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Arthur Gamboa leads a discussion with his 38 students in his Modern Literature class at Palo Verde High School Wednesday, May 11, 2011.
Sunday, May 15, 2011 | 2 a.m.
Dwight Jones
Sun coverage
Sun archives
- Democrats pass education budget $700 million over governor’s plan (5-10-2011)
- Democrats on path to force Sandoval to veto education funding (5-10-2011)
- Las Vegas teachers protest proposed education cuts (4-27-2011)
- Teachers take fight over education funding to streets (4-13-2011)
- District to cut 200 bus driver positions, change school start times (4-8-2011)
- School District gives early approval to budget that cuts 2,500 positions (4-6-2011)
- Assembly passes bill to use reserves for school construction (3-3-2011)
- Regent says it’s time that K-12 shares in budget sacrifice (2-8-2011)
- Education in forefront of upcoming budget battle (1-30-2011)
- School officials warn of jobs cuts, larger classes under proposed budget (1-26-2011)
- Soft words during State of the State hide Nevada in pain (1-25-2011)
- Teachers not pleased with most of Sandoval’s speech (1-25-2011)
The former Catholic priest moves among his flock of high school seniors, questioning, listening, seeking eye contact with his students as they read aloud from Isaac Asimov’s series “Foundation.” The work, which is set so far in the future that people have forgotten about Earth, isn’t easy to absorb. Arthur Gamboa is working hard to engage the teenagers, but that’s difficult in this class of 40 Palo Verde High School seniors. The room is cramped. The aisles are narrow. There’s no space to walk behind teens seated in the back rows.
The 48-year-old teacher worries that he’s not clicking with a significant portion of his students because of the crowded conditions spurred by a three-year expansion of class sizes. “One half can get my presence by my walking among them. The other doesn’t,” Gamboa said. “There’s also another challenge, just trying to keep a student focused.”
Educators say 10 to 20 percent of the students will excel in any classroom, no matter how crowded. The bottom 10 to 20 percent will lag behind; class size is irrelevant. It’s the students in the broad middle — more than 180,000 in the Clark County School District — who will suffer the most as class sizes balloon amid state and local budget cuts, or so the thinking goes.
Clark County Schools Superintendent Dwight Jones said of looming budget cuts and growing class sizes, “I’ve made it pretty clear what is being proposed right now is just too devastating for the School District.”
Jones thinks the cutoff point for classroom effectiveness could be 30, 35 or 40 students in the upper grades. It’s a hard number to pin down. There are so many variables — the complexity of a subject, the intellectual and social skills of students, teacher skills, the intensity of parental involvement — to cite a few.
At some point teachers find that it’s increasingly difficult to reach individual students. Longtime Palo Verde teachers remember classrooms with five to 10 fewer students just a decade ago, settings that offered more opportunities for one-on-one contact. Then came the boom and its rapid growth in the neighborhood. And then the bust and shrinking government resources to support education. Students were crammed into classrooms.
“I’ve witnessed that the last few years,” Gamboa said. “The larger the numbers in the classroom, the more the problems that are exacerbated.”
Jones cites a familiar refrain among teachers working in crowded classrooms: “Am I giving them exactly what they need?” Some of his most effective classroom teachers say they aren’t.
In the 1970s, school districts throughout the country pushed for class-size reduction. The goal was to provide a nurturing atmosphere for students, particularly in the earlier grades when research shows that the foundation is laid for a child’s math, reading and writing skills.
Educators, school boards, legislators, teachers unions and taxpayers joined to invest in lower student-teacher ratios. Advocates say the research is clear — smaller classes provide a healthier learning environment.
Critics of class-size reduction say the results aren’t so certain. They often point to inner-city schools where public school systems adopted smaller classrooms, yet the results on standardized test scores at those schools have declined. To the critics, the chief result of class-size reduction has been increased spending per-pupil and higher taxes.
But most educators say conducting a well-run class becomes difficult when teachers are increasingly focused on crowd control and discipline. Teachers fret about losing many of the cues that come with physical closeness to students in need of help. They miss the uncertain eye movements, the nervous body language, the altered breathing patterns.
“At some point individuals don’t feel like they’re teaching anymore,” said Randall Boone, department chairman of curriculum and instruction at UNLV’s College of Education. “Instead, they feel as though they’re just providing a place for students.”
However, Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, doesn’t buy that analysis. The 40-year educator, writer and researcher thinks smaller class size is not the key to a strong education.
