- Outlook for expansion: Expensive. Low-cost options are nearly exhausted; what's left are big-ticket solutions. The main alternatives are more portables or new construction. Districts with "landlocked" schools -- maxed out on property and playground space -- could add grades only through major, disruptive reorganization, such as creating a "primary center" and moving older students to other sites.
All this considered, the total one-time, facility-related cost of full implementation in all four K-3 grades is estimated at $1.1 billion.
- Best hope on the horizon: Gov. Wilson supports putting a multi-billion-dollar bond on the statewide ballot in 1998 -- at least $1 billion of it earmarked for CSR -- and changing the two-thirds vote required for local bonds to a simple majority. The 44 local bonds passed last spring will help -- most notably, Los Angeles's $2.4 billion bond win.
Teacher and parent responses
- Teachers in reduced-size classes: Veteran teachers, freed of their accustomed load of 30 or more kids, can hardly find enough superlatives. Time once taken up managing the group can now go into instruction and personal attention.
In reading, each child can get more practice time. ("I can go around the classroom and have them read to me twice.") Curriculum coverage is faster ("It's the difference between driving in rush hour and not. You have the same destination, but there are fewer obstacles to getting there.")
Quiet, "good" students can now get noticed. (Education Week reported one teacher's discovery that a quiet child who read perfectly every day turned out to have memorized each assignment with help from older siblings.)
On the downside, some teachers fear they'll be blamed if test scores don't jump, even though variables they can't control -- such as student mobility -- are also involved. Many novice teachers are struggling. Greener than the usual fledglings, they need help, and support varies by district.
Worries include: Will teacher inexperience retard, if not undo, the benefits of small-class benefits and/or create inequities? If first-grade material is covered faster, will the second grade change accordingly?
- Kindergarten teachers: Some who have been left out are chagrined as well as concerned about program quality. In some schools, kindergarten classes have not only remained large, but also have been moved to smaller quarters so that their spaces could be subdivided for two or more 20:1 first- or second-grade classes.
- Upper grade teachers: There's a mix of envy, support, resentment and hope. Many have lent support (e.g., intermediate-grade teachers agreeing to mid-year moves to provide primary space), expecting benefits later in terms of better-grounded kids. But concerns raised by the different workloads are headed for the bargaining table.
- Parents: Most with kids in 20:1 classes are happy. Some have actively campaigned to influence decisions, including arguing against 40:2 team-taught classes or multi-grade groupings. Urban parents are aware there's a shortage of qualified teachers. Some upper-grade parents are angry about being left out or being asked to accept changes such as their children starting middle school in sixth grade.
Equity issues
- Teacher-related: Most emergency teacher hires are in urban districts, which faced the toughest recruitment challenges, compounded by an exodus of teachers taking up jobs elsewhere. Of 1,500 Los Angeles Unified teachers hired by early September last year, half had only emergency credentials. Yet urban schools serve concentrations of poor and minority students whose needs call for more, not less, knowledge and experience.
What's also unknown is the impact of reportedly significant numbers of new and/or uncredentialed teachers assigned to special or bilingual education classes, where teacher shortages are chronic.
- Facility-related: Especially in urban areas, districts have space for expansion at some schools but not others. The students most likely to benefit from CSR are in the schools least likely to have room to expand it.
San Diego's board gave blanket approval anyway. Indications are that the district's sites feel so pressured to get the numbers down -- by communities and a pending accountability system -- that they're stretching the limits on learning space.
Other critical issues
- Sustainability: CSR is now part of the state's permanent school finance structure. But some worry that funding increases may be insufficient to sustain it, especially as it expands. The legislative analyst estimates that per-pupil costs in five to seven years (based on average, rather than new, teacher salary levels and assuming an average class size of 19) will be about $1,020 in current terms.
- Collective bargaining concerns: The major issue is CSR's impact on teacher salary increases. Other issues are large class teacher workloads, longer days for a.m./p.m. kindergarten teachers, and night and weekend time required for staff development.
- Impact on choice: CSR has attracted some transfers from private schools. But some parents could not find a classroom slot in the school of their choice because of the 20:1 cap. Similarly, the numbers restrict choice of preferred teacher. And some youngsters have been shut out of their neighborhood schools and forced to travel to where space is available. Oakland, for example, had 950 such students last year. No district busing meant they had to find their own way to school.
- The kindergarten vs. grade three decision: Districts expanding to three rather than four grades must choose kindergarten or third. Debate continues over which is the better educational choice. Some promote third as the last chance to help poor readers; others say a jump-start in kindergarten would make for fewer poor readers by third grade. Administrators also differ about whether kindergarten is academic or developmental.
- Impact on other programs: The jury is still out on limited English proficient programs, and CSR magnifies the problem of a chronic shortage of bilingual teachers.
So far, indications for special education are mixed. In some cases, more individual attention means fewer kids referred; in others, it means more. Some special education classes were moved to smaller spaces and some lost teachers to regular classes. Reform programs such as the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now and the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative feel that they're fighting for attention. But some feel that in the end, such programs may benefit from the good feeling about schools generated by CSR.
