Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Politics Dems Pounce on Haslam's Latest Dumb Idea
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 11:21 AM
It's a move that would quickly lead to increased class sizes, and it is a major threat to student achievement.Common sense tells you that more students in each classroom means less individualized instruction for each student. For decades, smaller class sizes have helped narrow the achievement gap and increase student learning.
In fact, the best private schools in Tennessee show off their small class sizes and brag about the personalized education they can offer due to their low student-teacher ratios.
Why isn't this philosophy good enough for public school kids?
Sign our petition calling on Governor Bill Haslam to immediately withdraw his plan to increase Tennessee classroom sizes.
Update: An email from the state education flack
Jeff,
I wanted to bring to your attention an inaccuracy in your post from today: http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2012/02/08/dems-pounce-on-haslams-latest-dumb-idea
In it, you say, “Even Tennessee Democrats realize this is a stupid idea. We're talking about Gov. Bill Haslam's proposal to lift the cap on class sizes in public schools.”
This statement is just not true. Gov. Haslam’s bill proposes to do away with the average maximum class size. This bill is all about allowing for local flexibility and control in districts, and does not in any way mandate larger class sizes. The maximum class size would remain the same. Please make that change to your story, so that it is factually accurate.
Thanks,
Kelli
Kelli Gauthier
Communications Director
Tennessee Department of Education
(615) 532-7817
Update II: House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh says Haslam's proposal would end state funding for 5,300 teaching jobs.
Comments (29)
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"Haslam told reporters after visiting a Maury County middle school on Tuesday that Tennessee is the only state to set maximums for both total and average class sizes." What does "total" mean here? And is it true?
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"Total" refers to each individual class and is higher than the school-wide "average" allowed. Current law is designed so that there is an absolute ceiling on the number of students in any given class, but lower required "average" sizes means that every class in the school can't be maxed out, otherwise you'd never hit the lower average. It's a compromise so that a few classes can be large (and hit the max), but that most classes will have to come in well under the max so that the school-wide average can be met.
Currently (T.C.A. 49-1-104), the maximum individual class sizes are:
K-3: 25; 4-6: 30; 7-12: 35
School-wide class size averages under current law are set at 5 below the maximum.
Pete, in Tennessee we have a state board of education rule providing for both average class size and maximum class size for various grades ranges...K-6, 4-6, 7-12. The average class size prevents the local school system from maxing out the size on every class, while still giving the local school administration some flexibility with regard to the placement of students. Haslam's bill would empower the local to assign the maximum number of students to every single class.
For K-6, average class size is 20, maximum class size is 25. For 4-6, average class size is 25, maximum class size is 30. For 7-12, average class size is 30, maximum class size is 35.
Neither the Dems nor anyone else can actually prove that lower class sizes cause increases classroom performance to begin with.
"Neither the Dems nor anyone else can actually prove that lower class sizes cause increases classroom performance to begin with."-Gilbert Martin.
Nor can it be demonstrated that Mr. Martin can compose a coherent declarative sentence.
Actually, they can, GM. In fact, Tennessee's own Project STAR study a few years back concluded that smaller class sizes did lead to higher academic achievement in grades K-3.
Yes, Gilbert Martin, lower class sizes couldn't possibly help kids learn. Isn't that why homeschooled children never win spelling bees and never ever show up on Jeopardy teen tournaments? Everyone knows that crazy one-on-one stuff never works. Radical thinking! Here's what we should do: Throw kids into huge theaters with one teacher at the front like we had at U.T. If they can't learn, it's their own damn fault.
Gilbert seems to think that multivariate dependence means you can eliminate any given variable you want from the causal relationship. Reductive thinking is the hallmark of a zealot.
Thanks for the clear and helpful answers to my question. "Total" was a poor word choice in the passage I quoted.
It seems pretty obvious to me that students will get better educated in a smaller class than they will in a larger class, all other things being equal. Maybe there is a certain minimum number below which student interaction becomes less productive, but I don't imagine classes are likely to dip below that number. I feel pretty certain that Gilbert let that comment fly with very little information to back it up, knowing he can always claim that something isn't "proved." Waiting around for "proof" of every bit of simple logical reasoning makes one look like a willful clod. Exactly how MUCH difference class size makes is less obvious, of course, but apparently that's been studied.
