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- What's a teacher to do when he or she has 40 students in their class? Class size is limited in grades K - 3rd. But from 6th grade through 12th, class size is allowed to rise to 40 students. Sam Louie goes to Robert Frost Middle School in Granada Hills, and meets one teacher who's been trying to teach science to 39 students. (TRT: 8:07)
- AFT
- The Brookings Institution’s “Policy from the Hip: Class-Size Reduction in California” Study
- California LiveWire: Teaching in the Golden State’s “Why Class Size Does Matter!” Blog
- The Council of Writing Program Administrators’ “First-Year Composition Class Size” Blog
- EPI’s The Class Size Debate
- Marginal Revolution’s “Class Size Doesn’t Matter Much” Blog
- NEA
- San Diego State University’s “Class-Size Reduction and Teacher Quality: Evidence from California” Study
- SignOnSanDiego.com’s “Class-Size Myth Lives On” Blog
- UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies
40 Students in a Class?
Last updated: May 17, 2009
Reporter's NOTES
Sam Louie
This was an eye-opener for me when it came to covering school-related issues. I just never imagined that LAUSD teachers had to deal with so many kids in the classroom.
The school district did not allow our video cameras inside the school in question, but they did allow us to take digital pictures of a classroom on a separate day. This is a challenging situation for everyone involved. So we’ll see what happens in the near future with a new superintendent in place.
Insider Viewpoints
When the 2006 school year began, even though it was my 23rd year in LAUSD, when I saw all my classes with 40 students, I snapped. This is no way to run a school district, spending millions on training teachers who must teach in an impossible environment.
Try to imagine 40 eighth graders in a class, 40! The board has to realize that the classroom must come first.
No training can change the fact that 40 in a class is an unacceptable number. It cannot be tolerated.
The board doesn’t get it; someone had to start the conversation. Is 40, 39 or 38 kids in a class education or is it warehousing?
Should we have Math and English coaches if Math and English classes are too large? Should we spend millions for the infrastructure to assess students who have little chance to learn in classes of 40? It is a question of priorities!
Jay Gussin
Eighth Grade Teacher
So the governor and the CTA have sprung a $3 billion plan to improve troubled California schools on a surprised legislature…The inconvenient truth here is that class-size reduction doesn’t work.
It’s just a way for the CTA to make life easier for teachers, masquerading as an attempt to improve education. Cue Lisa Snell of the Reason Foundation:
“A new RAND study…finds that California’s large-scale class-size reduction program — without the other components of the SAGE intervention — has had little effect on student achievement in the Golden State…Nevertheless, California’s class-size reduction program did have consequences — unintended ones.
“Qualified teachers in urban areas fled to higher-performing schools in the suburbs, where class-size reduction meant that new teaching positions opened up. Urban schools were faced with huge shortages of classroom space and qualified teachers.
“As a result, many less-experienced teachers were hired. Since student achievement tends to be more strongly correlated with teacher quality than with small class size, many urban students were actually worse off after the class-size reduction program took effect.”
Chris Reed
Writer
SignOnSanDiego.com
Students across Los Angeles attend extremely overcrowded classrooms. Half of all math classrooms and two of every three science classrooms in the LAUSD enroll more than 33 students.
Nationally, there are almost no schools that offer such large classes. The average math class in the nation enrolls 22 students, and the average science class enrolls 24.
Los Angeles high-school teachers serve 40% more students than high school teachers across the nation. The overcrowding in Los Angeles classrooms undermines student learning and their progress to graduation and college.
Los Angeles students have less access to teacher instruction, feedback and guidance than students across the nation. We can create smaller classrooms where students learn from well-trained and caring teachers.
But this will require us to invest more in our schools. Los Angeles schools spend only 85% of what the average U.S. school spends per student. Surely we can and must do better.
John Rogers
Assistant Professor
UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
COMMUNITY VIEWPOINTS
Like LAUSD, the Santa Ana School District–where I teach 8th-grade science–also has a class average of 40 per class. In fact, I teach seven classes, some with 42 students shoved in.
I often find myself awake in the middle of the night, wondering if anyone cares or is willing to make a difference. This particular morning, I was searching through posts about class size and came across this blog.
I was so shocked after reading the post by Chris Reed that I looked up the original article from September 3, 2006, in which he stated that class reduction “doesn’t work. It’s just a stealthy way for the CTA to increase the number of teachers and make its members’ jobs easier.”
Really? You don’t want to make the lives of teachers a little bit easier?
Try running my classes for a week! I think you will find that classroom management feels more like circus management.
I also found the research of Lisa Snell that he quoted to be unsound data. Nowhere do they list class-size numbers.
For instance, do they mean that going from 40 to 30 students is not going to help class performance or is it going from 30 to 20 students that it is not going to help? Veteran teachers in the SAUSD have conceded that 40 students to a class are just how things are and that nothing will change it.
They tell me to stop trying to change the district and just to leave if it bothers me so much. But leaving the district would be conceding defeat.
My students are brilliant and captivating, but they are receiving the biggest disservice of all. If we want increased student performance, lower the class sizes.
8th Grade Teacher - Santa Ana, California
Forty students in the classroom, especially in science — where we use glassware and chemicals — is neither safe nor educational. Students don’t get the help and attention they need in order to learn!
Aphrodite Antoniou - Chatsworth, California
109th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 6028
To amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to provide grants to improve the infrastructure of elementary and secondary schools.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
September 6, 2006(8) Overcrowded classrooms have a dire impact on learning. Students in overcrowded schools
score lower on both mathematics and reading exams than do students in schools with adequate space.
In addition, overcrowding in schools negatively affects both classroom activities and instructional techniques. Overcrowding also disrupts normal operating procedures, such as lunch periods beginning as early as 10 AM and extending into the afternoon; teachers being unable to use a single room for an entire day; too few lockers for students; and jammed hallways and restrooms, which encourage disorder and rowdy behavior.
Pamela Dancy - Sylmar, California
[…] Top Stories and Commentary for Friday, November 10, 2006 40 Students in a Class? Blog by John Rogers/KCET Life and Times […]
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Mr. Gussin: Students, parents and teachers certainly can make their voices heard at school board meetings. Such civic engagement is important.
But the school board cannot address the dramatic overcrowding in LAUSD by acting alone. The fundamental levers for change lie in Sacramento. As long as California spends less per student than almost any other state, California teachers will continue to teach more students than teachers anywhere in the nation.
John Rogers - Los Angeles, California
Professor Rogers, do you have any advice on how teachers and parents can press your points with the district?
Jay Gussin - Valencia, Alaska
Are there any LAUSD parents or teachers who want to help start a grassroots organization to pressure board members to drop the norm to pre-2001 levels next school year?
Jay Gussin - Valencia, California