Senator Morgan's SB 31 is a "runaway bill" that doesn't help with classroom size, but we're fighting about it anyway?

Senator Karen Morgan proposed a bill, SB 31, that mandated certain small class sizes for grades K-3. The bill started out as a mandate to the legislature, to allocate the money necessary to add more teachers or paraeducators as necessary to meet these classroom size caps. The limits started out as 18 for Kindergarten, 20 for 1st grade, 22 for 2nd grade, and 24 for 3rd grade. In a very reasonable compromise, Senator Morgan later amended two of these caps to 20 for kindergarten and 22 for 1st grade.

I heard her interviewed on KSL the day I was in Salt Lake for the Utah Taxpayers Association's pre-legislative sales pitch. She explained at length about the money allocated. It would range from $12 million to $22 million if only para-educators were hired, and up to $40 something million if new teachers were hired. I believe the fiscal note on the bill originally explained this also, though it does not in its current form. Here's one article explaining this initial version of the bill and how the Utah Taxpayer's Association was against the bill.

As the article explains, the expensive bill passed the stacked Senate Education Committee, which was really the first sign that mischief was afoot. Senator Stephenson revealed his strategy in the hearing:

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said he supports the bill and would like to see it integrated even if funding for it isn't available this year.

"If we're not able to get this fiscal note funded, we ought to push the bill forward anyway and begin to impose a standard for these grades that you have identified," Stephenson said. He suggested that since districts already receive state dollars for class-size reduction, there ought to be a standard in place to ensure they actually do it.

By the time the bill passed the 2nd Senate vote (it has to pass a committee vote, and then two votes in the Senate), it was gutted by Howard Stephenson's amendment. This article about the vote features Sen. Jerry Stevenson commenting that he wanted to make absolutely sure that the mandate didn't apply to the legislature or funding. The article also explains that the money allocated had been reduced to $3.6 million and delves into the legislators' false premises for Stephenson's amendment:

Before lawmakers approved the bill, Morgan amended it to raise the caps slightly, reducing its cost to $3.6 million. Lawmakers also amended the bill to specify that in order to continue to receive state money that’s long been distributed for class size reductions, schools would have to meet the new caps....

...Several said they liked the idea of holding schools accountable for the money they’re already getting to reduce class sizes.

A 2007 legislative audit showed that $460 million meant to make class sizes smaller in Utah over seven years hadn’t led to any change, though some have said class sizes would have been even larger if not for that money.

In an important sidenote, Ms. Schencker got a little lazy with her background info here. Her assertion about the 2007 classroom size reduction audit is apparently her summary of info given her by Senator Stephenson when she interviewed him about this same bill the month before. She just pasted in the exact same paragraph here with no explanation that this spin of the 2007 audit came from Howard Stephenson.

Let's look at what the report actually says. The 2007 audit is available online. (Hat tip to Cameron who first commented on this audit and sent me the link.) It explained that not all districts were accounting specifically for the classroom size reduction money before mixing it with their general funds. This was because the legislature specifically released them from tracking and reporting that to in part reduce the amount of reports to the legislative interim education committee, pg 14. Pgs 7-9 show that the districts specifically tracking the money used 100% on teachers to reduce classroom sizes and supplemented beyond that because the CSR money had not kept up with inflation. The next few pages explain other measures taken that indicate that it is a reasonable conclusion that the districts not tracking the money specifically still used 99%+ of the money on classroom size reduction.

The biggest reason that classroom sizes did not go down is detailed on pg 23. The legislature never once funded enough reduction money to match enrollment growth from 2001 to 2007, contrary to the language in their own statute allocating the money. Pgs 24 and 25 also explain that charter schools, many with charters already committing them to small class sizes, are also diluting the available CSR money for those districts with the largest classes.

So the audit concludes that 99% to 100% of the hundreds of millions allocated were spent appropriately to reduce class sizes, and that money still didn't keep up with student growth. This shows that the faulty Stephenson/Schencker summary of the audit should really be stated as "Of course class sizes would have been even larger if not for that money." Stephenson, Waddoups, and other legislators claiming that the large amount of classroom size reduction money "hadn’t led to any change," implying that the districts are diverting money to administration and other "fat," are purposefully misrepresenting the content of their own audit knowing that most people will never read the audit and find them out. It also shows the absolutely false premise of the current SB 31 as amended, that the districts have to be "held accountable" because they are misusing funds.

Stephenson's amendment made it so the school districts has to achieve these very small class sizes with $3.6 million or lose the $100+ million that had already been proven to be insufficient to keep up with growth. Meet a moving target with insufficient resources, or we'll take way those insufficient resources until you do. I've said it before--the legislature's mandates could make great Dilbert punchlines.

SB 31 was amended again before passing its 3rd Senate vote and moving to the House, taking out all of the money allocated. The only thing left in the bill is a mandate for districts to restrict K-3 class sizes to the prescriptive levels or lose the $100+ million that the audit has already proven to be insufficient to keep up with growth. Sen. Morgan's new comments about the bill are troubling and very different than her initial excitement to increase funding in order to reduce class sizes.

Morgan's bill would add penalties to the existing law, which could mean school districts losing class-size reduction funding if they don't meet state standards.

"I have no problem with that," Morgan said of the change. "I believe in fiscal responsibility."

"We can only do one piece at a time," she said.

"The districts can implement this with the money we're giving them," she said.

"The money we're giving them" refers to the fact that the legislature plans to increase the WPU (general funding for all public ed.) by $3 million rather than specifically allocating additional monies to the classroom size reduction mandates. Putting the money in the WPU is a very different thing. WPU changes almost every single year. WPU has gone down significantly over the last few years, with no new money for even new students. It is completely different than what Senator Morgan originally proposed. It just seems unlike her to put in a penalty as the first piece without the resources to meet the standard. She's parroting Senator Stephenson so much that I jokingly wonder about what incriminating pictures he has of her.