Rather, he stresses the need to hire and retain good teachers while ridding districts of their worst. An advocate of the type of reforms being pushed by Gov. Brian Sandoval and Jones — ending what is informally known as teacher tenure, the execution of effective teacher evaluations, and the annual firing of teachers who record poor academic growth rates among students. Hanushek thinks parents in Clark County should be more concerned about the coming layoffs of good young teachers who lack seniority.
The Stanford professor, who appears in Davis Guggenheim’s well-received 2010 documentary, “Waiting for Superman,” argues that if you lined up all of a school’s teachers in a row and graded each for his students’ growth in standardized test performance between the start and finish of a school year, you could get rid of 5 to 8 percent of that group. Over time, he said, there would be a dramatic improvement in student performance.
“The only thing that matters is teacher quality,” Hanushek said, noting that class size is largely irrelevant to a good teacher. “There are huge differences among teachers that are unrelated to their background characteristics. If you go for seniority, then that’s the mistake.”
Principal Dan Phillips, is photographed in his office at Palo Verde High School Wednesday, May 11, 2011.
The student population at the 15-year-old Palo Verde High School has changed with the recession, reflecting the new reality of its Summerlin neighborhood, some of which has an effect on academic performance. The school’s homeless population has grown, many families bouncing among the homes of friends and relatives. Grandparents have taken in children and grandchildren. Multiple families are living in what had been single-family homes, some renting, others owning. Students are stressed, hungry, tired and a growing number are not prepared to learn. Principal Dan Phillips thinks growing class size is one more disruption.
“We’re starting to see the stress out there,” Phillips said. “The first 10 or 15 years of their lives they’ve known nothing but affluence ... or there was a facade of affluence.” Some students are couch surfers, staying in the homes of friends, having nowhere else to live. “Education,” Phillips said, “is one area they think they have control.”
Budget cuts have reduced Palo Verde’s faculty from 160 teachers two years ago to an expected 108 next year. Classes have been eliminated in art, photography, auto shop, costume design, the sort of vocational classes that can set a strong foundation for students who don’t excel in more traditional subjects.
Phillips does the math: A class of 45 students typically has six non-motivated students; 20 are in the middle but not particularly motivated. He fears that the “vast middle” will grow with all of the cutting. “The filters we have to catch kids are going to fall through,” Phillips said.
Class-size growth in the valley’s schools is invariably linked to the construction boom that saw the region’s population explode from 708,750 in 1989 to 2 million before the economic collapse. From 1994 to 2008, the School District’s student population exploded to 310,000 students from 150,000. Bond measures were passed to build schools. Property taxes were raised to pay for their operation. A makeshift mix of temporary revenue packages was adopted by state lawmakers to help fund education. Yet educators and public school advocates say schools continued to lack the resources needed for smaller high school classes.
“Personally I’m glad that all of my children have graduated from the School District. I think the future is dismal,” said Carolyn Edwards, School Board president. A decade ago she lobbied Nevada legislators for a long-term plan to fund education.
Carolyn Edwards
She bemoans what she views as the failure of state lawmakers to adopt such a strategy, one that might have found a more stable funding structure for the state’s public schools, colleges and universities. “There is no vision here,” she said. “There is no future planning here.”
High school graduates from the late-1980s recall science and math classes with 20 to 25 students. It was a setup that played to the complexity of the curriculum and the needs of students in science labs, where one-on-one time with a good biology or chemistry teacher can be the difference between a student who comes to love or hate a subject.
It’s particularly frustrating for Palo Verde science teacher Dedra Steinline to see 38 of her 40 lab stations filled with sophomore biology students. She graduated 20 years ago from Basic High School, and she recalls much smaller science classes.
“There always seemed to be plenty of room. We had our own lab tables, drawers where we kept our supplies. It just felt bigger,” Steinline said. Thirteen years ago, during her first year as a teacher, she had 20 to 25 kids in her Palo Verde classrooms. “I felt like I really knew the kids,” she reflects. “There’s a whole different atmosphere when you have fewer kids. They become more of a family. Students pick up the kids lagging behind.”
Steinline, whose husband also teaches science at Palo Verde, considers the anticipated budget cuts, and considers what it could mean for next year’s classes. “You have the kids in the middle. They could go either way,” she said. “I could lose them. They could go the other way. That’s what I see.”
Brian Sandoval, a man for all dark ages.
