Confused about Amendment 8? Good. That's what they want

By Jennie Smith, Dade County education policy examiner

"Our school features large classes, with a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 30, so that all of our students get a couple of minutes of individual attention every class period."

How many times have you heard that used as a selling point for private schools or charter schools?

The answer is, I am certain, never. One of the biggest draws of private, parochial and charter schools is small class size and thus more individual, personalized attention.

Parents know it matters. No parent relishes the thought of his or her child, particularly a child with special needs, a slow learner or one who is simply too shy to speak up and ask questions when he or she does not understand, languishing in the back of a packed classroom, where an entire class period can elapse without the child opening his or her mouth a single time.

Students know it matters. When they want to learn and understand, they like to be able to raise their hands and have the teacher's attention. They like to feel acknowledged. They appreciate it when their teacher notices that they were not in class one day, or that they look confused, or that they are struggling with the classwork just assigned.

Teachers certainly know it matters. Those people who seem to honestly believe that there is no significant difference between a class of 20 students and a class of 25, between a class of 25 students and one of 30 students, have obviously never been in front of a classroom. It matters. Just as every child matters to his parents, every student matters to a teacher, whether in a positive or negative way.

A brief example from personal experience: while, generally speaking, I cannot complain that, as a French teacher, I have had enormous classes, I did have one class of French I last year that fluctuated between 30 and 31 students all year. (My average last year was about 25, though several classes had 27 or 28, and a couple had around 22.) I noticed constantly in my largest class that there were students managing to "hide" by not speaking up, not raising their hands. While I do try to call on every student at least once every class period, and while I do try to gauge with my eyes and ears which students are showing comprehension and mastery and which ones seem lost, confused or uninterested, the more students there are in front of you, the more difficult that task becomes. Adding to the problem is that, in every class, there are those students who prefer to stand out (some of them seeking positive attention, others negative) and those who prefer to "hide." And any teacher can tell you that it is far easier to "hide" in a large class than in a small one, particularly when there are students demanding attention (and there always are)...whether by waving their hand in the air throughout the entire class, or by acting up so as to keep the focus on himself or herself.

In 2002, voters in the state of Florida ratified the Class Size Amendment by 52%. The amendment called on schools to gradually decrease the number of students in each classroom, so that by the year 2010, pre-kindergarten through third grade classes would have a hard cap of 18 students per teacher, 4th through 8th grade would be limited to 22 students per teacher, and core classes in high school would be limited to 25 per teacher. Up until last year, the amendment operated at the "schoolwide average," meaning that some classes could be over 25 as long as others were below.

The initiative, naturally, requires increased funding for public schools. While the voters approved the original amendment, legislators never properly funded the mandate, and indeed have knowingly underfunded it by $350 million; furthermore, they will impose heavy fines on districts found not in compliance of the law by this Friday.

As a result of the underfunding, many politicians and school boards are advocating that voters pass Amendment 8, which would loosen the class size limits to the schoolwide average, saying that it will protect electives and provide school sites with more flexibility in scheduling.

However, the state teachers' union, the Florida Education Association (FEA), local teachers' unions, and the state PTA, as well as a few public education-friendly politicians such as U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, are all encouraging voters to vote "no" on Amendment 8. The position of these groups and individuals is that the voters knew what they were asking for when they approved the initial amendment in 2002, and that the Republican-controlled legislature, known to be very supportive of charter schools and private school vouchers while trying to reduce the cost of public education in the state, will simply use the passage of Amendment 8 as an excuse to cut more money out of the education budget, costing teachers jobs and cramming students into larger classes once again.

In a nutshell: the voters approved the Class Size Amendment in 2002, against the explicit wishes of then-governor Jeb Bush. Since then, legislators have failed to properly fund the mandate to make it work as voters intended; this year they provided no additional funding for districts to meet the hard caps, although they estimated it would cost at least $350 million. This year, as a result of their refusal to fund the voter-ratified measure, some districts have been cutting or crowding electives (since the class size laws apply only to "core classes") and combining classes in an effort to balance their own budgets. The same politicians who have refused to fund what the voters asked for from the beginning now ask the voters to second-guess their original stance, claiming that it is bad for children--in short, asking for permission from voters not to fund smaller classes.

