JULY 16, 2014Improving revenues hasn’t rolled back class sizes
(Wash.) A rebounding economy and expectations that recreational marijuana will deliver a windfall in state revenues has raised hopes for an initiative aimed at decreasing class sizes in Washington’s K-12 schools.
But a survey of budget battles in other places, however, suggests educators are still fighting an uphill battle to restore funding cut during the recession even though there’s a lot of public support for smaller student-teacher ratios.
“It's something everyone recognizes needs to happen, but how will we pay for it?” asked state Sen. Ann Rivers of Vancouver, in an interview earlier this month with The Columbian. “Everything's on the table. Everything must be on the table. We must proceed with that in mind.”
An often debated strategy for improving student achievement, small class sizes have been a goal pursued generally across the country for much of the past 40 years.
According to data from the Digest of Education Statistics, however, that trend changed abruptly between 2008 and 2010 when the average student-teacher ratio nationally jumped 5 percent from 15.3 to 16 – a figure that is thought to still under value the actual class size because it includes special education where teacher-student ratios are often much smaller.
Classroom overcrowding has become a major issue in a number of places – perhaps most prominently in New York where an audit released earlier this month found nearly a third of the city’s schools were as much as 200 percent over-capacity in 2012. The finding prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to call the conditions “unacceptable” and vowed to address it.
The situation in Washington state may not be quite as dramatic, but perhaps it is not far off in the wake of a 2012 court ruling that found the Legislature has illegally underfunded schools. Part of that neglect, critics say, has left Washington 47th in the nation.
In response, an effort led by the state’s teachers association appears to have qualified a measure for the November ballot that would gradually decrease class sizes, giving priority to the lower Improving revenues hasn’t rolled back class sizes :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet: