As budgets shrink, class sizes expand

From California to Florida, states are on the verge of rolling back what was once thought to be the most promising frontier of education reform: smaller class sizes.

Five years ago, when surpluses were the rule on Capitol Hill and across the nation, President Clinton pledged $12 billion to the idea. A year earlier, California alone promised $800 million. Yet now, states pinched by shrinking budgets are looking for programs to cut, and class-size initiatives are among the first on the chopping block.

To lawmakers, they're an easy target. Reducing class size is perhaps the single most expensive item of education reform, demanding more teachers and new facilities. Many educators also remain divided over how well it works.

To the public, however, class-size restrictions remain one of the most popular and common-sense reforms. As a result, the weakening of class-size initiatives nationwide is not likely to end the movement, experts say, rather it is the beginning of a new cycle of advance and retreat that will likely continue for years to come.

"It's completely on hold until there is more money," says Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution in Washington. But as soon as states bounce back, he adds, "It will be back on the table."

Among the states considering action:

• Legislators in California and Nevada have introduced bills to ease class-size restrictions by raising the maximum student-to-teacher ratio necessary to qualify for certain state money. In Nevada, for example, the accepted ratio for first grade would swell from 16-to-1 to 22-to-1.

• In his State of the State address last week, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suggested that the state would have to reconsider a class-size initiative passed by voters in October. He estimates it will cost $28 billion and lead to massive tax increases.

• Oklahoma has already issued class-size exemptions to 11 school districts. The districts say they could not balance their budgets without the waivers, which allow for a 29-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio.

For some districts the situation is so dire that they can't wait for the state. Santa Cruz, Calif., has decided to increase class sizes regardless of what the Legislature does, potentially forfeiting state funds so it can save more by firing 28 teachers.

In the Bay Area, Antioch and Livermore have done the same - and they've heard complaints about it. As many as 1,300 parents thronged a school board meeting in Livermore last week with slogans designed to save small class sizes in kindergarten through third grade.

Frank Jakubka was there with his first-grade son, Mitchell, and a sign that proclaimed: "Cut from the top, not from the class." Without the attention from teachers that smaller class sizes afford, he says, his son - an only child - would have had a far more difficult transition from home life to the social world of playtime and show-and-tell. "The teacher was able to work with him and put him in groups," Mr. Jakubka says. "It's working. You don't need scientific proof to see that."

Page: 1 | 2