Democrats' bow last Wednesday at the Latino Coalition annual economic summit in Washington. My fear was that both parties were going to avoid mentioning the E-word right up through November. I thought, now that Romney has come out openly and purposefully, in a white paper,  with his party's anti-public school line, including support for vouchers, larger class size and a direct, unambiguous assault on teacher unions, Pres. Obama would have no choice other than to respond.

But not only did the president and education chief Arne Duncan personally duck out of sight on this one, in the one instance where Team Obama did respond -- on teacher unions -- they revealed to all those who still have illusions, the Democrats' own complicity in the corporate version of school "reform".

The exchange has gone something like this:

Romney: President Obama has been a tool of the teachers union,  unwilling to stand up to the "union bosses" and he has caved in to greedy teachers and their demands for collective bargaining rights and smaller class size.

Team Obama: No he hasn't. The President has been just as anti-union as you have and Sec. Duncan has consistently pushed for larger class sizes.

As Mitchell Landsberg reports in yesterday's L.A. Times: 

In fact, Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, have clashed repeatedly with teachers unions over the administration's support for charter schools, merit pay and standardized testing. And Obama has won praise from a number of Republicans for pursuing an education agenda that, in some significant ways, builds on the policies of former President George W. Bush.

 It was none other than brother Jeb who put it most succinctly:

"I am very, very encouraged, and excited that the president has taken on a core constituency of his party, which is the teachers' union," Bush said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. (Video here.)

It's now clear that Obama, the great triangulator, believes he has positioned himself just barely enough to the left of the Republicans, to maintain his AFT and NEA support while also placating his fund-raising base of anti-union, DFER hedge-fund reformers. Team Obama thinks he can win the election without enthusiastic support from the nation's 6.2 million teachers, and he may be right. We shall see.

But the question remains, who will stand up for public education, teachers and children?

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten will probably face some tough questions on this score when she turns up as the guest on #SOSchat tonight on Twitter. 

Early registration is now open for the Save Our Schools (SOS) People's Platform Convention, Aug. 3-5 in D.C. As one of the placards at last summers SOS march read, "You have the right to remain silent, but I wouldn't advise it."

Longer school day or smaller class size?

Research you can use 

"Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has voiced a preference for expanding school days and years to increase instructional time over reducing class sizes." -- Edweek

Why do Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel and corporate school reformers all favor longer school days and school year while opposing smaller class size initiatives? The answer is simple. The longer school day and year require fewer teachers, with each teacher teaching  more kids in larger classes at no extra cost. This is the business model of school reform. Yes, it's cheaper in the short run.  It is also a "reform" that is meant to override collective bargaining agreements.

However, there is no evidence that more instructional time alone, especially in larger classes, has any positive effect on measurable learning outcomes or on closing the so-called "achievement gap." In fact, many studies show a drop-off in student engagement that accompanies longer instructional time and that the addition of instructional time alone is insufficient to maximize learning outcomes (See: "Time and learning in the special education classroom." by Libby Goodman). There's plenty of other research showing little benefit expected from a further increase in the amount of math and reading instruction offered per day. For example: The merits of a longer school day, Charles R. Link, James G. Mulligan and Theory and practice of early reading, Lauren B. Resnick, Phyllis A. Weaver.

Ironically, some of the best research summaries on the benefits of smaller class size can be found right on the D.O.E.'s own website.  Other resources include:

• The National Class Size data base
• Heros, Inc.
• The NEA
• Class Size Matters

On that lost highway -- the Pennsylvania Turnpike

Headed east on the Turnpike, I'm hearning plenty about the devastation to public education now taking place under the banner of "reform".  Massive cuts to the education budget, firings of teachers and increased class sizes are expected to reverse many, if not all gains schools may have made in the past few decades.

A survey of Pennsylvania school districts released Thursday suggests teacher layoffs, instructional program cuts and tax increases beyond inflation are increasingly likely if Gov. Tom Corbett's cut of more than $1 billion in education subsidies stands. For example, 17 percent of the responding districts increased class sizes this year, but 86 percent expected to do so next year. -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The impacts of the budget cuts are severe and will deeply affect the opportunity for students to learn across the state," Jim Buckheit, executive director of the school administrators association, said in a conference call with reporters. "It's the wrong answer for Pennsylvania's children today and the wrong answer for Pennsylvania's future."

Duncan's Croissants

I'm really pissed at my friend Arne Duncan. He never even thought to invite me to his Breakfast With Bloggers over at the DOE. He knows how much I love those croissants and coffee, ordered up fresh from the department commissary. I guess he's not quite ready to reach across the other aisle. That's OK, Arne. I'm patient.

Or maybe the breakfast was one of those Race-To-The-Top-type deals where you have to submit your blog posts in advance. Then Arne could look you right in the eyes, like he did with Arizona's Sen. McCain and Gov. Brewer, and determine who was most deserving of this meal on the taxpayer's dime. (Oops, put your guns away, T-baggers. I may be wrong about that. He probably paid for the croissants with private foundation dollars.)

Anyway, I'm not really grousing or complaining (I got my own coffee & muffins Letizia's in Logan Square). I also got a full report on the eat-in this morning from Edweek's Michelle McNeil and from my favorite teacher/union-bashing blogger, Rick Hess, who probably had only a short cab ride over from his AEI think-tank office. You can read both of their accounts for yourself, but here are my highlights.

From McNeil:

First off, the department released two guides for states: one on "smart ideas to increase productivity and student achievement" and another on flexibility states have in using existing federal dollars. [But, adds Michelle] there's a footnote the Education Department has inserted saying it doesn't guarantee the "accuracy, timeliness or, completeness" of the ideas in this document, nor does the department pass judgment on their "importance or success." So, I'm wondering how useful these "smart ideas" really are?