From a personal perspective, I am truly afraid that voters will not understand the implications and unintended consequences of Amendment 8.

Even at my own school, the principal has been rallying us, the teachers, to vote yes on Amendment 8, even without saying so in those words. She continuously bemoans the lack of funding to make it happen, the difficulty in scheduling the students with the hard caps on class size, and how some students are being moved around or denied their first choice in classes because of the restrictions. Her statements imply that it is literally that voting yes for Amendment 8 would do nothing more than allow that one extra student, that 26th warm body, to sit in your classroom.

I do not doubt the intentions of my principal, who has always been very receptive to suggestions and seems truly to have the interest of the students at heart. But I also do not doubt that she is mistaken. Even if she truly believes in her heart that relaxing the constitutional amendment as it currently stands will do nothing more than allow a 26th student to be in an Advanced Placement English class, the truth is that as soon as legislators have voters' "permission" to cut funding, they will do so, and more money will disappear from the public education budget. As class sizes are allowed to increase, teachers will lose their jobs, and shy or unmotivated students will once again be "hiding" in crowded classes.

Ironically, career-long advocate of charter schools and private school vouchers, the ex-governor Jeb Bush, claimed in a conference in Utah in August that smaller class sizes did not lead to increased student achievement. Yet class size is one of the main advantages the charter and private schools he supports so heartily have over public schools (along with the ability to control their student populations--i.e., choose their students and/or expel those students who do not conform to expectations of behavior and/or academic performance). How would the parents who so highly laud their children's private schools and charter schools feel if it were announced that, since class size "doesn't really matter," their children would suddenly be back in classes of 30, instead of 15 to 20?

It is disingenuous at best of the former governor to make such a claim.

The truth is, it is all about numbers, and not just the numbers of warm bodies in a given classroom. It is about the numbers of dollars and cents. Funding is a choice, even during a recession. Legislators have an opportunity every year during session to prioritize. In Florida, legislators have continued to prioritize prisons over schools, the testing industry over teachers, public monies for private enterprises over quality education for all students. Now, after refusing time and again to fund the mandate, they say, "See? We told you so," and ask you to take it back.

There is no money to fund class size limits so that teachers can teach and students can learn, yet somehow they can find the billions of dollars it would take to create the famous End of Course Exams (EOC) proposed in Senate Bill 6 to be used to evaluate teachers?

There always seems to be funding for another standardized test, another incompetent corporation to score and report those standardized tests, and for the state to pay for children to go to private, for-profit and religious schools with none of the accountability systems for their teachers that Jeb Bush and his cronies in the state legislature pushed, and continue to push, so hard for.

Voters knew what they were voting for in 2002. They were voting for all children, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or special needs, to have the right to an education equal in all ways to that they could get in a private school: including smaller classes and more individual attention.

Recession or no recession, I do not think that desire has changed--not in parents, not in students and not in teachers.

One final note, on a personal level: Class Size Matters. It matters. Every student sitting in my classroom (or not sitting there, as the case may be) matters. My best classes this year are my smallest one. One has 15 students, and one has 19. In those classes, every single student is heard every single class--and not just once, or even twice, but usually several times, and whether they wish to be heard or not. When we read aloud (in French, of course!) every student has to read...there are enough lines of the text for everyone to read at least once. When we answer questions orally, I make sure that every student answers at least a couple of questions, if not more. Because there are fewer students, the load of papers to grade is more manageable, meaning my students get faster feedback. Nobody hides; nobody can. And everybody in those classes in learning.

And I don't need one of Jeb Bush's cronies' standardized tests to show me that. I can see it myself. Every day.

Taken from the Miami Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/dade-county-education-policy-in-miami/confused-about-amendment-8-good-that-s-what-they-want