Monthly Archives: November 2014

Initiative 1351 Passes. Now what?

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Education Policy, Elementary

By Tom

It took a while for the results to trickle in, but after nearly a week it’s become clear that the voters have decided to lower class sizes in Washington. I voted yes, with all the passion as a 1988 vote for Michael Dukakis.

Why the lack of enthusiasm? Three things: implementation, allocation and expectations.

Implementation: Now that the initiative passed, none of us can expect our classes to suddenly shrink. I certainly don’t. Class sizes aren’t going to get any smaller unless and until there’s someplace to put those extra kids. And in my school, there simply isn’t. Every one of our classrooms is being used, along with the two portables that were brought in over the summer. And it’s the same all over our district. If I understand the Initiative correctly, there are workarounds for schools that don’t have room to create new classrooms; it involves hiring extra teachers until the average class size goes down. It sounds to me like my district will be hiring a fleet of learning support teachers, which is a good thing; as long as we’re careful about how it plays out. This is definitely something all of us need to pay attention to and get involved in. It could be a great thing for our schools or it could be a mess.

Allocation: 1351 is going to be really expensive, which is a problem, since lawmakers don’t run the state like a restaurant. “I hope you enjoyed your lower class sizes, citizens; here’s the bill. I’ll be your cashier when you’re ready.” What they do instead is move money around so that as few voters as possible notice. My guess is that the people who will end up noticing the most will be teachers. I worry about my salary, my benefits and my National Board bonus. I also worry about the state’s ability to pay for other important education programs, specifically those that involve college readiness.

Expectations: Once we get these smaller classes – or whatever workaround we end up with – all eyes are going to focus on outcomes. And I don’t think they’ll be waiting for the class of 2028. In fact, as a fourth grade teacher I’m looking forward to 2016, when I get a class of kids who all came out of 17-student third grade classrooms, all of whom had the benefit of more teacher attention. And my expectations will increase each year. But that’s nothing compared to what “outsiders” will be looking for. And by “outsiders” I probably mean the Seattle Times, who were relentless in their opposition to 1351, both in and out of their editorial page. I don’t seriously doubt that we’ll have the data to show that the Initiative led to student improvement, but I have no doubt that the doubters will be looking really hard to prove that it didn’t. And that worries me.

So I guess it’s time to celebrate. But briefly, because there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure this turns out well.

Class Size—Beyond One Teacher and Four Walls

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Education Policy

One year I team-taught in a school where I was one of two teachers for 25 fourth through sixth grade students! In that small class I could creatively meet the needs of a wide range of student abilities, from non-readers to nine-year-olds reading Shakespeare plays with me.

By the way, my students who were non-readers at the beginning of the year read Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang independently by the end of the year. In that one year I had the time to work intensively with their small group, teaching them both phonics and sight reading, and taking them through the first, second, third, and fourth grade readers before they tackled their chapter book independently, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. They loved the book and reveled in their success!

Meanwhile, I also had the time to work with three other reading groups, including the group working on Shakespeare. After we finished reading one of the plays at school, the students watched the BBC production at home, and their parents came in afterwards to say how much their children enjoyed and understood the play. Then they me asked if they could attend the class next time we read a play!

I know from firsthand personal experience how much I can accomplish with significantly smaller classes.

Even if we get smaller class sizes, even if the McCleary decision forces the legislature to fully fund education, even if the money arrives in my lifetime, I do not necessarily expect the ratio to work out to be one teacher, four walls, 23 students.

For one thing, as people have pointed out, to have smaller groups of students per teacher requires more classrooms. The cost isn’t just about hiring more teachers, it’s about building more classrooms. More buildings.

Or maybe not.

When I was in New York years ago I ran into an enthusiastic group of teachers. They worked in a program where three teachers taught two classrooms of children in one double room. That worked out to a one to 20 ratio without building an extra classroom.

The kicker to their program? One of the three teachers in each partnership had to have training in Special Ed.

The teachers said, “Go to reading” or “Go to math.” The kids scrambled to the three points in the huge space for one of three reading or math groups—on grade level, needing help, above grade level. By the way, the groups needing help were having so much fun, everyone wanted to be in those groups! There was support in the classroom for science and social studies. No students left the room for special support services. There was no stigma to getting services.

My only suggestion to them was that one member of the team should have training in gifted education. They thought that was a great idea. I moved to Washington and never heard any more about that program. But I always liked the idea.

Three teachers, four walls, 60 students. Teachers trained in teams with specialists in Special Education and gifted. It’s a way to reduce class size without paying for more classroom construction. (Some remodeling, maybe, it’s true, but nothing more.)

And it’s a way to provide for differentiated instruction all day, every day.