Smaller Class Sizes Needed

Step for a moment into any New York classroom, and you are likely to find a lively - if not frenzied - environment of learning activity.
You are also likely to find a teacher struggling just to stay afloat among a dozen competing student needs, levels of interest, learning styles and abilities.
That is the standard situation. Then there is the extreme - classrooms of thirty or more children where variety becomes mayhem and a teacher’s attention is so thinly dispersed that he or she cannot possibly manage each of the dozen or so student needs vying for attention.
In these situations, it is all who suffer in the interest of meeting the demands of many. Too many. Such is sadly the case in New York City’s oversized classrooms, and it needs to change.
If there is one education issue that has made its way across my desk the most in recent months it is this one: class size.
Like no other, the demand for smaller class sizes has distinguished itself as a central cause for New Yorkers who seek real improvements to the environment in which our children are being asked to learn and our teachers are being asked to teach.
Since the start of the current legislative session, parents, educators and school administrators alike have sent me numerous letters and e-mail messages asking for my assistance in solving this seemingly basic problem plaguing our City’s schools and cramping our children’s intellectual growth.
Teachers, in particular, have reached out in frustration. They explain how children become increasingly disengaged when frequent and direct interaction with adult mentors is simply impossible. In hectic, overcrowded classrooms, questions unasked go unanswered, signs of difficulty or trouble go unnoticed, and students become increasingly withdrawn about academic needs as countless distractions take time away from the task at hand.
While education experts and analysts continue to dream up new ways of improving school quality through programmatic or structural changes, we sometimes find ourselves overlooking the plain logic of numbers. To me, the message for improving our City’s schools could not be clearer or simpler: lower capacity classrooms mean a higher capacity for learning.
Certainly, Governor Eliot Spitzer understands this equation, as is evident from his education budget proposal, which pledges investments of $7 billion more for our state’s schools over the next four years.
Standing by his credo of accountability and reform, the Governor has said that the lion’s share of any education-funding increases must go toward tried-and-true measures for raising student achievement, including lower class size, increased student time on tasks, teacher quality initiatives, school restructuring or full-day pre-kindergarten.
And while the Governor’s plan assures that state education funds are invested wisely, in no way are local districts boxed in by a one-size-fits-all mandate. Rather, the Governor’s proposal offers substantial leeway, allowing districts to choose which strategy works best for raising student achievement.
Given the options, I hope Mayor Michael Bloomberg makes the right choice for New York City’s schools by joining me and my Senate Democratic colleagues in backing, and then applying, the Governor’s plan for smaller class sizes.
What we know for sure is that the more attention each child receives from a teacher, the better are his or her chances to learn and succeed. It could not be any simpler or more guaranteed.
State Senator Malcolm A. Smith is the Senate Democratic Leader