Letters 01
EPP December 2001 Letter on Class Size Reduction

December 25, 2001

Honorable George E. Pataki
Governor of New York
Executive Chamber
Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Pataki:

We are writing on behalf of the Educational Priorities Panel to thank you for your support for class size reduction funding. We are appreciative that the grants programs were continued for Early-Grade Class Size Reduction (CSR) and Universal Pre-K in the 2000-01 school year. Now, new recommendations have emerged, one for "streamlining" and the other for "flexibility" that threaten to eliminate the benefits of smaller class sizes for young children. We would like to comment on them:

Streamlining We were disappointed to learn that the Board of Regents State Aid Proposal for School Year 2002-03 includes a recommendation that state class size reduction funding be folded into a Pupil Needs Aid, which would be based on the numbers of students within a school district who are placed at risk for academic problems by poverty or limited knowledge of English. EPP has several objections to this recommendation:

• The August 1997 state budget agreement carefully balanced the tax relief benefits of the STAR program, which were targeted primarily to rural and suburban homeowners, with the early childhood education benefits of the LADDER program, which were targeted primarily to four-to-eight-year old children in the big five cities. These two programs were similar in structure in that they were intended to drive funding directly to the beneficiaries, homeowners and parents of young children, in ways that could not be affected by school district policies. The STAR program could have been structured in the form of a new tax relief aid, similar to the current Tax Effort and Tax Equalization Aids, but there was no guarantee that a new tax aid would benefit homeowners. Similarly, the Assembly could have increased the funding level of Extraordinary Needs Aid in 1997, but chose not to do so because there was no guarantee that more ENA would translate into smaller class sizes. The 1997 budget agreement was a promise that all parts of the state would be treated fairly, and, just as importantly, it was also a promise to homeowners and parents that their needs will be addressed directly. The Regents’ recommendation undoes these promises to urban parents.

• Because of the extended phase-in period, the Regents’ new proposal for Pupil Needs Aid will continue for many years to be as under funded as its predecessors, Extraordinary Needs Aid (ENA) and Pupils with Compensatory Education Needs (PCEN). The result is that funding to continue smaller class sizes in the early grades will evaporate. Currently, the State Education Department mandates that every school district has a plan for Academic Intervention

Flexibility The New York City Board of Education has shared with us a memo seeking "flexibility" in the use of state class size reduction funding so that it conforms to the federal CSR requirements. This federal program does not require smaller classes, and instead allows the hiring of additional teachers so that they can "team teach" with classrooms teachers or "float" between classes to help two or more classroom teachers. EPP has already stated our objections to these changes to Board of Education officials. In summary, they are:

• The federal class size reduction funding has been folded into Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. There is no reason for congruence between the two programs, because as of the 2002-03 school year the federal program will no longer exist. Why dismantle the components of a successful state program so that it conforms to an unsuccessful federal program?

• Carefully constructed research studies on the Tennessee STAR and the Wisconsin SAGE programs have found that students’ achievement increases in kindergarten and/or first grade when they are placed in smaller class sizes and that this achievement increase is sustained if these children continue in small class sizes until third grade. No research studies that we know of have found evidence that the reduction of student-to-teacher ratios, without a reduction in class sizes, has resulted in better student achievement. EPP believes that investments in education programs should be research driven, especially when the research findings have been subjected to extensive peer review, which is not always the case.

• EPP’s small monitoring study of the implementation of the federal program in New York City public schools found that the federal CSR program was a more complex program to implement and to monitor than the state CSR program. School level administrators understand the state CSR requirement for the creation of a new class within a grade. In contrast, we found that school administrators we interviewed for the monitoring report on the federal program spent little or no time matching floating teachers to classroom teachers and scheduled no time for training and joint planning. The result was that classroom teachers told us that their workload had increased. In school visits, several classroom teachers told the EPP interviewer without any prompting that they wanted their experienced paraprofessionals back rather than having to continue to train inexperienced teachers. We also found that floating teachers were not always assigned to help instruct small groups of students due to a misfit between their assignments to classrooms and the schedule of the instructional day. In these instances, the classroom teachers told us that they used their floating teachers as an "extra pair of hands" for duties usually performed by lower-paid paraprofessionals.

As advocates for driving maximum funding to the classroom in order to close the achievement gap between city students and their peers in the rest of the state, we support the state CSR grants program because it has provided a tangible benefit for young students, especially those in the lowest-performing schools. Our monitoring report on the implementation of state program, Smaller is Better, found universally positive reactions from teachers and principals about the improved learning and behavior that resulted when class sizes in a grade were reduced to an average of 20 students. This is a state funding program that works.

EPP is in favor of streamlining state aid categories and allowing maximum flexibility at the school district level. But our most important criterion for evaluating whether additional investments make a difference for children is the impact of these investments at the school level, the level where instruction actually takes place. The Educational Priorities Panel urges you to support the continuation of the state class size reduction grant program and the regulatory components that have helped ensure its successful implementation. We fully recognize that the new fiscal reality that has resulted from the September 11th tragedies and the declining economy will make it difficult to increase the CSR funding level to $225 million next year. However, this funding level, as originally agreed to in the August 1997 budget agreement, could be more gradually phased-in.

An alternative schedule for increasing CSR funding would also allow more time to create classroom spaces in some overcrowded community school districts in New York City. EPP will shortly be releasing a report on school facilities planning that we are anxious to share with your staff members. Our recommendations will include a planning process to make Building Aid more rational and needs-based and as well as low-cost strategies to create more classrooms for early-grade instruction. We will also be inviting your staff to a seminar in the early part of 2002 to outline these recommendations in greater depth.

Sincerely,

Noreen Connell, Executive Director
Marilyn Braveman, Chairperson