My 4th grader is going to be in a class with 35 kids!

[Anonymous]

There’s not much to do about it. When schools can’t get the number of teachers they need, class sizes balloon. Welcome to the state of public education in the U.S.

[Anonymous]

It all depends on the teacher’s motivation and classroom management skills. It can work well or poorly.

In my elementary, we switched among 3 different teachers during the school day - Reading / Spelling / Grammar, Math, and everything else.

My 4th grade math teacher was un-motivated, only went through the motions, and gave everyone a “satisfactory” unless a parent complained about their DC. We did not learn much. Parents thought their kids were doing fine, even though we had some kids who should have received extra pull-out help to catch up. No practice worksheets and she taught everyone in one big group, lecturing for nearly all of the period.

My 3rd grade math teacher was motivated and had good classroom skills. By the end of the 2nd week, she had figured out where each student was academically. She dealt with the class in 3 slices. At the start of class period, she gave the top group their practice worksheets and middle group their practice worksheets to fill out. Then she spent about half the period with the low group, trying to bring them up via direct instruction at the whiteboard. She then gave the low group their practice worksheets and taught the middle group via direct instruction. Then the top group. All the math problems were simple to grade, but she did that outside classtime.

[Anonymous]

Tonight’s the weekend

[Anonymous]

Often the funding for school's to hire teachers is based on last year's enrollment, so if there are big shifts, it impacts the next year's cohort. That and cohort sizes vary which makes it all harder too.

My son was in a class of 33 for 1st and 4th grade. The principal knew what she was doing - they were all good, easy kids. The cohort above and below were in classes of 20-24 - they were a lot harder and needed to be in smaller class sizes.

He's in 9th grade now without any ill effects from 2 years in a huge class. Just check in with the teacher if you're concerned.

[Anonymous]

*schools* not school's

[Anonymous]

I actually think that number is illegal. It is in Fairfax county. They required to hire another teacher once you hit 32 I believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually think that number is illegal. It is in Fairfax county. They required to hire another teacher once you hit 32 I believe.

Right. I'd be making a lot of noise about this. 35 is way too many kids.

[Anonymous]

Wow. I'm on Long Island, in what most people consider to be a sh*tty School district, although we do have very small class sizes. My son, in 5th grade, will be one of 16. And it's a co-teach.