Testimony of Richard Farkas Vice President for Middle Schools United Federation of Teachers before the City Council of New York

Oct 19, 2004 11:31 AM

I am Richard Farkas, vice president for middle schools at the United Federation of Teachers.

In our middle schools, class sizes are often as large as 33, the UFT contract cap. The city average is 28, compared with 22 for the rest of the state.

At the start of the last school year, Chancellor Klein announced that middle school English classes would be no more than 28 students. His intent was to address what everyone knows are deep problems in middle-grade education. In our city, as in many other large cities, there are high failure rates, high dropout rates and a great deal of misguided so-called “reform” in the middle schools. Literacy is an especially weak area, and the Chancellor’s announcement was greeted with great anticipation.

What happened? I can answer that quite easily. Nothing happened.

The program was evidently not implemented. We never heard another word about it.

As many parents in the room are probably aware, gym and music classes in the middle schools are allowed to go to 50 students. It’s not unusual for principals to have to program two classes at a time in a gym or music room. That’s 100 students. How much physical or musical education do you suppose those students are really getting?

This is not a problem that will take care of itself. If the CFE settlement does not include specific class-size mandates, then the city’s public officials must insist on them.

All middle school research—and there has been a lot over the past decade—concludes that at this vulnerable age, young adolescents need teachers who know them well and have time to spend with them. This is especially important in large inner-city schools where students can easily “slip through the cracks.” It is essential for school safety and the reasonable functioning of the schools.

Instead, we are cramming our students into classrooms designed for far fewer children and we are overworking their teachers. Families with means often take their children out of the public system in middle school, and we cannot in good conscience always persuade them that their children will get the attention they are asking for in their local middle school.

We believe this Commission can and should recommend much lower class size caps than those that currently exist. This will surely require more building space, and the Commission should underscore the need for a fully-funded capital plan to create the classrooms we need.

Even as new school buildings are going up, the city can devise creative temporary solutions to the class-size crisis. It can lease private space. It can put two teachers in large classes. It can assign more paraprofessionals to classrooms. Reduced class size should not be filed under “wishful thinking.” It must be realized, because it underlies many other middle school reforms. The UFT believes it is a top priority for schools and the city.