"The only thing that matters is teacher quality," Hanushek said, noting that class size is largely irrelevant to a good teacher. "There are huge differences among teachers that are unrelated to their background characteristics. If you go for seniority, then that's the mistake."
Does that SOUND LOGICAL?
It sounds like a CONTRIVED POSITION by another clueless ACADEMIC that was PAID.
Of COURSE we should "keep the good teachers", AND we should REDUCE CLASS SIZE...it's NOT AN EITHER-OR proposition.
"The Stanford professor, who appears in Davis Guggenheim's well-received 2010 documentary, "Waiting for Superman,"
WELL RECEIVED???
As does all propaganda, when done correctly, it fools fools.
But it doesn't fool folks who can THINK...
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.ph...
http://www.theawl.com/2010/11/waiting-fo...
http://hpronline.org/hprgument/review-of...
Google. Try it. There are THOUSANDS of these links to articles critical of the MOVIE & IT'S PREMISE.
It's trash... and a shameful use of cinema for Political Propaganda...not exactly unprecedented, is it?
ARE THERE TEACHERS for whom class size wouldn't be a "deterrent"? SURE! Are they UNIQUE, and unusual, and ANOMALIES?
Yep.
Do we want what's best for ALL GREAT TEACHERS AND ALL STUDENT POPULATIONS?
"I'm not sure... what will it cost me?"...
@commonsense101.
The tenure issue is just a smoke screen.
If you want to talk about REAL education reform why aren't we talking about making the school year match that of the countries that are ahead of us in the world? Most other countries have school years of 200-220 days versus our 180. The longest break in other countries is one month, not THREE! Why do our students follow a calendar that was developed in 1850? When was the last time you saw American school kids working in the farm fields. That is why we have the calendar we have.
Why is nobody talking about the implimentation of Common Core State Standards, which is being done by 40 states, and is supported by many professional education groups as well as the National Governor's Association to raise the standards for American education. Why do other countries select their best and brightest to be teachers, pay them accordingly and treat them as respected professionals? Look at how the US selects, pays, and treats its teachers.
The high schools up north, for the most part, pass AYP. We have the model, small class sizes and teachers who have a relationship with their students. The model works in Nevada because it is Nevada schools, teachers and students who are being successful. The only problem is the cost, up to 33K in some districts. In Clark County, since the test scores are low, we are going to punish the teachers by making the classes bigger, taking away pay and resources. What sense does that make? It's like taking ammunition and supplies away from soldiers because they failed in their mission.
What business is going to relocate to a state that has the worst education system in the country, even if they have some of the lowest taxes? Would you do that if you owned a business? I don't think so.
Teacher tenure has nothing to do with educational reform. It is about union busting, and destroying collective bargaining. It distracts from the fact that we aren't doing any to improve the quality of education in Nevada unless we address the other, more important issues as well.
A couple of real PEARLS OF WISDOM, from the Tanker!
"In Clark County, since the test scores are low, we are going to punish the teachers by making the classes bigger, taking away pay and resources. What sense does that make? It's like taking ammunition and supplies away from soldiers because they failed in their mission."
"Teacher tenure has nothing to do with educational reform. It is about union busting, and destroying collective bargaining. It distracts from the fact that we aren't doing any to improve the quality of education in Nevada unless we address the other, more important issues as well."
RIGHT ON THE MONEY, Tanker.
There is a threshold where as a teacher you can "reach" your students, or just be one more annoying background noise in the life of the young. Add in the additional number of tests to grade, time spent to explain or clarify a point with individual students, thirty five plus students are more than any teacher can truely handle.
God help this country when we can't find the money to properly educate our young but can spend money to build roads in Afghanistan, or subsidize the billionaires.
"Why is nobody talking about the implementation of Common Core State Standards, which is being done by 40 states, and is supported by many professional education groups as well as the National Governor's Association to raise the standards for American education."
Common core standards go into effect in ELA classrooms in the fall of 2011. Ironically, however, very FEW ELA teachers have been properly trained in their implementation. From what I understand, ONE ELA teacher from each school will go to a training this summer. This teacher is then responsible for training the entire ELA staff at his/her school. ONE "just trained" teacher with no practical experience with the implementation of the core standards will train an ENTIRE ELS department (anywhere from 15-25 teachers) TWO days before the 2011-2012 school year begins. ELA teachers will then be expected to hit the ground running with the common core standards -- with all that training, how could they fail? (for those not acquainted with the fine art of sarcasm -- THAT was sarcasm) Keep in mind, the interim tests will NOT be reflective of the common core standards. So if they are used to "measure the effectiveness of a teacher," the teachers will be measured by a stick that does not reflect what they have been TOLD to teach. In addition, there has been no clear indication that they high stakes test -- the CRT -- will reflective of the common core standards. Does this plan male sense to ANYONE?
