I don't understand the deal with MoCo class size

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With so many kids from so many countries and so many ESOL and the FARMS increasing yearly, MCPS needs smaller classrooms. The parochial schools can get away with 25-30 kids because they all are from middle class American families. Most of those kids went to the parochial preschool and know the basics and behaviors of school.

MCPS kindergarten is a complete disaster. 27 kids and 10 of them ESOL. Some kids reading chapter books and others can't even read one word in English. Communication and culture differences. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there and I learned my lesson after sending one there. She learned nothing she hadn't learned in preschool. The curriculum is for the foreigners. Even in 1st grade, they are going over K word wall words. A, Am, Can, Go. I mean let's move on already and teach the kids that need to be taught. Can we not put all the ESOL kids in their own class with smaller ratios until they are fluent?

They are?

I wonder why that is?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom recently sent me an envelope of old photos including my class pictures from 3rd-5th grade. 31 kids each year. This was a middle class school in a small mid-western city and as I recall we all did fine. Why all the handwringing?

Yes, I remember having 33 kids in my third-grade class. This was in a one-class-per-grade school.

There are a lot of studies showing how small class sizes benefit students. Sure, you survived, but that doesn't mean it was good for the students.

Those studies show that the class sizes have to be a whole lot smaller (like under 20). Going from 25 to 24 has no identifiable benefits.

And, as various PPs have said, it's better to have a good teacher in a large class than a bad teacher in a small class.

That's not actually what the studies show. The studies show that the benefits aren't statistically significant going from 25 to 24. It doesn't mean that there aren't benefits.
And, really, why is there always this straw man of "better to have a good teacher with a big class than a bad teacher with a small class"? As if having smaller class sizes means having worse teachers? That's not the choice presented here. Just an attempt to deflect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With so many kids from so many countries and so many ESOL and the FARMS increasing yearly, MCPS needs smaller classrooms. The parochial schools can get away with 25-30 kids because they all are from middle class American families. Most of those kids went to the parochial preschool and know the basics and behaviors of school.

MCPS kindergarten is a complete disaster. 27 kids and 10 of them ESOL. Some kids reading chapter books and others can't even read one word in English. Communication and culture differences. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there and I learned my lesson after sending one there. She learned nothing she hadn't learned in preschool. The curriculum is for the foreigners. Even in 1st grade, they are going over K word wall words. A, Am, Can, Go. I mean let's move on already and teach the kids that need to be taught. Can we not put all the ESOL kids in their own class with smaller ratios until they are fluent?

They are?

I wonder why that is?

They aren't all. My parochial was MOSTLY middle/upper-middle, but always a few kids on a free ride. More importantly though -- have you noticed that parochials that have class sizes like that have more than one teacher for that class? Um, yeah.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My upper middle class white son was not reading when he entered grade 1..despite years of quality early education, no tv and parents that read to him. Great if your child was but there are kids with no language issues that are still earning to read at 6.

Of course there are. And the wide diversity of levels in any classroom is just another reason why we need smaller class sizes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With so many kids from so many countries and so many ESOL and the FARMS increasing yearly, MCPS needs smaller classrooms. The parochial schools can get away with 25-30 kids because they all are from middle class American families. Most of those kids went to the parochial preschool and know the basics and behaviors of school.

MCPS kindergarten is a complete disaster. 27 kids and 10 of them ESOL. Some kids reading chapter books and others can't even read one word in English. Communication and culture differences. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there and I learned my lesson after sending one there. She learned nothing she hadn't learned in preschool. The curriculum is for the foreigners. Even in 1st grade, they are going over K word wall words. A, Am, Can, Go. I mean let's move on already and teach the kids that need to be taught. Can we not put all the ESOL kids in their own class with smaller ratios until they are fluent?

They are?

I wonder why that is?

They aren't all. My parochial was MOSTLY middle/upper-middle, but always a few kids on a free ride. More importantly though -- have you noticed that parochials that have class sizes like that have more than one teacher for that class? Um, yeah.

How much do parochial-school teachers get paid? How much do teacher aides for parochial schools get paid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With so many kids from so many countries and so many ESOL and the FARMS increasing yearly, MCPS needs smaller classrooms. The parochial schools can get away with 25-30 kids because they all are from middle class American families. Most of those kids went to the parochial preschool and know the basics and behaviors of school.

