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Lillian Rodriguez Lopez

Chair of New Yorkers for Smaller Classes

Executive Vice President, Hispanic Federation

Testimony before the CFE Commission

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Hunter College School of Social Work

Good afternoon, my name is Lillian Rodriguez-Lopez, and I’m Executive Vice President of the Hispanic Federation and Chair of the New Yorkers for Smaller Classes coalition.  I became involved in this coalition over a year ago, when I observed that in our poll of Hispanic New Yorkers, the need for smaller classes for Latino children was at the top of their list of concerns.  Since then, I have learned that parents, teachers and education advocates have for years struggled for this goal, so that our children would receive some of the same benefits and opportunities that smaller classes afford children in the rest of the state.

Today, I’d like to present to you two different five year class size reduction plans that will finally accomplish this goal, and I’ll even suggest where we might find the funds to pay for this, by reprioritizing the city’s current spending plans for the CFE funds. As it stands, the city’s plan would devote only $117 million in annual spending out of more than $5 billion in additional state aid for smaller classes, and would lower average class size only through grade 3.  This would mean that ten years from now, many of our students in grades 4th to 12th would continue to be trapped in classes of 30 or more.  Every day, as we speak, they are being denied an adequate education by their inability to learn in such large classes.  For years we have made excuses for the fact that we have deprived the children of this city of their right to a decent education; ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say to you today that the days of excuses are over.

Especially now we are expected to receive from between $4-5 billion per year from the state in additional aid to our schools, we longer have any moral or financial justification to deny our children the same chance to succeed in life as those elsewhere receive, which will only be possible if we provide them with the smaller classes they so desperately require. 

Right now, in this city, we have a high school dropout rate of over 50%; and our black and Hispanic graduation rates are among the lowest in the nation, of only 30- 32%.   We have got to start improving their chances as soon as possible, by reducing their class size, or else I fear for them and the future of our city as a whole.  Talk about waste!  Just consider the waste, in terms of human lives, and dollars, of a system that graduates less than 50% of its students, and for most of those who do graduate, takes five or six years to do so. 

Our first plan, which we call Plan A, provides class sizes that would ensure that our at-risk students in all grades receive the instructional support and attention they require.  The second, Plan B, would be the minimum necessary to make certain that they be provided with class sizes that are at least comparable to those currently enjoyed by students in the rest of the state, who are much less likely to be poor, minority, or ELL status.

1.  PLAN A

Our first plan has the same class sizes limits for grades K-3 that Montgomery County, Maryland has now adopted district wide, and for all grades, the same goals that North Carolina has implemented in their high-poverty, high-priority schools, which serve a similar student population as our schools here in New York City.  In order to ensure that our students have an adequate opportunity to succeed, they need to be provided class sizes that are significantly smaller than the average size in the rest of the state.

Class Size Goals

K through 3rd grade:classes limited to 15

Grades 4 through 8:classes limited to 17

Grades 9 through 12:classes limited to 20

Implementation: 5 years

Reducing average class size by two each year, these goals would take about five years to achieve.

Staffing Cost estimates

We estimate that staffing costs would require approximately $230 million per year, reaching $1.15 billion annually after five years, plus additional costs at a much lower level to achieve school- and classroom-specific reductions.

Rationale

Research shows that high-needs students, especially those who are poor, minority and/or English Language Learners, require substantially greater resources and smaller classes than average students to receive an adequate education.  According to recent data, approximately 82% of New York City students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, compared to 35% in the rest of the State. Fourteen percent of public school students in New York City are Limited English Proficient, compared to 1.2 % for the rest of the State; and 30% of the City’s students meet the federal definition of poverty, compared to a 12% for the rest of the State.

Accordingly, Plan A proposes goals on class size that are lower than those that presently exist in the state’s public schools outside New York City.  Proposed class sizes are smallest in the early grades, where research indicates that the need for intensive instructional support is greatest, particularly among poor and minority children. 

As noted above, our proposed class size goals are those recognized by North Carolina educators as necessary to provide an adequate education and retain experienced teachers in their high-needs schools, and their implementation has had a notable effect in improving student achievement and narrowing the racial and ethnic achievement gap. 

Our high school class sizes of 20 are what the National Council of Teachers of English would recommend as a maximum for high school classes.   Twenty is also the recommended size for the “Ramp up” programs for high school students in literacy and math, developed by the National Center for Education and the Economy and implemented in New York City schools.

Moreover, in the CFE case, the plaintiffs commissioned a series of panels of educators, known as the Professional Judgment Panels.  These educators, drawn from districts throughout the state and esteemed in their fields, concluded that much smaller classes in all grades would be necessary to ensure that students in New York City could receive an adequate education.   The educators on the Professional Judgment Panels recommended much smaller classes in high poverty schools, with class sizes in the elementary grades that average 14 students, in middle school grades 22.6 students per class, and in high school 18.4 students per class. 