So, once again, the State is throwing a new program at teachers with little preparation, little support, little information, and little thought; however, the State wants big results.
Go figure.
PS -- I believe common core standards go into effect in math classrooms in TWO years. Why? Because, again from what I have heard, they are just too difficult to throw at the teachers. Ahhh...don't get me started.
Guv BS's motto: "The public good be damned!" Gods Bless our Idiocracy.
The Right-Wing PLOT to GUT EDUCATION...
Now includes ridding our schools of their most VALUABLE ASSET...
The Experienced Teacher.
"LOOK! We can save HUGE DOUGH if we get rid of the more experienced teachers! The less experienced teachers MAKE LESS MONEY!"
Its ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS about the MONEY!!!
...if you're running a BUSINESS that requires BRAINPOWER, and need to cut staffing, do you let go your more experienced, longer-term employees over newer, less experienced workers, or would that be considered...
BITING OFF YOUR NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE???
@proudCCSDmom. It gets better. The training for the one ELA and one Math teacher for each school is NOT paid. The training will be conducted for 5 days from 7am to 1 pm. Those same teachers will have to do some reading and some additional work before school starts in August. Again, unpaid hours. For completeing this work, they will get 3 credits from UNLV.
Common Core State Standards for math are phased in over 3 years. K-2 starts in the fall.
I have a nightmare every night. I see Nevada in 5 years. The higher education system is destroyed, as well as K-12. The K-12 classrooms are filled with 50+ students because CCSD can't hire teachers because no teacher will move to Nevada, and the qualified substitute teachers aren't enough to fill all the vacanies. Schools are closed and standing empty. Crime rates are jumping and the visitation to the strip has dropped to record low levels. No high tech businesses have moved to Nevada and in fact, businesses are leaving because they can't find qualified workers and anybody who is qualified won't come to Nevada. Unemployment in Nevada is triple the national rate, which has dropped as the recovery has taken hold. All along the strip, casinos are closing towers. The long shuttered construction projects are still waiting for completion, and more and more strip malls are empty of stores. The foreclosure rate has doubled as more and more people lose jobs or just walk away. In some blocks, the number of vacant homes outnumber the occupied ones. The population of Las Vegas has dropped as people leave to search for jobs.
Is it a nightmare or will it become reality? I am afraid that we are well on our way to finding out, and that makes me terrified for this is my home, my children's home and my grandchildren's home. Is this the future you want for your state and city? Because if it is, you are well on your way to getting it, be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
Take the time to look at the pictures. In a year or so those pictures may reflect uncrowded class rooms.
Gmag, I see you still can't fight facts with facts. You have to throw out personal insults.
Teacher quality is one thing school districts can control and it is highly correlated with student achievement so yes, teacher quality is perhaps the most important thing schools can focus on.
You can't control parents and student behavior problems are at least partially related to the competence of the teacher. students aren't dumb. If the teacher is incompetent the students won't respect the teacher.
I've also showed you on numerous occasions that experience after 5 years isn't correlated with effective teaching. In some instances teacher quality begins to decline and at some point - 20 years out or later - the veteran teachers may actually be worse than first year teachers.
From Harvard University: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/MeritPay...
I cover this subject in detail at my blog here: http://www.thewesternwrangler.com/2011/0...
Gmag
The logical reason why class size reduction doesn't work is because class size reduction increases the likelihood that we're exposing students to ineffective teachers.
The result of tenure, seniority, lock-step pay, teacher training methods, recruitment and retention is that the average teacher now comes from the bottom third of college graduates.
Research by Dale Ballou and Michael Podgurksy have also shown that increasing teacher pay only results in schools paying more money to recruit from the exact same pool of teachers.
So when you continue to recruit from the same pool where the average teacher is below the average college graduate and you want more of these teachers you are diminishing the quality of the labor force in teaching. In other words, bad and mediocre teachers are crowding out the good teachers.
As Tennessee professor Dr. William Sanders demonstrated, effective teachers are 10-20 times more powerful than small class sizes.