MCPS kindergarten is a complete disaster. 27 kids and 10 of them ESOL. Some kids reading chapter books and others can't even read one word in English. Communication and culture differences. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there and I learned my lesson after sending one there. She learned nothing she hadn't learned in preschool. The curriculum is for the foreigners. Even in 1st grade, they are going over K word wall words. A, Am, Can, Go. I mean let's move on already and teach the kids that need to be taught. Can we not put all the ESOL kids in their own class with smaller ratios until they are fluent?

They are?

I wonder why that is?

They aren't all. My parochial was MOSTLY middle/upper-middle, but always a few kids on a free ride. More importantly though -- have you noticed that parochials that have class sizes like that have more than one teacher for that class? Um, yeah.

How much do parochial-school teachers get paid? How much do teacher aides for parochial schools get paid?

Not much. Less than MCPS. What's your point? That MCPS can't be run like parochial schools? Obviously. Does that mean we should accept these large class sizes? No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

That's not actually what the studies show. The studies show that the benefits aren't statistically significant going from 25 to 24. It doesn't mean that there aren't benefits.
And, really, why is there always this straw man of "better to have a good teacher with a big class than a bad teacher with a small class"? As if having smaller class sizes means having worse teachers? That's not the choice presented here. Just an attempt to deflect.

It actually does mean exactly that. If something isn't statistically significant (at whatever level of statistical significance you decide to use), that means that it could very well have happened due to random chance.

And empirically, having small class sizes often does mean having worse teachers. If you halve the class sizes, you have to double your teacher workforce. Where will those teachers come from? How many good, unemployed teachers are there out there, available for hire? In fact, this is a possible explanation for the lack of effect of lowered class sizes -- that the positive effect of a smaller class was offset by the negative effect of an unqualified teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With so many kids from so many countries and so many ESOL and the FARMS increasing yearly, MCPS needs smaller classrooms. The parochial schools can get away with 25-30 kids because they all are from middle class American families. Most of those kids went to the parochial preschool and know the basics and behaviors of school.

MCPS kindergarten is a complete disaster. 27 kids and 10 of them ESOL. Some kids reading chapter books and others can't even read one word in English. Communication and culture differences. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there and I learned my lesson after sending one there. She learned nothing she hadn't learned in preschool. The curriculum is for the foreigners. Even in 1st grade, they are going over K word wall words. A, Am, Can, Go. I mean let's move on already and teach the kids that need to be taught. Can we not put all the ESOL kids in their own class with smaller ratios until they are fluent?

They are?

I wonder why that is?

They aren't all. My parochial was MOSTLY middle/upper-middle, but always a few kids on a free ride. More importantly though -- have you noticed that parochials that have class sizes like that have more than one teacher for that class? Um, yeah.

How much do parochial-school teachers get paid? How much do teacher aides for parochial schools get paid?

Not much. Less than MCPS. What's your point? That MCPS can't be run like parochial schools? Obviously. Does that mean we should accept these large class sizes? No.

No, actually, my point is that it's a lot cheaper for parochial schools to add teachers/aides than for MCPS to add teachers/aides.

As for accepting the large class sizes -- what are your options? You can take your child out of public school. You can advocate for increases to the MCPS education budget. You can demonstrate in Annapolis for Hogan to restore the GCEI funding. What are you proposing to do?

[Anonymous]

No surprise!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/area-schools-scramble-to-meet-the-emotional-needs-of-undocumented-children/2014/09/07/863cf9fe-3380-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The question; why?

The answer… illegal immigration.

There aren't many illegal immigrants on the Western side of MoCo, but some of the class sizes are huge. The population has grown rapidly, but the school district hasn't kept up with the rezoning. The county doesn't help by allowing more multi-family housing to be built in already over crowded school clusters.

It's this. We are higher population density b/c we build apartments and houses on smaller tracts of land. There's hardly any green space left. Look how Strathmore sold off it's lawn and NIH sold what is now the "Mews." People want to live closer to where they work.

But the number of actual school buildings rarely change and neither the number of teachers per classroom. They put up trailers in the playgrounds and keep packing kids in the classrooms. It's not the teachers or administrators' fault--county elected leaders need to change how they spend money.

Open more schools; hire more teachers. The population trajectory has been on this way for a while. It's not as though it happened overnight. (And, no, it's not due to illegal immigration.)