Their class size proposals, similar to ours, formed the basis of the CFE costing-out study that, in turn, was the foundation for the additional $4 to $5 billion per year that the city now argues it should be awarded to improve its schools.   Thus, the staffing costs for our class size proposals should be affordable within this level of funding as well.

2.  Plan B

Class Size Goals

K through 3rd grade:classes limited to 18

Grades 4 through 8:classes limited to 22

Grades 9 through 12:classes limited to 25

Implementation: 5 years

By reducing class size by one on average for each grade each year, these goals could be reached on average after five years.

Staffing Cost estimate

We estimate that this proposal would cost approximately $115 million per year for staffing to achieve system wide averages, after five years reaching $575 million. Limiting each class would require further investment, as in Plan A, but the additional cost would be considerably below $115 million.

Rationale:

This plan would provide the largest class size limits that could possibly be deemed acceptable, given that they are close to the average sizes in the rest of the state outside New York City.  If our students are to receive an adequate education, their classes must be at least as small as those afforded students in the rest of the state, where levels of poverty and immigrant status are much lower.

Our proposals differ from the statewide averages only by being somewhat smaller in grades K-3, and somewhat larger in high school.  This reflects the professional consensus that the smallest classes should be afforded children early on to ensure that they produce the maximum educational benefits. These goals are also quite close to those recommended by the plaintiffs’ Professional Judgment Panel for schools with an “average” student population, in order to provide an adequate education (34.2% students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch).

Finally, these class size goals are also close to those that the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered in Abbott V in 1998.  

3.  Facility needs

Along with the staffing costs, there would of course be substantial capital costs with either Plan A or Plan B, to provide sufficient classroom capacity for smaller classes in all grades.  Expert consultants hired by CFE made estimates for slightly different class size goals, concluding that reducing class size to 20 in grades K-5, 23 in grades 6-8 and 24 in high school would cost approximately $2.72 billion above  the current NYC five year capital plan for schools.   Assuming that the funding for this expansion would be bonded and amortized over a 30-year period, the total annual cost over and above the current city’s capital plan would be about $180 million for the facilities to reduce class size to these levels.

The facilities cost for Plan B in our proposal would be close to this amount.   Even within the city’s current proposed five year capital plan for schools, providing sufficient space for these class sizes would be achievable, if expanding capacity and building new schools were given a higher priority within the plan   As it stands, the current city’s capital plan for schools as presently conceived expends more resources, or $4.6 billion, for “restructuring” schools, than it does towards increasing capacity in order to relieve overcrowding and reduce class size.

The facilities cost for Plan A would probably be more than twice as large, or about $8.8 billion, with an annual  amortized cost of approximately $564 million per year.    The total for both facilities and staffing would cost approximately $1.7 billion per year after five years, which is admittedly a considerable amount, but still less than half of what we are expected to receive annually from the state as a result of CFE, and less than 10% of the total education budget of the city by that point, compared to the less than 1% the administration plans to spend on reducing class size. 

The need for additional facilities would require a considerable expansion of the current city’s capital plan for schools.   For some suggestions as to how this could be achieved within the overall budget of the city’s spending plan, see below.

The City’s current spending plan for CFE funds

In August, the Mayor of New York City and the Department of Education detailed how they would spend an additional $5.3 billion in annual operating aid from the state. Yet they completely omitted from their plan reducing average class size in any grade higher than third.  Given the deplorable statistics about overcrowded classrooms in our middle and high schools, the city’s refusal to address the need to address smaller classes in these grades is unacceptable, if we want to ensure that another generation of students won’t have to wait  for their chance to learn.  

Rather than providing our students with the smaller classes that they need to graduate, the New York City compliance plan is a grab bag of proposals, with very little rationale.  The plan spends billions of dollars on programs that have no evidentiary basis in either the court proceedings or in research.

For example, while investing in only $51 million to hire 859 classroom teachers to reduce class size to 20 in grades K-3, the administration wants to expends $21 million to hire 354 new teachers to support its 3rd grade retention policy, and an additional $287 million to hire 1700 new teachers and 3350 other professional staff for the elementary grades as a whole. This totals almost $300 million annually to pay for 5,404 new elementary schools teachers and staff, which would significantly inflate the teacher-student ratio without using any of these professionals to lower class size. 

How all of these additional staff will be spending their time is a bit unclear; the plan mentions that every elementary school would have its own foreign language and science teachers.  While this would surely be desirable, neither the evidence in the case nor the research supports the notion that providing foreign language or science teachers in elementary schools should be as high a priority as reducing class size. Certainly, there is no backing in the research that this would have a similar effect in terms of improving student achievement overall or narrowing the achievement gap.

Similarly, while investing only $60 million in hiring 1,100 new classroom teachers to limit class sizes to 28 in grades 6-8, and taking no steps to lower class size in high school, the city’s compliance plan devotes $391 million to fund several thousand more “safety” and guidance staff in secondary schools, including a “negotiation specialist” for each school.  Again, no evidence is presented that this would eliminate the need for smaller classes in order to improve student outcome. Indeed, the research suggests that by reducing class size and eliminating overcrowding, safety is considerably enhanced and disciplinary referrals decline.