The pass 25+ yrs experience with democratic majorities in this state show
that this party is only interested in TEA support and nothing else on education.
With the poor performances of our students shows that plainly. Any changes
seeking better performance without throwing more wasted dollars at this
most important sector should be welcomed!
if you are a school board member and you are against larger classes the the solution is obvious: do not increase class sizes. This complaining about the state policy reeks of major sports owners complaining about player salaries.
"Actually, they can, GM. In fact, Tennessee's own Project STAR study a few years back concluded that smaller class sizes did lead to higher academic achievement in grades K-3."
Conclusions of self serving studies conducted by the educrat establishment prove nothing.
The burden of proof always lies on those claiming the affirmative condition.
And those claiming it have to prove it with unequivocal and absolute definitiveness or they've proven absolutely nothing.
"Gilbert seems to think that multivariate dependence means you can eliminate any given variable you want from the causal relationship. Reductive thinking is the hallmark of a zealot"
"multivariate dependence" and "causal relationship"?
Ha!
You seen to think that you can get by with circular logic. You have to prove causation and dependence with unequivocal and absolute definitiveness.
Or to put it another way, anything that can't be proven with the exact same level of definitiveness that I can prove that my car has 4 wheels attached to it isn't proven at all.
"Conclusions of self serving studies conducted by the educrat establishment prove nothing.
The burden of proof always lies on those claiming the affirmative condition.
And those claiming it have to prove it with unequivocal and absolute definitiveness or they've proven absolutely nothing."
Even though this study was overseen by a Republican administration and played no small part in the formation of their own NCLB standards, you still wanna bomb-chuck?
Not sure what you mean by "educrat", but quite frankly the study has been incredibly valuable and is viewed by many even outside of the "educational" community as a source of extremely high-quality data. Project STAR was funded by the State of Tennessee and conducted as a joint venture between Princeton and State University of New York under the guidance of the US Department of Education under President Bush, no less. It's been used as a datasource in dozens of studies by economists as well; a group whose lust for quality numbers is well known.
Y'know, it doesn't matter who the identity of the people are that do the study if you 1) understand the test methodology, 2) can _prove out_ the test methodology, and 3) have access to the raw data. It's generally understood that the findings of Project STAR are all three of these. To pooh-pooh that because you dislike the "general community" of people who do such studies is illogical and bull-headed.
"It's been used as a datasource in dozens of studies by economists as well; a group whose lust for quality numbers is well known."
Now that's funny - seeing as how such causation claims regarding class sizes and educational outcomes are in the same category as economic claims about the validity of Keynesean economic theory.
"And those claiming it have to prove it with unequivocal and absolute definitiveness or they've proven absolutely nothing."
Who says? How many things in life are "unequivocal and absolutely definitive?" This is a surly child's attitude, Gilbert. Did you used to demand unequivocal and absolutely definitive proof that playing with fire would burn your hands?
"This is a surly child's attitude, Gilbert. "
You can't prove that statement to be true with unequivocal and absolute definitiveness, therefore it's false.
"if you are a school board member and you are against larger classes the the solution is obvious: do not increase class sizes."
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. TOSS has come out against this proposal, because directors of schools fear that county commissions will use it as an excuse to appropriate less money for teacher salaries, thus forcing boards of education to have larger classes, even if the board doesn't want to increase class size.
Baby boomers all over this country were in large public school classes in the Fifties and Sixties. I can't say we suffered for it. I'd have to search for my old class group photos to get the exact numbers, but I don't think I was ever in a class of fewer than 35 -- and usually the number was more than 40 -- from first grade through twelfth.
One teacher for each class, no aides. My teachers never seemed stressed, though. We started school right after Labor Day in September; summer vacation began in May. By the time I reached high school in the Sixties, the school year had been lengthened by a few days.
Larger classes mean more work for teachers in terms of grading papers, etc., but I never felt neglected or found it difficult to learn because of the numbers. I didn't attend any kind of kindergarten or nursery school. I went into first grade cold at age 5. Kids born in a particular year were kept together; they were not made to start school later if they were born after Labor Day and hadn't reached age 6 by then, unless the parents wanted to hold their kid back.