That last link also explains how the State School Board discussed the new state of the bill in one of their meetings and were concerned about the unfunded mandate. They discussed various options, took a vote, and ultimately left their official position as "supporting the bill in concept" just as they had before the changes. Senator Morgan heard of this or read the article, and reacted very strongly to the word "problematic" in a post to the Senate Democrats' Blog, saying that "Their lack of understanding of the state public education budget is what’s problematic." She roundly criticized the State School Board, implying that they don't care about kids if they don't support her bill--another Stephenson move--and herself supporting the false premise that the districts have not been "accountable" for the current classroom size reduction money.

I was flabbergasted when I saw her comments. It seems to me that she's staked so much of her pride on getting something...anything...passed with the words "classroom size" in the title, that she's compromised her principles and reverted to hostile anti-public ed. talking points about the State School Board. What next?

The evidence is clear Senator Morgan and the premise of your borrowed criticisms is demonstrably false. Read the audit again and evaluate the claims. I have a daughter in a 1st grade class of 30 and know how hard that is for her. That doesn't make these draconian mandates right. Your bill has been subverted from an intended aid to K-3 children and public education into a hostile bill with severe penalties for not reaching impossibly high standards. The consequences for not meeting the caps are enormous, and the nice, but not drastic benefits of a paraeducator in a classroom of 30 kids do not equal that risk. Howard Stephenson wants these classroom size caps as a way to spin the removal of existing classroom size reduction funds while also discrediting public education. Why pretend it's the school board's fault when the politicians and PCE spokeswoman quoted in these same articles are very open about their goals for "more dynamic reform?" Is your bill making those negative policies more likely to be enacted?

Please reconsider what you really wanted to accomplish and what SB 31 does now. Would a January 2012 Senator Morgan even recognize the bill? Your original called for $22 million in a dedicated revenue stream just to put a paraeducator in K-3 classrooms. You also openly hoped funding could be found to make the increased personnel actual teachers, which is a much superior option to just paraeducators. Now your bill punishes districts for not adding a paraeducator in every K-3 classroom with $3.6 million lumped into the general operating funds needed to meet other increased mandates from the legislature as well. You have empirical evidence from the audit that the districts will be unable to meet this mandate, despite being 100% responsible with the previous money. SB 31 will likely lead to *larger* classes as schools inevitably start losing the current, but insufficent, classroom size reduction assistance. You are on the verge of pushing through one of the most damaging bills in the session.

I'll end with my comments on the blog of another person I respect, Karen of the Utah Moms Care blog. Sen. Morgan apparently handed her the statement from the Senate Democrats Blog above and asked her to urge her readers to call their legislators about SB 31. She said the WPU funding was enough and implored parents to tell their legislators they value smaller classes. I am frustrated with her framing of this issue as any opponent of this mutated SB 31 must not want smaller classes for their children and said so. My young children will all be affected by large K-3 classes, but I have to bear their whole education in mind when evaluating policy.

My comments on this post are only slightly different from above, but I want to link the Utah Moms Care post as comments and conversation might happen at either spot:

I have to strongly disagree that what this bill has become is beneficial to schools. The WPU is a general resource with many competing needs, especially after the cuts of the last three years. They PR'ed it as "not funding growth," but the same amount of money (no increase 2 yrs, small increase last year) got spread over 30,000+ more students, the equivalent of a cut much larger than 1%. (Math help here anyone?...What would be the equivalent %?)

So we are at a huge low point in funding with class sizes increasing all over the state. The existing "classroom size reduction" money wasn't enough to keep up with growth, even in 2007 when funding and WPU were at a high point.

So increasing this current lower WPU amount by 1% is suddenly enough to achieve what we couldn't in 2007? And if we don't drastically rearrange resources to damage 3-6 grade class sizes (both you and Sen. Morgan know there's not all this budget fat lying around to be used "more effectively" as PCE, etc. claim), we agree to lose the much larger amount of previous classroom size reduction money that was never enough either?

Stephenson is laughing his way to the bank, getting Sen. Morgan to carry his water for him. I seriously don't get this. It seemed to me that Sen. Morgan agreed to the punitive trigger for failing to meet a damaging standard in an unwise attempt to preserve the bill when it had dedicated money, and is now holding on to this shell with no money and only the bad "reform" just to make it look like she's actually getting things done.

Then she flies off the handle with such a strident public statement when it is obvious she had neither listened to the actual discussion online or spoken with a State School Board member. The board members were much more diplomatic than me in their discussion, even those who who were concerned with the bill's provisions. And they deadlocked on their vote, leaving the official "supports concept" designation on the bill as Mrs. Ziegler pointed out above.

So instead of working with people she has worked with so well many times in the past, Sen. Morgan hands a note to you asking parents to email in support of her damaging bill? I constantly realize how little I know of the personal dynamics and relationships up there on the Hill, but this whole thing just seems strange. Framing the bill as the State School Board doesn't support small class sizes is something Howard Stephenson would do. The financial realities mean this bill has become only punitive.

Please help me see what I'm missing here...

Legislative rhetoric is running high in 2011 and excessive classloads are putting the accreditation status of many Utah high schools at risk

I have followed the legislative session fairly closely ever since 2007 and vouchers. The rhetoric behind vouchers and the following debate over the referendum when the legislature campaigned against the evil UEA and teachers who care more about adults than kids opened my eyes to the depth of ideological hatred against public education in a segment of Utah politics. The 2011 session has started out as openly hostile toward public education and maybe even more.

I listened to a good part of two education committee meetings today (1-26-11) and heard elected officials and invited guests openly and indirectly accuse teachers of hating America, families, and students. I think most people have no idea how organized and influential this anti-public education group of legislators and Eagle Forum members are among the legislature. Legislators need to hear from the majority who are not represented by this extreme faction styling themselves as the moral mainstream. Please listen to any committee meeting from the three main committees dealing with public education. You can listen to meetings live or listen to the recording afterward. You have to block out 60-90 minutes to listen to one, but I think it will be worth it in order for you to hear who is really shaping Utah education policy and using what claims.

