When Florida voters signed on to the 2002 constitutional amendment that capped class sizes, it was celebrated as a triumph for educational priorities. And if any state needed such a pedagogic victory, it was Florida. The only folks against it were not against better teacher-to-student ratios — nobody is — but they were seen as the usual Cassandras who were always wringing their hands over something. In this case, logistics, finances and unseen, unanticipated economic scenarios.
Fast forward to now.
The state has spent some $16 billion so far to reduce class sizes in stages. It’s resulted in more portables, more team teaching, more online or unavailable courses, more out-of-certification teachers and more taken-aback parents whose children couldn’t go to the nearest school. It has overlapped with the Great Recession that has hammered Florida — morphing from the “Sunshine” to the “Foreclosure and Unemployment State” — more than most. Post-Ponzi Florida now faces a $3 billion budget shortfall.
And now that the class-size mandate has reached its bottom-line limits — K-3rd grade, 18; 4th-8th, 22; and 9th-12th, 25 — the expenses keep ratcheting up. The state estimates a cost of $40 billion over the next decade. Given this state’s antiquated revenue-raising formula based on go-go growth scenarios, that’s a sum only available through raids on trust funds, reductions in services and increases in unemployment. Stop-gap stimulus funds are just that.
And this just in. Public education has not been dramatically improved in Florida.
That’s because in a hierarchy of factors that weigh in on student success, others trump class size. The quality of the teacher is critical. So also is parental involvement and student motivation.
What we don’t need right now is the prospect of being saddled with the rigid limits mandated by a well-intentioned, naive electorate in 2002. Amendment 8 is a common sense compromise — hardly some over-correction that doesn’t “put children first.” It would simply allow for some flexibility by allowing classroom caps to be calculated on a schoolwide average. That’s the way it was done — last year. And then assure that no individual classroom could categorically exceed 21, 27 and 30.
Then you obviate the need for schools telling late-registering students there’s no room — and creating further ripples elsewhere in the district. Or telling Advanced Placement, foreign language and other students they must take online courses.
And maybe some of that $40 million could be earmarked for incentives to recruit — and retain — the best teachers. Ultimately, that has much more to do with student success than arbitrarily-capped classes that court districtwide subplots that are, ironically, not student-friendly.
There is nothing good about what the Florida legislature has done to education. Smaller class size is critical to education. i am a retired teacher who taught in Polk County for one year. The 1978-79 school year was sheer misery for me. I had between 25 and 39 students in my classes which included Civics and Geography. I couldn’t walk between the rows but I slid sideways. Try bending down to help a student with that situation!. After one year I returned to ohio where I had no more than 25 per class. Each was much easier to teach and to maintain discipline. My wife currently teaches in Polk County at the elementary level. She has 18 students. That is workable but anything more than 20 is outrageous. It would be far better with ten per teacher. Don’t critsize what you obviously no little about.