What you want are great teachers and as many children learning from them as possible. What we don't want is to dilute the talent pool which is what class size reduction has actually done.
In my experience it was rare that a teacher spoke to us individually in middle school,high school or college,maybe once every two weeks if we were called on to answer a question and hardly ever privately. In college, I had some classes with 120 students. Me and my high school/college classmates turned out okay. I'm just not seeing a strong correlation between class size and ability to learn. Again, I'm just basing my conclusion on how me and my classmates turned out. That is why I'm not buying the gloom and doom argument that some on here are presenting as a future result of teacher layoffs.
Education in this state always seems to take a backseat to all other areas of our government. The stats for a successful student in this state sucks. We are turning out dropouts and uneducated young people in alarming numbers. PAY ATTENTION legislators this is not the area you need to be making all of the budget cuts in. I am so thankful that my children did not attend a Nevada school or they would both be on welfare and dumb as dirt! Parents here better fight for their children - THEY ARE OUR FUTURE. At ths rate we don't have a very good one and neither will they.
@Patrick Gibbons. According to the Nevada Department of Education, in 2009-2010 82% of the high schools outside of Clark and Washoe counties made Adequate Yearly Progress. The average size of the junior class which is tested was 88 students. That is the total number of students in that class. Each student will take 5 classes so that means the average class size for one teacher is less than 18 students. Please explain why smaller class size is not important. The percentage of Clark County high schools making AYP was 53% with significantly larger class sizes as you can see from the pictures in the article.
I agree with you that teacher quality does have an impact on student learning, but please explain to me how you evaluate a teacher's quality. Which teacher is more effective. An AP math teacher who has all their students pass the math proficiency or the teacher who raises the scores of their students 100 points, but not all students pass the math proficiency? Both teach in the same school. Until we can develop a foolproof system for doing that, it is very dangerous to use that as a sole basis for determining teacher retention.
Class size does have an impact on student learning. Based on your "extensive" year of teaching experience before you started working for NPRI, which is who you work for now, didn't you use the trick of moving closer to a student to help them focus and become less disruptive? Looking at the pictures with the article, that is difficult now, and if class sizes become larger, impossible.
@Patrick. Please see my post above on education reform, longer school years, Common Core State Standards, small class sizes. What does your research say about those issue, or are you just interested in getting rid of the most expensive teachers and reducing costs?
Let's get to the fundamental problem. Some classes work when they are larger. Others cannot work when they are larger. But instead of looking at the individual subjects, and the quality of the teacher in that subject and how s/he approaches it, we try a one-size-fits-all approach. The way I teach a history class (granted, it's college-level) may lend itself to a larger or smaller class, and students may benefit accordingly. But if our educational system is so badly in need of reform, and Brian Sandogibbons is the reformer, why did he propose taking his new-found money and putting it into education? Simple answer: because he is a political hack and dishonest. More complex answer: it helps his vice-presidential campaign.
Good motto, RoboGod. But I have always said that Governor Sandoval's long standing motto regarding this issue for Nevada is:
"The youth of Nevada need to be incarcerated...not educated."
One of the problems I see, and I have heard this from teachers too, is there are a helluva lot of administrators and higher ups within the Clark County School District that all look for more and more teachers to cut, trying to get innovative and helpful on what to cut and dice and slice. But they're not being helpful. They are basically in survival mode. They're sacrificing others to save their own jobs (and worthless carcasses that suck up money).
Get rid of three quarters of the administrators, that would solve the problem. They are not the ones who are identifying the problem....they ARE the problem. To put the whole cost saving debacle on teachers is totally unfair.
But, no, don't listen to me. That makes too much sense.
And anyways, Governor Dracula MUST look for more and more things to cut and take away from the Nevada middle class. All in order to give the filthy rich and the corporations more and more tax breaks and subsidies. If he followed what I said in above, he'd cut teachers more AND administrators. Because he serves corporations. Not the taxpayers.
The corporate welfare MUST continue according to Governor Dracula.
Gee finally a full class room. First photo I've seen that reminds me of what public K-12 looked like when I went through it. STOP CODDLING TEACHERS and fill up those class rooms. And keep the classes going for 220 days a year, not 170.
And since public K-12 was MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE a couple decades ago, let's RETURN TO THAT--larger class rooms where students can learn from each other, whether or not the teacher has a clue.