In the first grade, our teacher, good ole Miss Hardison, divided us into groups of a few and, while the rest of the class worked quietly on some assignment, Miss Hardison took each small group, one by one, to a corner for up-close and personal learning in front of an easel. I can see the letters and words on that easel right now. I was so excited about what would come up on that easel. That's how I learned to read. And to love reading.
There was strict discipline and no behavior problems. It was pretty authoritarian, and most of us were kind of afraid of our teachers, in elementary school anyway. I remember, oh I remember, being called up to stand in front of my first grade teacher so she could smack my palm with a ruler after I took my fat pencil out of my desk during rest time and, instead of resting, practiced writing my name on my newspaper mat on the floor.
I didn't tell my parents about that incident till I was grown. Parents backed up the teachers.
I resented the punishment, and it affected my attitude toward school, though I always did well in school. I don't believe in physical punishment of children. But there is much to be learned from the way things used to be done. Some of those things worked well.
When I was in school, Maury County, which was once a nationally known educational center (for girls and women in particular), had one of the best school systems in Tennessee. We had the cream of the crop in our teachers. Women had fewer vocational options then.
I was thinking about all this recently while I was talking with one our county historians about a dog, Ike, that used slide down the slide with us during school recess. He'd get into line and patiently wait his turn, over and over again. Ike showed up every day and did everything with us on the playground. As a kid, I thought it was great the school allowed it. We know what would happen these days.
@Donna: I pretty much had the same experience. The difference today is drugs, lack of parental responsibility, lack of discipline and respect and a change in methods when none were required. Evilution.
Gast, I remember growing up with the knowledge that American adults deeply valued my generation, the baby boomers. Their lives were centered around us, our health, our education, etc. We seemed treasured, as a group, in a way that I know my parents and grandparents did not feel growing up. I guess it was because so many of the adult generation had been lost in war, and baby boomers were the replacement to be guarded.
So, I'm sure it was a shock when many of our generation rebelled against a number of things the preceding generation valued and believed. But they raised us in an era of expanding horizons, and collective thinking followed.
@Donna: The rebellion started at the same time drugs became prolific. I'm starting to think that drugs have actually caused some small permutation that has affected our ability to think. That and a proliferation of video games and entertainment that requires no thinking, only reaction, is slowly turning our nation into Elbonia. (See Dilbert cartoon.)
Naa, I think Elvis, Eddie Cochran, and related folks preceding and following had a lot to do with it. But they were merely a reflection of some release.
I think the war bombs ripped some veil.
The psychedelic drugs played some role in mind expansion that was absorbed by the group even if individuals never ingested the drugs -- most didn't. The drugs trigger properties in DNA and latent biochemistry that are usually suppressed and inactive, but those properties are there and constitute our past and/or our future. I don't recommend these drugs to anyone; you can get pretty messed up; it's nothing to play around with.
As for the video games, when my kids began playing them while growing up, I sensed the games were assisting some new brain development and wiring meant to occur or primed for release in that generation. As part of evolution.
Just what it seemed to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyU5bsfRdpE
Wow, I was waaay off topic. Sorry. I have to get back to work. Have a good day, y'all.
Smaller class sizes mean more teachers with mean more union dues which mean more funding for studies that say smaller class sizes are good things!
@Donna: Starting at about eighth grade I averaged about an hour and one half of homework every night. How much is assigned nowadays?
Whatever the effect of arcade games on thinking ability we should at least have a nation of really great fighter pilots.
Anyone ever notice how much better people wrote and expressed their thoughts two hundred years ago, and they didn't have spell check, either. Or discordant amplified music.
Yeah, I remember the long, long hours of homework -- for me, at least two or three hours every night in high school, sometimes more. I had no time for anything else, except on weekends, but the work was piled on then, too. I was in gymnastics in school and was also in a singing group, later a band, outside school and barely had time for them. I don't think that's the way to go. Kids need lives of their own.
But I very much question methods that assign little homework.
Kids have more to learn today in terms of technology, with computers, etc., but they seem to pick that up easily.
In my school days, California had the best public schools in the country (no more!) and offered courses we didn't have here, subjects I would have liked to study. But we had experts in the basics and college prep. Not bad for a rural county with a small population (back then). My high school physics teacher here in Maury County later went to work for NASA. His was the most mentally challenging, mind-blowing class I ever took, in public school or in college.
