Page 145 - Class Size News Today

Class size has no appreciable effect on learning -- when you lower class size, they had to drop further and further down into the teaching pool and that hurt performance. >> in some schools overseas, they go to school year-round. theres no two, three months off. >> i think our schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day as community centers, six days a week, 11, 12 months out of the year. we have children that get to a certain point, in june they come back to school in september further behind...

Secretary bill bennett. i heard the other day some school districts are in such financial trouble, theyre thinking of cutting the school week to fur days. >> this is a huge worry. we understand the tremendous pressure that districts and states are under. places like hawaii have eliminated fridays for the rest of the school year. how is that good for children? in no calculus is that good for children. >> some children like in europe go to school six days a week. >> its that we have to level the p...

>> president obama in his weekly address tackles education. lets listen to part of what he says. >> the most important factor of a childs success is the person standing in front of the classroom. we will better prepare teachers, support teachers an encourage teachers to stay in the field. in short, well treat the people who educate our sons and daughters like the professionals they are. >> sounds like the president read a line from your article, what makes a difference, matters more than class s...

Billion in about 19 months time. >> wow. >> and so you just cant avoid hitting k-12 education which is the single largest portion of our state budget. >> yeah. >> so, our districts, were trying to manage some of this. of course, the stimulus money is helping. were moving some of our plans to spend that federal stimulus money that we were going to save for 11, were having to move that into this fiscal year to get us through this fiscal year. but then, of course, theres the effect, and once thats ...

Really important, andrea, we may have to lay off teachers this year because of the budget gap in the governors budget and if we had to do that, that would have a very unfortunate effect on our school system. >> how severely are you affected by the dysfunction in albany? you have a real political crisis on all sides, on all fronts in albany. >> were supposed to have a budget at the end of the month and right now theres no indication that thats going to come together and so how you plan on this, w...

Week those concerns typically go away and in some cases parents experience fewer hours for day care for their children than dhe in a five-day week because of the length of the school day, they may not need before and after school day care, for example. >> steve, north branch district really isnt alone here. there are dozens of school districts across the country now that are looking at the same choice, a four-day week or they have to let teachers go or getting these increases in class size that ...

We understand the tremendous pressure states and districts are under. hawaii eliminated fridays for the rest of the school year. how is that good for children? >> in a lot of countries, in asia, europe, they go to school six days a week. >> we have to level the playing field. if we level the playing field our students would go great. when theyre going to school 230 days, our students are going 180, and now being reduced to 170, 165? >> but if theres no money, what do you do? >> i think cutting t...

Campbell, for having me on tonight to tell north branchs story. unfortunately, since 2003 and 2004 weve cut $$2004 weve cut of the budget, and it gets harder and harder to keep the cuts away from the classroom. our class sizes are high. we have 29 students in our first grade classrooms and 26 students in our kindergarten classrooms. if we didnt look at the four high day week, wed have to look at additional cuts and adding more students onto student who have a high class size in their classroom o...

>> yeah, when we were going through the budget cycle, have to do it in the context this is the third year in a row of cuts. and this year what we were facing was probably equal to the prior two years combined. so, this gets pretty serious in raising class size, were closing some schools, or a school. were potentially looking at eliminating the elementary bands and strings program, foreign language programs. we come down to what is our core mission and what are our core educational priorities and...

>> new outrage as schools across the nation consider switching to four-day weeks to cut cost, a growing number have made the moves. critics say were giving up on kids and giving in to unions. henry ormond agrees. did you look at other options? >> its about maintaining the quality and a smaller class size. the fact is if you analyze the problem carefully you can see that the other option is really a reduction in force and that means fewer teachers with the same number of students. so the likely o...