BRIAN SANDOVAL ENJOYS INFLICTING IRREPARABLE HARM ON YOUR CHILDREN!!!
he gets off on it...
makes him feel powerful...
macho...
macho man brian...
as long as his kids are ok...
screw you...
you bunch of frickin losers...
don't believe me...
when asked if he was worried about immigration reform leading to racial profiling...
brian a mexican american said no...
because "his kids don't look hispanic"...
make no mistake boys and girls...
brain sandoval is a complete and total fraud...
and he enjoys harming your kids...
makes him feel powerful...
BRIAN SANDOVAL IS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FRAUD!!!
http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/ralston...
BRIAN SANDOVAL IS A COCONUT!!!
hey gibbie...
is it hard to drive that jeep of yours...
with those big red floppy clown shoes???
Mr. Gibbons, you say that "the average teacher now comes from the bottom third of college graduates."
WHY?
Just curious, have you ever taught?
Please season this conversation with the failure of No Child Left Behind and the profound effects of ELL/ESL students in the American educational system, more specifically, here in NEVADA!
One critical problem we have is that educators and education are NOT valued in the United States of America as it is in other countries.
The other problem, which has been pervassive and on-going for decades, 30+ years, is that NEVADA LAWMAKERS have habitually neglected and/or refused to address and reform an ancient TAX STRUCTURE that does NOT serve the people in this great state. That is the heart of the matter. There's fat to trim in every department in the state, in every program, and there should always be attached to any program, a timeline, expectations, and evaluation of that program to see if it should continue. How much of that really goes on?
Yes, education needs to be evaluated and reformed on the personnel end. Too many years have been focused on educational programs and not the vessels that deliver those programs. Like their students, many teachers blindly trusted the system that hired them to care about them. This is a very complex system as you don't just make teachers.
You take educated and qualified individuals and TRAIN them to be teachers! Just as you would for doctor interns, police & fire academy rookies, law student/intern, student nurse, and so on. A qualified person goes through many hoops, receives training, but continues that training and experience ON THE JOB!!! All must PASS a rigorous and thorough examination of various challenges within their chosen discipline, do volunteer experience time, certify and be licensed, and continue training and experiences.
One of the worst practices that could go on(and may be going on), is the use of evaluators who have NO experience in the discipline that they are JUDGING, ASSESSING, AND EVALUATING an employee on. This does happen. Let's not blindly pass legislation requiring evaluations, but NOT stipulate the requirements of the evaluator!!! It must be a fair process.
Tanker: Good luck on getting Gibbons to answer your questions. He's a drive-by poster, spewing his nonsense and completely unable to answer any sort of question posed to him if the answer doesn't fit with his ridiculous ideology.
gmag: If you're running a business, the fired employees DO NOT GET AN APPEAL PROCESS. You don't have to endlessly document their INEFFECTIVENESS. You don't have to help them understand their simple myopic thought processes. You just GET RID OF THEM.
Patrick, when you have some time, any guess on what portion of the lower third, teachers, post here demonstrating the myopic thought processes and lack of reading comprehension they purport to "teach?"
Mr. Lide,
Yes, and I came out of the top half of my graduating class.
Mr. Lide
There are several reasons why.
First the Colleges of Education typically recruit from the bottom half of high school college bound graduates.
Second, some highly skilled individuals may not be interested in entering a field where there is lockstep pay, seniority, and tenure policies that protect and reward bad and below average employees. Why join such a field when you could earn great rewards for your hard work somewhere else? In other words, the risk-takers, entrepreneurs etc aren't interested in teaching - these are typically highly intelligent, highly motivated people that could benefit many students.
Patrick: I don't know of any teachers who were recruited by any colleges of education. The teachers I know chose teaching because they valued education and felt that they could make a difference in the lives of students. They ARE highly intelligent, highly motivated people.
Tanker,
The effects size of small classes are small to non existent.
As for AYP it can mean something or nothing at all and sometimes both at the same time. The problem lies in how its designated which was nonsense from the start.
About 90 percent of schools will NOT pass AYP next year and 100 percent will not be passing AYP the year after that.
It has little to nothing to do with rising class sizes which nationally have increased by 1 student and in Nevada have increased by about 1 student and potentially up to 2 more next year. Failing AYP has everything to do with the fact that Congress passed NCLB with the belief that every child could be above average...seriously, that is exactly what they thought.
