Editorials

Truth in advertising

Apr 12, 2007 6:20 PM

“The classes are smaller, and that makes the teaching situation very personal. In this new environment, the kids come around to spend time with you on their own. A large percentage of them stay after school, either for extra help and tutoring, or to take an after-school class. Some stay to do their homework or even just to spend time with teachers and other students.”

Hmmm. Sounds like more propaganda from that dastardly teachers union, which, as everyone knows — just ask the New York Post — is only pushing for smaller class sizes because it wants the city to hire more teachers.

Meanwhile, Schools Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg don’t believe that smaller classes should be mandated. In fact, the mayor has twice seen to it that a referendum on mandating smaller class sizes was knocked off the ballot and the chancellor, while giving lip service to the idea of lowering class sizes, doesn’t believe in them enough to want it put into legislative language.

But wait, that interesting teacher’s comment above is not courtesy of the UFT. Instead it is — are you ready? — from the Department of Education’s own advertisement to attract teachers to work in the city’s schools. “Great Places To Work” is the title of the ad series and a recent one is all about Hamlet Santos, an 11th-grade math teacher in the Bronx School of Law and Finance.

Santos extols the virtues of his school, one of the new small high schools that we’re hearing so much about, and of the terrific academic advantages of having only some 20 students in a class. “Before, I would have 34 students in each class — and only see them for 45 minutes in five sessions a day,” recalls Santos in the ad. The smaller classes and smaller school, he adds, create the kind of environment where “everyone really wants to be … both student and teachers. It is a true learning experience for all of us.”

So if that’s the case, why shouldn’t such an environment be mandated throughout the school system? There are reasons to have both big and small schools but at the very least we can have small classes throughout the system. Like, for instance, oh let’s take a wild, offbeat example, almost everywhere in the rest of the state!

Average class sizes in New York City schools run up to 60 percent higher than average class sizes in the state. But the mayor and chancellor don’t want to have their hands tied to mandate smaller classes in the city’s schools.

Of course, the new state education budget — despite the mayor and chancellor — does mandate that school systems throughout the state must develop a five-year plan to reduce average class sizes for all grades. While we have a long road to go, this is a huge step. The mayor and chancellor must comply with the law, even if kicking and screaming. It’s too bad they have been so unenthusiastic.

Maybe they need to start reading their own advertising.