The Joint Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee is composed of both Utah House Representatives and Utah Senators. It is chaired by Senator Chris Buttars. The next meeting is Jan. 27 at 8:00 am.

The Senate Education Committee is chaired by Senator Howard Stephenson. The next meeting is Jan. 27 at 4:00 pm. Here is the direct link to the audio file for the Jan. 26 meeting which made me so frustrated. Karen at the Utah Moms Care blog has already posted her summary of the meeting. She also comments on her surprise at the "level of disdain being openly shown toward the administrators of public education in Utah."

The House Education Committee is chaired by Representative Bill Wright. The next meeting is not currently scheduled, but you can find the audio for the last two meetings via the link.

Finally, I want to call attention to another potential cost to the severe budget cuts in public education. In December, three Wasatch Front high schools from three different districts were put under "advised" status in their accreditation evaluations because of too many teachers with student loads of over 180 students. They were Kearns, Bingham, and Timpanogos High Schools.

All schools have to be accredited by the state of Utah and high schools have to be additionally accredited by the Northwest Accreditation Commission in order to have their credits accepted by universities.

The state's accreditation standards do not have a student load threshold, so we are free to stuff as many students as possible into jr. high and middle school classes because no one is checking. Student loads over 200 are the norm for full-time jr. high teachers right now. I have my first classes of 38 this year in my core class, and next year the numbers are projected to be around 40 students in core classes. The "non-core" classes are seeing class sizes closer to 50 right now.

However, the high schools facing the Northwest Accreditation standards face a limit to how many teachers can have these enormous student loads. Kearns, Bingham, and Timpanogos got caught, but schools only go through the accreditation process every 3 or 6 years, depending how they did on the previous evaluation. There are many other schools that would earn an "advised" status if they were being evaluated this year. The three schools on advised status need to show they have remedied the problems observed in order to leave advised status and not endanger their accreditation. There is little chance for those schools to hire more teachers with 7% budget cuts currently slated for public education, besides the fact that the system grew by over 13,000 additional students this year with no new funds to pay for them and is expected to grow by almost 15,000 students next year. Plus, an additional 1/6 of schools will face accreditation next year.

There could be serious, longterm consequences for public education if these extreme numbers are not addressed.

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Legislative Session 2011 begins....but it's not just about immigration! Will public education be harmed while no one is paying attention?

The illegal immigration debate is important. The state budget is important. But what will affect your children the most over the next couple decades? Won't the state of our public schools have a more lasting influence on the children of Utah? I am a parent and have as vested an interest in these schools as anyone, but it's also about the investment in helping the other hundreds of thousands of kids in the state. I believe the Utah public education system is a fundamental base to our society, as well as our economy.

The debate on illegal immigration policy in Utah will generate a lot of sparks and media attention this year, nationally as well as locally. With public attention diverted, and the difficult budget as cover, there are serious proposals to damage public ed. and divert public funds in the name of "reform." Basic funding is at a quiet crisis level risking the accreditation (i.e. whether colleges will accept their credits) of every high school in the state, but legislators currently DO NOT plan on funding almost 15,000 new students entering the system next school year (and that is net after accounting for seniors leaving) after not funding the 13,000 new students that entered this year. On top of that, many have pet projects favored by anti-public ed. groups to slice away even more of that money. Then when public schools struggle with the impacts of huge classes and little resources, those legislators will claim the worsening results justify further defunding the public system in favor of their connected donors poised to profit from the changes.

A large number of influential legislators--the ones who control the money--hold views on public education far outside the mainstream of the Utah public. Three examples just in the last week:

1. House Rep John Dougall explains in the comment section of this blog post about partisan school board elections that he thinks local school boards are uninformed, his new reading of the state constitution means that the state legislature isn't responsible for funding education, and that he thinks the entire public school system should be replaced by the free market.

2. Senator Howard Stephenson -- professional lobbyist, member of every possible education committee, and the sponsor of 15 education related bills in 2011 (no one else has more than 2...correct me if I miscounted) -- spoke to students at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. I learned this from Stephenson himself on Twitter (SenatorHowardS):

Had an awesome time speaking with students at the Hinckley Institute about Utah's public education system. #utpol 1:34 PM Jan 20th via TweetDeck

Also on Twitter, someone with the Utah House Democrats (utahhousedems) tweeted some highlights of Stephenson's remarks, including:

# Sen. Stephenson says difference between old Soviet farmers & Ut teachers is teachers care about their turnips--farmers don't. #utpol #utleg 12:46 PM Jan 20th via TweetDeck

# Republic Sen. Howard Stephenson calls state education planning "Soviet style" @ Hinckley Institute. What's his solution? #utpol #utleg 12:43 PM Jan 20th via TweetDeck

Stephenson has repeatedly made this comparison--public education is the same as Soviet-style communism. It's purposefully inaccurate and not representative of Utah.


3. Senator Chris Buttars, the new chair of the Public Education Appropriations Sub Committee, spoke at the Eagle Forum convention about his beliefs that Utah's schools are literally pushing a "socialist agenda" to destroy the country. "This is an entire program to bring America down and I want to tell you right now it's well entrenched in Utah."

This Deseret News article hits the nail on the head. It details how the the micro-managing legislature yanks public education back and forth every year, often in conflicting directions. They passed 42 bills about education last year. Forty-two! Stephenson admits he thinks he knows best and will run even more:

"We watched and realized that there are some things in education that simply have to change and be addressed," Stephenson said. "We feel we have to push the envelope now because there is so little action going on in certain areas."

Stephenson is in the process of writing bills about online high school programs, math initiatives, public school curriculum, charter schools, teacher tenure and more.