Class size reduction is merely a policy to funnel money from taxpayers to teacher unions. It does nothing for students and most education researchers have agreed on this for about 2 decades now.
Patrick, you really think that the effects of class sizes are small to nonexistent? In an elementary school classroom, teachers are expected to be able to provided instruction at all levels, work individually with students who need extra help, etc. How in the world is that possible without smaller class sizes?
I absolutely do agree with you regarding the ridiculousness of AYP and expecting all students to be above average.
Tanker: Take it on out to rural class rooms. Small class size is a DETRIMENT. I recall being a student in large classes and we benefited from each other, from some of the teachers--not so much.
Mr. Gibbons. I spent about 25 years teaching in universities. I taught classes of 200 in an auditorium, most of my classes fell in the 50-60 student range, and others with 20 students.
Please don't tell me that I could be as effective teaching 200 as 20. Please don't tell me I can do the same things in a classroom with 60 people that I can do with 20.
In the last 10 years at my last university, I routinely had 60 students in a classroom built for 40 chairs.
Do any of your studies ever talk about classrooms that are literally packed like sardines?
Perhaps you should meet with the teacher in the article and straighten him out.
Don't get me wrong -- there are some things that I agree with you on. But this holier-than-thou, smarter-than-all-of-you attitude does not persuade folks to listen to you.
Pat Gibbons and the people referenced in the article are, indeed, correct that teacher quality is more important than class size. However, saying ONLY that is disingenuous at best, because the same data show that theory breaking down after a class hits about 25 to 30 students -- numbers already surpassed at the secondary level. Too, there is more data supporting class size is optimally between 12 and 15 students, but this equally valid data is usually ignored. Why? It doesn't fit the agenda, the same as the evidence showing that classes with too many students aren't good learning environments. Cherry-picked and purposely confusing in order to advance an unpopular political opinion (namely, radically anti-government and anti public schools).
Which is more important: A) that a teacher identify the best students and help them reach their full potential, or B) that a teacher helps the worst student have a fighting chance at a reasonable life?
The ideal would be both, but I doubt that is possible in the real world. So which do you choose?
Where are all these teachers that can teach rooms full of students well, no matter how many! I have not seen them. Why are they not employed as demonstration teachers showing the rest of us how to do it.
Theorists are to often listened to. They talk, buy if asked to come into a classroom of say 40 to 50 students for a month, could they deliver? Patrick Gibbons, maybe you would volunteer for this. It could be a reality show and you could be the star! Put up or shut up!
Students learn when the triad is in tact. A good teacher, a motivated student, and supporting-nurturing parents. One leg is gone and the student has a much poorer chance of success. We need supports for all. This may include penalties for parents who do not control the behavior of their kids.
nnose:
It is called "social engineering." Advance the ruling class and press down the peasants. No pesky middle class - the thinkers, the innovators, the denters. They want to silence us.
The clueless - the peasants who believe them - will be pressed down just like the rest of us. These peasants actually think they will be allowed up there with their masters! Unless they have a billion dollars, they won't have a heck of a chance to get on "The Ark." They will simply continue to serve their masters. Ha, ha, ha, and one more HA!
An afterthought: I wonder if they would understand my analogy. Maybe not, but oh well.
@Gibbons. The results from the Nevada small schools refute your statement. Small class size does make a difference or their test results would be the same as Clark County. If nobody is going to make AYP in two years, how can we use those test results to make retention decisions? Suddenly good teachers will turn into bad teachers because their students didn't make AYP? Since you are such an expert why don't you come and show me how to be an effective teacher, after all you have a year in a special ed class room. I only have 15 years in a class room. Show me how it's done, and you can bring your sidekick roseanrose with you.
@Roseanrose. Your being in a large class and learning from each other explains alot.
@partrick. "Second, some highly skilled individuals may not be interested in entering a field where there is lockstep pay, seniority, and tenure policies that protect and reward bad and below average employees. Why join such a field when you could earn great rewards for your hard work somewhere else? In other words, the risk-takers, entrepreneurs etc aren't interested in teaching - these are typically highly intelligent, highly motivated people that could benefit many students." An if what you propose happens then we will never have a chance at getting these people in the US. How do you explain the countries like Finland, South Korea and others that get their best and brightest, exactly the people that you describe and have them be teachers. Check out this linkhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062419,00.html
I'm surprised that nowhere in the article or the comments does anyone address the issue of class size as it relates to homework.
