A Numbers Game in School, Who'd Have Thought?

I don't like politics, when asked what my political stance is, I simply fill in 'apathetic.' I do realize that this probably makes me a bad American but honestly, who can follow along with them? So I understand that there is a need for a lot of background information before I begin ranting but first consider: As I begin my blog on Florida's Educational system I would like you to think about being a teacher or any school personnel really or even a child in a public school and how these changes might affect you. 

I began my research today on educational reforms in Florida, only going back about six months and was un-pleasantly surprised to find a hurricane brewing off the coast of my future career; and just like with a hurricane there seems to be a chance to wash away some of the grime that has been building up but there also stands the huge potential for widespread damage. This hurricane however, has been a long time coming, so I decided to widen my search and came up with a topic that has been brewing for almost a decade. 

The Idea:

The controversial shake-up topic of today's blog, which has been floating around our great peninsula waiting to pounce, began all the way back in 2002 by voters in Florida but has only recently been fully implemented in our school systems: the dreaded class size amendment aka amendment 8. This amendment, like many others, is wordy and confusing, but the bottom line is you can only have a limited number of students in a core education class at one time. The cap is 18 for preK-3, 22 for 4-8 and 25 for 9-12. 
                                                The idea behind this cap was that students would receive more individual attention from their teachers because there would be less students in each classroom. Theoretically this was great because these students would be able to get the help they need but financially, this is the iceberg to our proverbial Titanic of a budget that we had at the beginning of this venture. This has sunk the ship of educational budget and now we're all floundering in the water trying to get back on course. 

The Problem:

Schools all over the state struggled to fit into this strict restriction which has been steadily tightening around the necks of every school since 2002. This tightening began as a district-wide average cap for the core classes (English, math, science and social-studies) which allowed for a lot of wiggle room. So long as there were enough teachers in the district to bring the core class student:teacher ratio down to the required cap everything would be great and no one would get fined. (The state had money to funnel into this system as well, which by the way has thus far cost us a whopping $18 BILLION dollars.) 
                                   
                           The noose began tightening in 2006 when the average was was to be calculated by school instead of by district and our budget started to look less like the Titanic and more like a nice yacht. Student were shuffled from class to class to fit into this puzzle but most schools managed and survived the fines if they didn't. Last year however, in the 2010-11 school year, schools really began to feel the scratch of the rope and our budget had shrunk to a rowboat. The averages are now calculated by individual classes, and while the standards have loosened somewhat to 21 in K-3, 27 in 4-8, and 30 in high school, there is still a huge problem fitting a school full of students into a restricted set of teachers.

These teachers are facing pay cuts of their own (which is a lengthy subject for a future blog…) and above them each district is cutting back as well. So the idea of fining schools who can't afford to meet the class size amendment because they can't hire new teachers, because they can't pay the teachers because the state can't fund the new teachers even at a reduced salary based on merit without tenure… seems preposterous to me. For some counties it is cheaper to ignore the amendment and pay the fine than to hire the required teachers because the money to expand the staff is simply not there. If they are so much as one student over the cap they are expected to hire a teacher and spread out the students to fill the classes. This is a logistical nightmare. Reshuffling an entire school to fit in one more student doesn't really seem like a good idea to me. When you think about how many classrooms, teachers, lunch breaks, students, desks, fire codes, textbooks, electives, projectors, pencils, principles, custodians, chairs, lights and class scheduling personnel are required to run a school, reshuffling the whole system is ludicrous for one student that could transfer in late when you have each class tightly fitted beneath the required cap! Ludicrous! (not the rapper…)

My somewhat-simple Solution:

The idea of cutting down the class size was great. Students need teachers who can take the time to help them, the execution however, was much more expensive than we could hope to afford. The expense however is not the only problem because five horrible teachers are not going to feel better than three good ones, no matter how many students are in their classes.
 Let me give you a pop-culture reference as a prime example. You've probably seen the previews for the new movie Bad Teacher, think about putting someone like that in front of 30 9th graders, now think of the teacher from Freedom Writers in front of 40 9th graders… 

                      

Do you see what I mean? I think the focus needs to change from a numbers game to a quality requirement. I'm not saying that I am jumping on the merit pay band wagon but maybe focusing on teaching teachers how to teach rather than kicking 3 students out of their class would be a more influential adventure. For those of you who really love this amendment take heart in that I still believe it has potential, just at the school wide average level, I just don't think there is room for it in the classroom.

Something to think about for my next blogging adventure..

Sources for further information on this subject:

http://www.fldoe.org/classsize/

http://www.ocala.com/article/20100523/articles/5231014?p=5&tc=pg&tc=ar

Images in order:

onlinemovieshut.com

filmcritic.com

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/jparker/uploaded_images/100205-770809.jpg

diogenesii.wordpress.com