"Push the envelope" means radically alter or damage public schools in favor of his pet proposals that are largely unsupported by the public which supports our schools. Rep. Jim Nielsen speaks out in the article too, stating what anyone following public education policy debate in Utah can easily attest to:

Rep. Jim Nielson, R-Bountiful, believes the legislature's role in education reform should be "relatively limited," as that is mainly the responsibility of the state school board and local school boards.

"I think we can do things to indicate what our priorities are and build financial incentives to reward schools that meet certain objectives, but I wouldn't go beyond that," Nielson said. "In my opinion, the legislature has overreached its authority during much of my lifetime."

Amen Representative Nielson! The legislature fights for local control...except when they disagree with you.

I can't go over the details of every bad education proposal in this post. Here's the link to the list of all the 2011 education bill, although most of them still are not available to the public to read less than 9 hours before the opening of the legislative session.

I have already commented on some of these issues in the past week. I will write more about many/most of these proposals later. They include:

Vouchers by a different name. Yes, seriously. They will only apply to online private schools (at first) and any legislator you question about it will wince and try to explain these are better approved private schools, but it redirects the state WPU per student funding to private organizations.

Hypocritically taking away local districts' ability to fund and tax, but increasing the state sales tax which is controlled by...the state legislature.

Senator Buttars' proposal in response to the secret socialism to amend the Utah State Constitution to take away the State School Board's authority over schools and curriculum and give it to...you guessed it, the state legislature.

Two bills aimed at converting traditional public schools to charter schools.

Increasing "socialism" by hypocritically taking away arbitrary "full measures" of locally voted district funds and giving them to charter schools in addition to the state funds they already get, but with no way for those local school boards to account for or recoup the money except by raising taxes...unless that power is taken away as mentioned above, leaving local districts defunded. (Which I suspect is the plan of some.) And if that bill doesn't pass and a district does raise taxes to make up for the charter subsidy, Howard Stephenson will then criticize the increase as waste through his Taxpayers Association bullhorn while touting how much more "efficient" charter schools are. (Stephenson is actually sponsoring the bill and apparently doesn't worry about hypocrisy or irony) The euphemism for this removal of local control is "backpack funding" as used by Parents For Choice in Education. Sen. Liljenquist's "Student Based Funding" may involve the same concept.

"Grading" public schools based on test scores by assigning one letter grade to explain every aspect of a school's performance. I have a lot of interesting information on this to post this week. They are following New York's utterly failed grading system rather than Florida's semi-supportive model, despite touting Florida's recent educational successes as only due to its school grading. (Which is also untrue.) This will apparently motivate those lazy teachers to teach better.

Removing due process requirements to get rid of provisional teachers. There basically aren't any already, so this bill puzzled me. (Plus, I can't read it yet.) But there will also be a bill to put longtime teachers back on provisional status based on their test scores. I think there is actually some merit in this concept by itself, but combined with the other bill, it appears that it's a disguised two-step method to instantly fire teachers without due process. Tough schools already have a much tougher time hiring good teachers. Who would work at a school in South Salt Lake with 90%+ low income and minority kids under this proposal?

A bill using "surplus" energy taxes to create curriculum promoting Utah's coal and oil industries.

5 more curriculum bills, 4 of them sponsored by Howard Stephenson. They involve Civics education, Engineering education, Honors Math Programs, and two ominous, unrevealed bills vaguely title "Curriculum in the Public Schools" and "School Curriculum Amendments." Once again, although the federal government is an over-reaching tyrant when it usurps local control via unfunded mandates, the state legislature and specifically Senator Stephenson who is proposing all these bills are virtuous defenders of good when they act as a political school board and usurp local control via unfunded mandates. Does the hypocrisy even bother them anymore?

So please, whoever you are, whatever your political leanings, pay attention to education this session!!!! It runs from Jan. 24 through March 10. You can click on this calendar each day for the schedule of committee meetings (the majority of time is spent in committees the first couple weeks) and general House and Senate floor time. When a committee or the floor is live, there will be little icons next to the lines on the calendar. You can click on them and listen live to committee meetings and actually watch live video of floor debate. The first education related meeting is the Senate Education Committee (chaired by Howard Stephenson) at 3:15 pm today, Monday, January 24. Listen for half an hour. Hearing the legislators' words and tone from their own mouths can help you cut through spin from various sides and begin to form opinions on who actually represents your interests.

Pay attention. Get involved. Contact your state representative or senator. Defend public education as a crucial part of our community and not as a fund to be drawn down and replaced by educational programs based on ideology and campaign donations.

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HB 199, School Bus Advertisements -- Justifiable Desperate Measures

Jim Bird is running HB 199, a bill that would allow school districts to sell advertisements on the side of school buses. There has been some relatively calm worry about inappropriate advertising by the Eagle Forum, some hyperbole (whore out our children??) along with the good point that this is nothing more than a very, very small band-aid for our painful education budgets, and some rational discussion without taking a very strong stance.

I can see the concerns, but to me, the positive impact, especially on transportation budgets (here are two of the weirder stories among many resulting from bus routes being cut), outweighs the vague worries of negative influences. Our school runs Channel 1 News every day with commercials included. I strangely find myself agreeing with the take of a Daily Herald editorial about the many commercial influences already in schools, not even mentioning the silly companies we associate ourselves with for fundraising sales -- chocolates, gift wrap, magazines, and a plethora of discount cards. That is until the last sentence of the editorial containing yet another swipe at public schools which equates school bus advertising with "innovation in school funding."

I am OK with this bill because over 13,000 new students got sent to school this year without being funded. Governor Herbert "hopes" to fund the over 32,000 additional students projected over the next two years while the legislature is rumbling about funding only a portion of those incoming students ("Not funding incoming students" is a politically smoother way to phrase things than saying "We plan to cut the public education budget"). Various schools are in danger of losing their accredited status because too many teachers have student loads of more than 180 students while I am teaching classes of 36 to 38 students without enough room for that many desks and a total load of over 250 students. I would venture to say that excluding special education teachers, every full-time teacher in an Alpine District high school or junior high is teaching more than 180 students. It's just not every school's year to be accredited so we haven't been caught yet.

