Top News Stories

Report shows DOE refused to make headway on class size despite $153M of new funds

by Maisie McAdoo

May 8, 2008 10:14 AM

Classes grew in many schools; city comptroller vows review

Despite committing $152.7 million to reduce class size this year, the Department of Education actually allowed class sizes to grow in one-third of almost 400 targeted schools, a UFT-commissioned report has found, leading the city comptroller to promise a thorough review of the DOE’s class-size spending.

“I do not understand the DOE’s failure to use the money given to it to reduce class sizes,” Comptroller William Thompson told a crowded April 28 press conference where the report was released. “What did they do with it? Why didn’t it go to kids?”

Thompson and several other city elected officials attended the conference, called by the New Yorkers for Smaller Classes coalition to release the UFT report.

Spending and class-size reduction

The $152.7 million was part of the first installment of Campaign for Fiscal Equity funds that the legislature and governor awarded to the schools after a 13-year legal battle. The State Education Department directed districts to spend the funds on five key reforms, with a special focus on high-needs schools. Because of its historically large classes, the statute required New York City to make class-size reduction one of those reforms.

In the fall, the Regents and the city reached an agreement as part of the Contract for Excellence that $152.7 million of the new funds had to be used to reduce city classes as the first installment to meet a four-year goal of average class sizes of 20 students in grades K-3 and 23 students in grades 4-12 within five years.

The report’s most disturbing finding was that of 390 elementary and middle schools that pledged to spend at least $50,000 on class-size reduction this year, nearly half, 48.5 percent, did not reduce class sizes at all; and one-third of those schools actually increased class sizes.

“This could play right into the hands of state legislators” who oppose additional funding for New York City schools, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer warned. The coalition called on the SED and the Regents to tighten their oversight and enforcement of the class-size reduction program.

Falling short of goals

Based on DOE data studied by an independent researcher retained by the UFT, the new report also found that 43 percent of all elementary and middle schools systemwide increased class sizes this year, despite the state-mandated focus on class size. A virtually identical 42 percent of the system’s most troubled schools — those on the state’s list of schools not meeting minimum academic goals — also failed to lower class sizes, though the funds were supposed to reduce class sizes in these schools first.

“While the DOE paid lip service to these legal commitments, its class-size reduction plan failed to adopt specific goals and thereby failed to meet the legislators’ and the governor’s intent because the DOE had different spending priorities,” an angry UFT President Randi Weingarten told reporters. “This study shows that the DOE is not being accountable for spending resources the way they were intended.

“Now, what will happen next school year? The state has kept its promise to school children and has directed more resources for lowering class size, but given the current city education cuts, will the DOE simply allow them to be used to mask the city budget cuts, thus once again shortchanging kids and flouting accountability?”

Averages mask increases

The DOE has claimed that average class sizes have been going down, thereby meeting state mandates. While that is technically true, the report found the intent of the law was violated as average class-size reductions — fractional ones at that — mask increased class size in many schools, much larger class sizes in some districts, and unequal class sizes in small and large high schools.

Some 60 percent of middle schools failed to meet class-size targets. And this year, smaller high schools had on average almost four fewer students per class (24.5 vs. 28.3) in core academic classes than did large high schools of 1,500 students or more.

The author of the report, John Tapper, adjunct professor of education statistics at the University of Vermont and a doctoral candidate at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education, said he was surprised at the strength of his own findings. “I had no particular horse in this race when I started,” Tapper told the press conference, “but a real story emerged from the data. The averages really do conceal a disturbing amount of class-size increases.”

Targets and broken promises

The DOE, in its Contract for Excellence, set interim targets of 20.7 students in kindergarten through 3rd grade on average and 24.8 students in grades 4-12 this year.

So far, though, average class sizes decreased this year by just one-tenth of a student in kindergarten through 3rd grade and six-tenths of a student in grades 4-8. DOE missed its targets at half of K-3 classrooms and about 60 percent of middle school classrooms, with especially large classes in Queens and Staten Island.

“At the current glacial rate of decline, it will be 10 to 30 years before the city reaches its targets,” Class Size Matters Executive Director Leonie Haimson told the press conference.

The coalition has led five years of efforts to get class sizes reduced, including petition drives, a lawsuit and intensive lobbying of the city and state. There was a sense of victory when the governor and legislature formulated the contracts, but the DOE insisted that principals were allowed to control their own budgets and would comply voluntarily.

“The DOE said, ‘Trust us,’ and the class-size needle barely moved — or even worsened,” noted Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, executive director of the Hispanic Federation and chair of New Yorkers for Smaller Classes. “How can we applaud smaller classes in charter schools and smaller high schools yet deny them to the majority of students in New York City public schools?”

The coalition is calling for not only tighter state and city oversight but the imposition of class-size caps, instead of merely target averages, in future years of the Contracts for Excellence.

Read UFT's Press Release NYC Fails to Meet State-Mandated Class Size Goals. Then click the link: Read the Full Report Here.