As a former CCSD English teacher, I can assure you that in this case size does matter. The complexity of written homework assignments given and the ability of the teacher to thoroughly evaluate and provide feedback for X number of assignments in a 24-hour day, assuming 6 hours for sleep, is correlated to class size. One doesn't have to be a math wizard to realize that there is indeed a quantitative difference which quickly translates into a qualitative difference.
Back in 1980, I had 119 students (English and Language Arts) spread across 5 classes. Today, that load has ballooned up to 180 students, or more, for current CCSD teachers like my neighbor who avoids giving complex homework.
So please keep in mind that comprehensive education is more than just the classroom management issue. If you want students to be top-notch written communicators, which so many businesses lament they are not, smaller classes definitely provide the best conditions for meaningful feedback and improvement. (And, no, it is NOT cheap.)
Pat,
I see your still a blowhard.
And again, I see that NO ONE is swayed by your PROPAGANDA.
Wrangler, SHMANGLER!!!
brooks250: Excellent point. I wonder if Patrick will address that...oh, who am I kidding...he won't address anything that doesn't fit with his little rap.
most of the students in CCSD comes from families that don't value education. these are the same students that shows up to 9th grade with 2nd grade reading and math levels. most of these students are raised by parents who doesn't think it's the parent's job to teach theirs kids how to read or speak properly at their homes. if you don't want your kids to be exposed to such environment, i suggest you get out of las vegas. CCSD has been under performing for years, whether the economy was booming or not. Because of its growth, CCSD had to over pay most of these unqualified teachers to fill the growing demand. CCSD is caught in a perfect storm of unqualified students, unqualified teachers, unqualified administrators, and inadequate funding. i suggest people stop complaing and let human nature take its course, either adapt to the current environment or relocate!
I would support budget increases but only after the bigger issue of teacher quality was addressed. Funding alone seems to be all the teachers are talking about.
Who and how do we determine who is effective and who is not? Is effectiveness determined by an increase in passing rate? If so, then we have to compare the same group of children with the same teacher in the same subject from year to year. That is logistically impossible.
Let us look at this new panacea of First In, First out (F.I.F.O) from another angle using a different profession. For your loved one's brain surgery would you advocate 'passing up' on the older 20 year experienced doctor in favor of having the brain surgery performed by an Intern with 2 or less years of experience?
What about this? Would you rather have your 16 year old son drive you to work at rush hour because you at, 40 may be over the hill?
INFORM is a new system that CCSD is rolling out now for the coming school year that takes all the test score information and presents it in ONE PLACE for each student. A great feature is that it has 3 years of CRT scores next to each other to compare the progress of each student.
Any of you concerned about teacher performance, will enjoy this latest tool. And if you are a parent, it provides you with a picture of your child's progress so you can have intellignet conversations with teachers on a plan you believe will assist in his/her learning potential. A parent's insight and involvement is like GOLD to a teacher and very welcome!
Somewhere, along the line, many of you will discover that education is quite dependent on a child's development. There are some children that have extremely slow work speeds, are more concrete, are more abstract, are more kinestetic, are second language and struggling to learn English, have behavioral issues, ADHD, ADD, physical challenges, and the list goes on. All children can learn and grow. But let's set the goal posts fairly. And note, just like one shoe size does NOT fit all, nor does one goal fit all children. Just one reason No Child Left Behind and some of these contrived programs Ms.Rhee is feeding Nevada and the rest of the world simply are not the "magic bullets" in education. Nothing replaces good old fashioned study, practice, and meaningful classroom activities for a child to learn. You don't need to throw money at the study or practice part, you do need to get the parents involved to properly guide their children through the experience. A professional teacher really doesn't need much to provide classroom experiences. I wonder WHERE the money is being spent. If it is truly being spent on salaries of qualified teachers that do provide those experiences, there is no problem here. So why are children left behind?
Some of the budgeted expenses at a school site are the computers, stables as manipulatives, posters, copy machines, paper, pencils, markers, erasers, crayons, glue, paper clips, post it notes, folders, and consumable books.
So, we have costs for real estate, labor, fixtures, supplies, and what else? Why are we leaving children behind?
Why, in over 30+years, has the Nevada State Legislature avoided changing the tax structure for mining so that they would pay a FAIR TAX? All the affected children, families, school employees, should be picketing every mining business in Nevada asking them to support this CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE.
When MINING pays its fair share in taxes, then students will NOT be LEFT BEHIND!