It is acceptable to me to sell the space on the side of buses because we are desperate, not because cutting education funding and then allowing districts to beg for scraps is "innovative."

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Your kid's Spanish class probably has 40 students and LaVarr Webb thinks that is too small

Hello. I’ll start with a quick update on my blogging or lack there of--I think about the issues daily and have a ton of posts semi-written in my head about current education topics and other issues dating back to the legislative session. I’d love to post daily or even weekly, but the reality is that I will likely be blogging in spurts for the near future rather than on any sort of set schedule. I hope to get in 10 posts or so in a spurt the next few weeks, and would like to do a belated 2009 Legislative Report Card as rated by me. I’m going to try that for December, in time to digest the information before some issues are continued in the 2010 session and the budget situation forces even more drastic cuts.

It’s the beginning of the school year, and I thought I’d again present the reality of class sizes as conveniently ignored by both the Utah State Office of Education and the legislature in one of their rare collaborative ventures. The last official stat I saw bandied around was 22.5 students per class on average for the 08-09 school year. Maybe K-2 was close to achieving that…I don’t have hard evidence, but anecdotal claims say that was too pie-in-the-sky for even the early grades. I know later elementary classes are not that small, and I definitely know what’s happening at my school.

I work at a junior high in Alpine District, one of the larger districts with more financial cushion than the smaller districts. I teach a “core” subject, meaning one of the subjects with an end-of-year CRT test that counts towards the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard that determines if we are labeled a “failing school” under the No Child Left Behind law. Core subjects are often “protected” somewhat with class sizes smaller than elective classes. I averaged 32 students per class last year (08-09) and had to get extra desks for the classes larger than that.

This year (09-10), excluding one special non-core class for students who need extra assistance, my average class size is 33.4. For the first time in my career, I have some students seated in chairs in the back at tables because I don’t have room for any more desks. The classes of all core subjects at the school are averaging about the same, and the elective classes are averaging 38-42 students per class. Other secondary schools in the district are facing similar numbers. There are local claims that class size is an unimportant factor in learning, but I firmly believe otherwise. Everything in a larger class takes more time and less material can be covered, classroom discipline—a means to the end of learning—is worse, one-on-one teacher/student time decreases, and the workload is increased for the teacher. That affects the amount of involved assignments and home work that can be given, again decreasing the amount of material covered and practice of that material.

Larger class sizes decrease the effectiveness of good teachers and exaggerate the flaws of bad teachers. I believe all arguments to the effect that large class sizes don’t matter fall flat when confronted by any parent. Does any parent of any student, whether the brightest gifted student or a struggling child achieving below grade level, think their student will do just as well in a class of 35 as in a class of 25? I would speculate that 95% or more of parents would tell you otherwise. I don't want my children to attend school in classes of that size.

With that said, I know we cannot avoid further cuts in education funding next year with the budget crunch pain coming. I am personally and sincerely grateful for the quality work done by the legislature this past session in terms of balancing the budget under difficult circumstances. Even more difficult choices will have to be made in the 2010 session. Many smaller districts did not rehire their first, second, and third year teachers this year, and I think Alpine will likely follow suit to some degree next year, again increasing class sizes. Our school could lose up to three teacher FTE’s next year under current projections—meaning 100 or more students would have to be redistributed each period, increasing the class size of the teachers who remain.

However, when it comes down to drastic measures, I would strongly favor reasonable cuts in teacher pay—reasonable and temporary cuts—before mass layoffs and even larger class sizes. I know many teachers would argue that is a bad precedent to set, but packing classes more and more full when they’re already averaging more than 30 students per class from late elementary school on is even worse. Oversized classes do not benefit the students or the profession. I can rearrange my finances for a couple years more easily than I can overcome the laws of physics and give personal attention to more than one kid at a time.

But when LaVarr Webb, lobbyist and Republican mouthpiece, advocates “boost[ing] public-education class sizes dramatically, “force[ing]” many public school classes to be online, and “an aggressive voucher program… saving billions over the long term,” realize that all savings from these approaches can only come on the backs of our kids. The massive savings would only come by packing our students into “dramatically” larger classes (larger than 33, not 22.5), putting instruction online and paying someone low wages to oversee students working on the computers, and by closing public schools to fund private school vouchers.

Hard times are here and cuts are coming, but don’t let anti-public education voices use them as an excuse to push a destructive agenda.

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Does the legislature deserve a gold star for education funding?

An article a couple of days ago about the upcoming primary in House District 20 between Rep. Paul Neuenschwander and the challenger, Becky Edwards, contained a comment that has become a common theme of many incumbent legislators this year:

"I voted for over $930 million of new money for education, which is the most ever," he said. "For [Edwards] to say we weren't represented well, that's just baloney. We passed a record tax break and still gave record money to education."
He questions why Edwards is so opposed to the omnibus bills when the only people to vote against it were Democrats.
"If she thinks differently, is she a Republican or a Democrat?"

The Senate Site featured three posts May 7th and 8th , here (ignore the troll posing as a teacher in the comments), here, and here, repeating the plea: Our record education funding increases the past three years show our support of education; stop claiming we’re anti-education. How much credit do you think they deserve?

I wrote about my views on the legislative duty to fund education a couple of months ago. I am glad they gave teachers some excellent and much-appreciated raises the last two years and that they increased the WPU funding. I also applaud the legislature’s prudence in reducing the size of the raises this year when budget projections came in lower than expected. I even like the direct raise to teachers, which wasn’t supported by all teachers and the UEA, even though the legislators made various false insinuations about money “not reaching the end of the row” during the sessions and at various other meetings. But is that all there is to it? Does a raise equal “shut up and sit down?”