Taken together, the cost of the additional specialists and other non-classroom teachers provided in the city’s elementary and secondary school plans is almost $700 million per year, sufficient to pay the entire staffing costs of Plan B, and more than half of Plan A.

The city’s compliance plan also expends $52 million annually to support 42 new small schools and charter schools in the elementary grades, as well as $346 million for 800 new small schools and charters in the secondary grades.   It would devote an additional $77 million towards providing additional administrative staff for these “smaller learning communities,” and $88 million for their higher ratio of counselors and support staff.

Creating new, smaller schools and charters may be a priority for this administration, but was neither mentioned in the evidence or in the court’s decision as a critical need for our schools.  The level of funding to staff and support these new schools, totaling $565 million per year, together with the nearly $700 million cost of the additional staffing that the city proposes above, would be more than sufficient to pay for the entire staffing costs of plan A.

Moreover, because there is insufficient space to put all the additional non-classroom staff that this plan includes, either in existing or projected school buildings, the administration also plans to spend $298 million per year to lease office space, and provide computer and administration costs for all the additional specialists and staff hired for elementary schools, as well as $223 million in annual costs for leasing space, computer and administration for all the additional specialists, counselors and other assorted staff proposed for middle and high schools. 

How this office space will be found near enough existing schools to be practicable is unclear. Why a “negotiation” specialist, based in an office somewhere outside of a school will be able to defuse the tensions between students at some of the new smaller schools, who have class sizes of 20-25 while other students, in the same building, are still in classes of 35-40 students, is also questionable.

If one took the total of $521 million in annual expenditures for these leasing, computer and administrative costs, and put them towards securing the capital cost of actually building new schools, this would provide approximately $8 billion dollars for school construction and expansion, which in itself would provide nearly enough space to reduce class size to the levels called for in Plan A, and far more than needed for Plan B. 

Other questionable priorities of the city’s proposed compliance plan

The city’s compliance plan also spends an inordinate amount on computers and technology.  For “instructional technology and support”, the plan devotes $364 million per year, more than three times the amount spent to reduce class size.

Additionally, the Mayor’s capital plan spends $736 million for “technology enhancements,” which is to install wireless capability for every school and buy laptops for nearly every student in the system, even though there is no evidence that the high-needs student population of New York City would receive as much benefit from laptop computers as they would from smaller classes and the increased attention from their teachers that such classes would provide.

In Maine, a much more modest program has cost the state $15 million over the last two years to buy laptops for middle school students and teachers.  The program has had disappointing results so far in terms of its impact on achievement, with eighth-grade scores in all subjects flat since the program began, including reading, writing, math and science.   Some critics observe that students now spend inordinate time in class playing games on their laptops without their teachers noticing.

According to the CFE consultants, to provide New York City students with 72,053 computers, which would give them the same access to technology as students in the rest of the state, would cost only about $126 million.   Subtracting $126 million from the $736 million that the city’s current plan includes for technology would yield another $611 million in the existing capital plan, which could instead be invested in acquiring new classroom space to help reduce class size. 

This, along with half of the annual funds spent on “instructional technology and support,” or $182 million, would secure almost $3.5 billion in capital funds for school construction.  Together with the $8 billion obtained by converting annual payments for leased office, administration and technology costs for all the additional staff not housed in schools, would provide $11.5 billion for school construction and expansion, more than enough to provide adequate classroom space for either Plan A or Plan B.

In order to minimize chaos and confusion, class size reductions should be phased in gradually over a period of years, as is presently occurring in Florida.  Like that state’s class size reduction program, implementation should be flexible to start, and become increasingly strict over time.   Average class sizes should first be imposed system wide, then at the district or regional level, then at the school level and finally in each classroom.  Following this system, most of the school districts in Florida have complied with the state’s class size reduction requirements for two years in a row, with minimal disruption, lowering class sizes by two students per class, despite a rapidly growing enrollment. 

Here in New York City, unlike Florida, we are experiencing a decline in enrollment, which will help us reduce class size to the necessary levels.  Of course, we face special challenges, especially in regards building and leasing sufficient space to reduce class size.  When you deal with this issue in a subsequent hearing, our coalition will present you with numerous proposals that would help the Department of Education acquire the classroom space needed in the most cost-effective manner.

But until then, on behalf of New Yorkers for Smaller Classes, I would ask you to take a serious look at our class size reduction plans, and our proposals on how to pay for them.  On behalf of parents, teachers and children throughout this city, who every day have to struggle through no fault of their own because of tragically overcrowded classrooms, I  urge you to take this once-in-a lifetime chance, and finally ensure that at last, our children will have their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to succeed.

Thank you so much.

Lilliantestimony.doc