Size counts

In my tenure as a high school educator I had classes of 17, and classes of 42.  The
room was the same size and I had an assistant with the class of , you guessed it,
the one with 17.  This was due to the fact that 1 of the children needed extra help.
I was lucky that the 42 sized class was an honors class, so discipline problems
were not there, but helping everybody was impossible.

I tell you this story because without investment in our education,  all of our classes
may have 42 in them,  and they are not all honors classes.  When you increase the
numbers in a class dramatically it changes the ability of the educator to teach and
the child to learn.

We can look at some numbers that will be helpful.

Recently Texas reduced their education budget enough to put 40,000 
teachers out of work.

Lets say that there were 500,000 teachers, all were Elementary, and each
had 25 students.

That would mean we had 12,500,000 students to begin with.

If we lost 40,000 that would leave 460,000 still working

Now if we divide 12,5000,000 by 460,000 ≈ 27.77

Gee that's only 3 more students, not that much.


Hold on there old chopping block! 


What if part of those teachers were high school, and second lets say there were
1200 students at the school taking Math and 10 teachers.

                      1200 ÷ 10 = 120 students per teacher

       five classes per teacher:  120 ÷ 5 = 24

What if 3 of those teachers were part of the 40000?  We still have 1200 students.

                     1200 ÷ 7 ≈ 171.42 students per teacher

 five classes per teacher:  171.42 ÷ 5 ≈ 34.28                                                                                                                               
                       increase of 10 students per class

As you see the change can be amazing.  And not all of your classes are =.  So one
might have 28, while another has 40.  When classes get this big it is the child that
is the big loser.  All it takes is one or two students in a class that can destroy its
entire environment.  Until 100% of our parents send us students who care and want
only to learn, not screw around, discipline will be part of the management of a class.
However, any class above 30 in High School, or 25 in Middle or Elementary School
is too much.  We as teachers need to be able to to reach all of them, not only a few.

Also, at the same time, the no child left behind program is turning
educators into test teachers.  This is another comment that I do not wish to discuss
at this time.

Educators want to inspire, but they can't if there is not enough time to reach the
students they have, because their classes are so big.  If we believe in a great
education for our children, then we are going to have to invest more time and
money into it.  With our investment we can use the modern technologies that
you and I use every day,  and that our students are learning and working with
outside of school to help their school experience more meaningful.