And pay attention to the way different opinions spin those numbers differently. A huge part of that total “new” funding (the claimed 73% increase) is just to cover the continued substantial growth they were constantly reminding us of during the voucher debate. If their own formula calls for them to fund each student a certain amount and 10,000 more students start school, is the basic funding required to educate those children an “increase?” Both Bramble and Neuenschwander are including that in their numbers. They are also using the UTA’s method of calculating per student spending to even further falsely inflate the size of their dedication—that means claiming federal funds, state trustlands money distributed and administered separately from state budgets, and district level funding increases, such as Alpine District residents voting themselves a $229 million bond in a property tax increase…all included in UTA’s spending per student figures, as somehow reflecting positively on the state legislature’s attitude towards public education.

So I’ll just repeat some of what I wrote previously:

Legislators are also elected to represent their constituency. This is a moral duty as well as a pragmatic one for those wishing to be re-elected. Polls at the beginning of the last legislative session and for the last few years have consistently shown immense support for increased funding for education, even when the alternative is a tax cut. Wouldn’t further underfunding public education be breaking the public trust?

So I view legislators who increased education funding during the years with the largest (2007) and 3rd largest (2008) budget surpluses ever in the history of the state as doing their duty and enacting the will of the electorate. A solid, admirable job, but not spectacular. That is not the same as fighting for real improvement in education.

The legislature often tacitly defines “gratitude” as unquestioning acceptance of their will, which educators view as insulting and paternalistic. “Look. We “gave” you these raises, so just quit griping about vouchers, top-down merit pay schemes, false accusations, unproven corporate programs, message bills aimed at non-existent educational problems (i.e. flag and Constitution in every classroom), and our removal of local control. You wouldn’t want to make us mad after all we’ve done would you?” That’s not good or “generous” government; that’s ham-handed manipulation.

Bottom line: if you supported vouchers which are inherently designed to weaken and eventually phase out public education and justify an omnibus bill with pet appropriations to unproven programs favored by Howard Stephenson’s lobbyists, voting for necessary increases in times of surplus that still barely cover growth after years of falling behind does not give you a record of supporting public education. At best, it makes you slightly less “anti-public-education.”

True Class Sizes and Utah’s Writing Scores

The article earlier today on Utah’s continued status as the state spending the least per student used a common statistic. This is a statistic that every citizen, educator, and legislator with any experience in our schools knows to be false, but is still frequently cited both by education and legislative leaders.

Still, he said, Utah faces the challenge of the nation's largest student to teacher ratio: 22.6 students per teacher. And that impacts retention.

"We have about seven more students per teacher than the national average," he said. "It makes us very economically efficient. ... It also tends to stress the system."

If we are even coming close to those class sizes, it would only be in the lower elementary grades. I am admittedly not very familiar with our elementary schools as our daughter is not yet 5, but I understand that even Kindergarten classes rarely hit that ratio. The true statistic for secondary classes would read something like:

Utah faces the challenge of the nation's largest secondary student to teacher ratio: 30 or 40 students per “core” teacher (math, science, English), and 35 to 40+ for “non-core” teachers. And that has an enormous impact on every single aspect of teaching, from planning to classroom behavior to one-on-one opportunities to grading. That additional workload and stress causes too many teachers to burnout and quit.

"In our public fairytale where we count counselors, speech pathologists, media specialists, and other necessary, but non-classroom personnel as counting towards class size, we have about seven more students per teacher than the national average figured from numbers the other states presumably lie about too. So that’s OK," he said. "It makes us very, very, very economically efficient. ... It also tends to cause a teeny-weeny bit of stress to the system when teachers provide for 200+ students. (And don’t even ask about teacher ratios at Willowcreek Junior High in Lehi or other schools in growth areas waiting for new buildings to be finished.)"

The public and legislative debate on education needs to be based on facts. True class sizes need to be admitted and discussed, by education officials as well as legislators. Are those sizes acceptable? What are the ramifications for struggling students as well as gifted students?

And those class sizes are not the result of district mismanagement or waste; growth has simply outstripped the legislature’s ability or will to fund class size reduction.

Also, the Tribune published an excellent editorial (The entire text is in my previous post.) about Utah’s scores on a national writing test comparing 8th grade students. It was justly critical of the rationalizations and explanations for the poor scores. I am not personally familiar with the test (It is apparently given to random schools within each state. Another teacher told me today that it was given at our school 6 or 7 years ago.) and cannot explain what exactly the students wrote about or the scoring out of 300 points.

I agree with the Tribune’s concluding statement:

As NAEP states, "To become good writers students need expert
instruction, frequent practice and constructive feedback."
Utah students, whose score of 152 is below the national average of
154, obviously need more of that than they're getting.

And the absolute best, most effective way to achieve that goal is to reduce class size. The same results can not be achieved by any other means. Writing software, teacher aides, professional development, and other plans help and are appreciated. But they can’t be touted as lower cost alternatives to actual smaller classes. Complaining about the very real cost of more teachers, rationalizing that class room reduction is pointless if we don’t hit the magic ratio of 15 to 1, or blaming the teachers union and claiming it just wants more teachers to boost its non-existent power are silly avoidance techniques.

We may not have the resources to reduce classrooms to the ideal size and make everyone happy, but we have money being proposed and wasted on unproven pet projects. Any poll, even of Republicans, would put classroom size as a higher priority than laptops for preschoolers and tax-cuts for Delta Airlines and Skoal Tobacco. Do the right thing legislators. If we don’t have enough money for class size reduction or you want another tax cut, tell the public and make your case. Don’t falsely accuse the districts of mismanagement or spend the money on side projects. And don’t talk down to us about how we don’t really want smaller classes. Teachers, parents, and students know better.