ME: You know, Michelle, I've been wondering the same thing.

From Hess:

Duncan firmly pushed back against reflexive small-class mania. He suggested that it doesn't make sense to insist that a great teacher can only teach 22 kids--even if she feels like she can handle 29 and would gladly carry the larger load if she'd be compensated accordingly. He said, "Class size has been a sacred cow and I think we need to take it on. Give me and my wife a choice of putting our kids with a great teacher of 28 or a mediocre teacher of 23, and I know what I'd choose every time."

ME: Isn't it great that Arne is sticking it to all those maniacs who listen to those lazy teachers and who believe all that class-size  research and stuff. They are making such a big deal over a measly 60 of the nation's poorest kids being packed into Detroit classrooms. Surely there are great teachers over there in Michigan (who haven't already been riffed) who will gladly race to the few remaining inner-city Detroit schools to shoulder such a burden.

As for Arne himself, I feel badly for him and his wife, sitting there hoping against hope for a chance for their kids to have a great teacher and a 28-student classroom. The Duncan's don't send their kids to inner-city schools where many class sizes have swelled to 40 or more as a result of the economic crisis and mass teacher firings. To avoid D.C. schools (even when Michelle Rhee was  running them), the Duncans moved across the river to suburban Arlington, where schools and class sizes remain relatively small.

PLEASE SOMEONE. ANYONE. Help the Duncan's find a school with 28 per class and a great teacher for their poor kids.

Duncan wants larger schools and larger "smartly targeted" class sizes

Arne Duncan urged districts to consider "modest but smartly targeted increases in class size." As a parent, Duncan said, he'd much rather have his kids in a class of 26 with a really excellent teacher, than in a class with 22 kids, lead by a mediocre teacher. (Edweek)

Duncan, speaking at a forum sponsored by the neocon American Enterprise Institute, also called for closing "under-populated schools." But for most, who can't afford a home in his Arlington,Virginia neighborhood, those aren't really the choices, are they? The Duncans' don't send their kids to inner-city schools where many class sizes have swelled to 40 or 50 as a result of the economic crisis and mass teacher firings. To avoid D.C. schools (even with Michelle Rhee running the show) they moved across the river in suburban Arlington, where schools and class sizes remain relatively small.

"I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education," Duncan told the Wall Street Journal.

First of all, Duncan hasn't really "saved the country's children," or its educational system, has he? And while it is all well and good to want the best for his own children, it's a bit disingenuous of him to use them as an example of why he doesn't mind a class of 26 with an ace teacher in front of it. Well of course not. That's not even an issue where he lives. For many kids in L.A. or Oakland however, the reality is a class size of 35-40, not 22-26, often with an inexperienced TFA teacher or a full-time sub teaching outside of their subject area.

Duncan tries to snow us with his comparisons to "Asian" schools and his use of averages when comparing their class sizes to those in U.S. schools to justify his claim. There is no real average class size, either here or in Asia. "Average" becomes almost a meaningless term in places where wealthy communities buy down class size and in poorer ones where size swells. In some inner-city neighborhoods in Los Angeles, for example, high school class sizes have swelled to 50 students. Class sizes in the 30s, once considered extreme, have become the new normal in high schools across Oregon.  Duncan must have already forgotten his home town, Chicago, where class sizes were  projected to climb above 35 until the teachers union filed suit to block the increases.

No, we don't need any more class-size increases--"smartly targeted" or not. Nor do we need our secretary of education using his bully pulpit to push for larger classes.

Klein cut secret deal to misuse state $$$

OOPS! He thought the gov said "INCREASE"  class sizes. 

The state cut $500 million in funding from the city schools this year, Zarin-Rosenfeld noted, and the system is facing a "a similarly bleak financial picture next year. But parent advocates note that even when times were good in 2007 and 2008, the department failed to reduce class size. (Juan Gonzalez)

How the TIF game is played in Chicago

Mayoral control of the schools makes Daley's hand-picked school board merely an extension of City Hall. This in turn enables the downtown, business-friendly TIF plan to loot the public schools for hundreds of millions of dollars without a peep from the board. This, combined with some of the lowest levels of state funding in the nation results in massive teacher lay-off and swelling class size. The newly-elected leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union wants to shine a light on TIF and find alternatives to making teachers shoulder the burden of the current economic crisis.

It's all explained more in depth on the CAN-TV discussion with Lorraine Forte, editor in chief of Catalyst Chicago, and Ramsin Canon, politics editor for Gapers Block.

'Don't worry. It's only 100,000 teachers--not 300,000'

WaPo liar Lane sounds like BP's Hayward

Lane's Post Partisan blog is anything but. Here he echoes the very partisan teacher/union bashers and tries to run the big lie past us, that firing hundreds of thousands of teachers is no big deal. 

Well, 300,000 teacher layoffs would increase the national student-teacher ratio in public schools from 15.3 to 1, to 16.6 to 1 – roughly where it was in 1997. And 100,000 teacher layoffs would increase it to 15.6 to 1 – the 2005 level. Neither number portends educational apocalypse.

Lane must not read the Chicago papers. CPS class size is projected to increase to 35/class. In L.A. the Times reports class size has already swelled above the 50 mark.

Lane is a class size deny-er. He's the schools' version of  BP's Tony Hayward who also told us not to worry, the "environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest." The loss of 300,000 (or even 100,000) teachers jobs is indeed, something to worry about.