[Anonymous]

Our elementary school was built just a few years ago and already they are taking away rooms used for specials to convert to classrooms. Why would MCPS not anticipate that people will flock to a new school and thus build in extra classroom space? Seems like terrible planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our elementary school was built just a few years ago and already they are taking away rooms used for specials to convert to classrooms. Why would MCPS not anticipate that people will flock to a new school and thus build in extra classroom space? Seems like terrible planning.

When, exactly, did it open? And how many years before that was it designed? People in part are faulting MCPS for being unable to predict the future. And if MCPS overbuilt, people would scream "WASTE! BLOAT!" -- in fact, they do do that. DCUM regularly complains about the excess capacity at Beverly Farms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's this. We are higher population density b/c we build apartments and houses on smaller tracts of land. There's hardly any green space left. Look how Strathmore sold off it's lawn and NIH sold what is now the "Mews." People want to live closer to where they work.

The county's biggest development plan is at White Flint on Rockville Pike. They're not building on green space there. They're building on surface parking lots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's not actually what the studies show. The studies show that the benefits aren't statistically significant going from 25 to 24. It doesn't mean that there aren't benefits.
And, really, why is there always this straw man of "better to have a good teacher with a big class than a bad teacher with a small class"? As if having smaller class sizes means having worse teachers? That's not the choice presented here. Just an attempt to deflect.

It actually does mean exactly that. If something isn't statistically significant (at whatever level of statistical significance you decide to use), that means that it could very well have happened due to random chance.

And empirically, having small class sizes often does mean having worse teachers. If you halve the class sizes, you have to double your teacher workforce. Where will those teachers come from? How many good, unemployed teachers are there out there, available for hire? In fact, this is a possible explanation for the lack of effect of lowered class sizes -- that the positive effect of a smaller class was offset by the negative effect of an unqualified teacher.

That's flatly silly. Not finding statistical significance does not mean there's no causal effect there. And the fact that you DO see a significant relationship when the class sizes get lower (under 20) means there's good reason to believe that in fact you just aren't able to capture the effect because of confounding factors. So, yes it's true that we haven't PROVEN a difference between 25 and 24, but it's not at all true that there's no evidence of a negative relationship between class size and student success.
The notion that you wouldn't be able to find enough good teachers is also silly. First of all, you don't have to be as good of a teacher when you have 18 5-year-olds versus 26 5-year-olds. You have to be good to handle 18 of them, yes, but you have to be FANTASTIC to do a great job with 26 of them. Secondly, there's a market for teachers, and when there are more job openings, the teaching career becomes more attractive for college kids (because they know they're going to get a job) and more kids go into teaching. Does MCPS have trouble filling slots for its teachers? No. The quality issues with teachers in MCPS do not have to do with not having enough teaching applicants. They have to do with not being able to get rid of bad teachers so they can replace them with better ones who want that job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With so many kids from so many countries and so many ESOL and the FARMS increasing yearly, MCPS needs smaller classrooms. The parochial schools can get away with 25-30 kids because they all are from middle class American families. Most of those kids went to the parochial preschool and know the basics and behaviors of school.

MCPS kindergarten is a complete disaster. 27 kids and 10 of them ESOL. Some kids reading chapter books and others can't even read one word in English. Communication and culture differences. You couldn't pay me enough to teach there and I learned my lesson after sending one there. She learned nothing she hadn't learned in preschool. The curriculum is for the foreigners. Even in 1st grade, they are going over K word wall words. A, Am, Can, Go. I mean let's move on already and teach the kids that need to be taught. Can we not put all the ESOL kids in their own class with smaller ratios until they are fluent?

They are?

I wonder why that is?

They aren't all. My parochial was MOSTLY middle/upper-middle, but always a few kids on a free ride. More importantly though -- have you noticed that parochials that have class sizes like that have more than one teacher for that class? Um, yeah.

How much do parochial-school teachers get paid? How much do teacher aides for parochial schools get paid?

Not much. Less than MCPS. What's your point? That MCPS can't be run like parochial schools? Obviously. Does that mean we should accept these large class sizes? No.

No, actually, my point is that it's a lot cheaper for parochial schools to add teachers/aides than for MCPS to add teachers/aides.

As for accepting the large class sizes -- what are your options? You can take your child out of public school. You can advocate for increases to the MCPS education budget. You can demonstrate in Annapolis for Hogan to restore the GCEI funding. What are you proposing to do?

All of those things. I'd rather NOT take the kid out of public school -- which is not at all a solution to this problem, except for that one kid -- but yes, there should be increases to the MCPS budget. But if I were king, they would be tied to a requirement of lower class sizes.