What do Utah state legislators say to themselves before they go to bed at night? Or legislative mixed messages…

State legislators, to put it mildly, seem to be sending some mixed messages these days. I’m not asking how do they sleep at night, just what they say to themselves. I wonder, from their perspective, what does the world look like? I seriously wonder what goes on inside of their heads. How do they internally reconcile conflicting actions or input? What is truth? These are just some of the recent education-related mixed messages:

1. As I blogged about on Jan. 21, the legislative audit of the classroom size reduction money specifically said that the school districts money were spending the money correctly…but that the legislature hadn’t allocated enough to cover smaller sizes and normal population growth. The lack of reduction was purely about not enough money for too many kids; NOT mismanagement by the districts. Cameron at Magic Valley Mormon explains the findings of the audit even better here and here.

But the Senators I heard speak at a neighborhood meeting claimed the opposite. Senator Stephenson has gone further and said that it’s not the state’s job to reduce classroom size. He wants to take away the classroom size reduction money the districts now receive unless they magically reduce classroom size.

Mixed message to districts: We didn’t assign enough money to reduce classroom sizes, but we’re mad that you didn’t reduce classroom sizes. Now as punishment for not accomplishing what we didn’t assign you enough resources to do, we’re going to take the already insufficient state money away and demand you reduce class size with local money. All of this, even as Rep. Dougall runs a bill eliminating some of the local revenue streams in favor of taxes distributed by the state legislature. (Does this sound like an educational Dilbert comic to anyone else?)

2. The legislators insisted that the voucher bill was not about privatizing the public education system. In fact, vouchers were only going to strengthen public schools.

That assertion is hard to believe when Rep. Frank and Sen. Stephenson are running HB0075 and HB0076. These bills seek to create special “Privatization Commissions” at both the state (both HB0075 and 0076) and local (HB 0076) levels with business interests representing the majority of the commissions. These commissions would have authority to disallow any government service that could be provided privately (with very few exceptions), regardless if that service would be more expensive or of it even would be provided. Local governments would have to comply with large amounts of paperwork to justify their actions to the commission. (Rep. Frank has been correctly zinged for the bills’ effects and for talking out of both sides of his mouth on his blog. He passionately claims that he is ONLY going after state government, citing HB0075, while conveniently ignoring the other bill he is sponsoring, HB0076, that would specifically disallow public pools from “competing” with private pools.)

So the legislators want to privatize public pools, recreation centers, golf courses, garbage collection, etc. but they of course have no interest in privatizing education…or financial stake.

3. Senator Bramble similarly danced around the truth. I asked him at the local meeting if the legislature was going to change what I regard as already tough referendum laws to make it even harder for citizens to vote on a controversial law. (The referendum last November was the first successful state referendum in over 30 years. Not successful as in passing—it was the first state referendum to even get enough signatures to be voted on in that time.) The senator went on for several minutes about why he thought referendums were a bad thing. I thought the arguments didn’t hold a lot of water. But he finally said that they weren’t going to change the requirements, though they might for citizen initiatives. (To the best of my understanding, voter initiatives are bills/proposals/laws written by non-legislators. If a high enough percentage of voters sign a petition, the bill is put on the public ballot, thus bypassing the legislature. Voter referendums involve laws that the legislature has already passed. Afterwards, if a high enough percentage of voters sign a petition, the passed bill is put on the public ballot, thus potentially overriding the vote of the legislature. The legislators I heard speak seem to hate both. Go figure.)

Senator Bramble was misleading. They are leaving State Referendums alone, but SB0054 attempts to change both county and municipal referendums, as well as state, county, and municipal initiatives.

If it passes, the deadlines will be moved up over two months for all of those vehicles of citizen redress, making it even harder for a group to gather the necessary signatures before the arbitrary deadline. They left state referendums out because that move would attract too much attention after the successful referendum last November. Does anyone doubt that within a year or two the requirements of state referendums will also be changed to match all of the other citizen referendum and initiative laws?

4. Last, the legislature has been hit hard in the media and by bloggers this year over the influence of lobbyist gifts and campaign contributions. Speaker Curtis, State Attorney General Shurtleff, and Senator Dmitrich have all publically claimed that these perks do not corrupt or influence the legislative process. Senator Dayton told the Cherry Hills meeting that “The voters should be offended” that the media would make such a claim. Senator Bramble gave one-sided examples where supposedly lobbyist gifts helped the legislative process and childishly asked the attendees to raise their hands if they disagreed with him.

This is where I really wonder. What are they thinking? Really. They can’t see the appearance of impropriety…even if we buy their claims of perfect integrity against all financial temptation? I wish I had been saving articles last year and knew the details of the proposal last legislative session to ban teachers from accepting Christmas gifts from students. I don’t think it ever got anywhere, but can’t they see the disconnect there?

Look at this scenario: I’m a teacher. Let’s suppose that I honestly am a longtime friend of two families. All of our families have honestly spent time as legitimate friends before now. Let’s say the other two families have children of the same age and I end up with both of them in my class at the junior high. The night before an end-of-level test, the other two families just happen to treat my family to a nice dinner followed by a Jazz game with luxury box seats. My family pays for none of this. The test is given the next day and both of those students just happen to get perfect scores.

It is course possible that their scores were legitimate and that these families always give me generous gifts in appreciation for my friendship. But would you believe that was the case? Can you not see how it appears? Would you blame other students and parents for being suspicious or angry if they found out about the situation? Would you perhaps propose rules regulating teacher/student relationships?

Can you see that the public and you are often viewing the issues from conflicting points of view? Is it at least possible that the public is right?

Administration costs, the class size reduction audit, and denial of reality

I have seen a lot of comments floating around lately about the “black hole” of school district administrations and how they can’t account for the money the legislature so generously “gives” them. I even saw a comment claiming that district administration soaks up 25% of the education budget. I can’t remember if it was just a random comment board or someone supposedly credible. Last Tuesday, I did hear Senators Bramble and Dayton claim various times how the UEA and the school districts (the same thing in their minds…) “can’t tell us where they spent the money we allocated.” They used this for general public ed. bashing and as justification for the way they’re giving the teacher raises. (I support giving the larger percentage raises to newer teachers, although I’ll discuss on another post the reasonable arguments a 25-yr. teacher gave me for doing it by equal percentage rather than by equal amount. What makes me mad is the accusing tone about the supposed mismanaging and misappropriating of district funds coming from legislators who receive automatic pay raises each year without a public vote, receive lifetime insurance benefits, accept lobbyist gifts and money regularly and then rail against the press for maligning their integrity, defend laws allowing them to legally divert campaign funds for personal use, and vote for school vouchers and private stadium funding.)

These claims strike me as self-serving and suspicious. Most of us are not accountants or professional fiscal analysts, so reading long government budget documents (or even finding them in the first place…) can be a difficult task. Like when the voucher supporters used this study to claim over a BILLION dollars in savings. Once I read it, the study turned out to be inaccurate to the point of ridiculousness. (Just read the Executive Summary at the beginning and see what it claims.) The one legislator I asked had not read it, and I’m sure that was common among both the legislature and the public.

School District Administration Costs

I read the Alpine School District’s budget, all 82 pages of it, and now present some information using the final numbers from the 2006-2007 school year:

Pg. 11
Total Alpine General Fund Expenditures 2006-2007
$276,025,276

General Fund Expenditures on General District Administration
$1,188,391

General Fund Expenditures on School Administration
$17,422,875

This is a total of $18,611,266 spent on all levels of administration which is 6.7% of the money spent from the General Fund, less than that if you count the total district budget like the Utah Taxpayer’s Association does. The $1,188,391 spent on district administration equals .4% or less than half of 1% of general fund money spent.

I can agree with arguments that the superintendent and other administrators are overpaid. Let’s knock a chunk off of their salaries and invest back into reducing classrooms. We still have to allow for the fact that they do a difficult, thankless job that requires extensive training and entails great responsibility for public funds and so pay them a good wage, but let’s make it a $100,000 cap for administrators. Superintendent Henshaw’s salary decrease would pay for two new teachers or one more experienced teacher. Other salary decreases would return less than that. If we can cobble together money for a dozen or so teachers, how much of a dent is that going to make in our crowded public schools? I totally support this and would vote for such a proposal, but the real funding problems preventing smaller class sizes come from higher up than the school district level.

Case study—Is this waste?
As a new teacher, I brought unique talents to the classroom, learned, improved….and still to a large degree stank at teaching. Each year since then, I have improved, but I had many miserable moments my first couple years and seriously considered quitting. My mentor teacher had to teach also and my administrators have a lot of responsibilities while also putting out frequent fires during the day, so I was observed barely more than the minimum required by law and often felt alone. Experiences like mine are almost universal among new teachers. The district recently hired a new employee, a former teacher, to be a part-time coach for new teachers. A new teacher in my department at school was telling me of a day the coach came to observe while he struggled through a new lesson. She observed only one period and was off to another school because she’s responsible for the whole district, but she gave him some helpful feedback before she left. He told me how much better the same lesson went the next day with other classes because of some suggestions she had given him. He felt supported and was having success. That could be one of the make-or-break moments determining whether a new teacher sticks with education, but the coach’s salary and benefits also contribute to the “top heavy” district budget and take away money that could be used on an additional classroom teacher. I can see both sides, but every district position that I’m aware of helps teachers and lightens their workloads.

The Articles on the Class Size Reduction Budget

Here are links to four articles on the audit findings:

AP via KSL http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=2353292

SL Trib http://www.sltrib.com/ci_7762670
I copied the entire text into my previous post since the Tribune only keeps the articles up for a couple of weeks.

D-News http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695237166,00.html

AP via the Daily Herald http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/249089/


The articles unanimously show the school districts used the money for teachers. The districts that were censured could account for every dollar spent, they just didn’t all track which dollar came from which source beyond what was required by law. That will be a good change to make in their accounting, but again, will cost more of the general fund money. All four links clearly state that the districts that specifically tracked the incoming funds used the money appropriately. The lack of classroom size reduction came from the insufficient funding of growth, not mismanagement.

From the Deseret News article:

That's partly because the money isn't rising at the same rate as enrollment in Utah's public schools, states a performance audit of class-size reduction money, presented to legislative leaders on the Audit Subcommittee of the Legislative Management Committee today. That's even though the law says it should.
"Essentially, for the last six years, (class size reduction) funds functioned as maintenance funding rather than providing for new class-size reduction efforts," auditors wrote.
The audit came after lawmakers last winter questioned districts' use of class size reduction money.

The huge increase in healthcare costs hits schools hard as well since their number one expenditure and asset is teachers.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_7991840

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, wants to see school districts chip in more local money to reduce class sizes. He hopes to push for changes to the law that would only offer the money as an incentive to districts that can prove they're keeping sizes down. Now, all school districts and charter schools get the money automatically based on enrollment.
"It's not our job to fund every component of achieving class size reduction," Stephenson told members of the Legislature's Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

It's anyone's job but yours huh? Your own audit says that the "additional" money already provided was barely enough to keep pace with growth, and now you're going to take that money away if districts don't accomplish the impossible? Sounds like a sneaky way to try and make yourself look like a good guy for not raising taxes by making someone else do it.

So stop blaming the districts for having a lot of kids to teach with limited funds. I totally see the unique funding problems we have in Utah with large numbers of students per tax payer and a small industrial base to tax. I don’t begrudge legislators not increasing funding some years. I think legislators should carefully watch the incoming budget numbers before increasing school funding too much this year. But I do resent great teachers being made scapegoats for those who actually have control of tax money distribution and the circumstances of the society in the state.