By DAVID BOYLE
There is a battle brewing over the impact of the teacher-pupil ratio and its effect on students’ learning.
The Anchorage Education Association has fired the first round in the battle with its going-in position of limiting the number of students in certain grades.
In its efforts to increase membership during a district’s declining enrollment, the AEA wants its members to be “…compensated by addenda for workloads that exceed the following levels.”
| School Level | Maximum Number of Students |
| PreK | 18 |
| Kindergarten | 20 |
| Grades 1-3 | 22 |
| Grades 4-5 | 25 |
If the number of students in the above classes is exceeded, then the teacher will receive $250 per student per month. So, let’s say there are 25 students in Mrs. Doe’s 3rd grade class. Mrs. Doe would receive an additional $750 each month. That would be an additional $6,750 for the year.
It doesn’t matter if Mrs. Doe is an effective classroom teacher or not. It doesn’t matter if her 25 students can read at grade level or be proficient at math at the 3rdgrade level. All that matters is the number of students in her class for her to receive the bonus.
The Anchorage teachers’ union also wants its members who are middle school and high school teachers to be paid more if they have more than a certain number of students in their classes.
But it seems as if these teachers are not as valuable as the elementary school teachers. Could it be because there are many more elementary teacher union members than secondary school union members?
Here is the compensation to be paid to secondary teachers by the district for exceeding these numbers of students:
| Specific Education | Maximum Number of Students |
| General Education | 140 |
| Physical Education | 200 |
| Special Education | 90 |
| Fine Arts | 150 |
If an algebra high school teacher has more than 28 students in his/her/they/them 5 classes, that teacher would receive $50 for each student every month exceeding that number.
So, let’s say that teacher has an average of 32 students in each class. That teacher would receive an additional $200 each month, another $1,800 in added annual pay.
Once again, it would not matter if that teacher was effective or not. It would not matter if the students were proficient in algebra.
Interestingly, there is a similar effort in the state legislature to limit the number of students per classroom. Rep. Zack Fields (D, Anchorage) has filed HB 98 to limit the pupil-teacher ratio in public schools.
Representative Fields’ bill limits class sizes except for art, library, music, computer science, vocational-tec, honors-level, or physical education. The bills states that class sizes may not exceed 24 students in K-3, 26 in grades 4-8, and 28 in grades 9-12.
But here’s the “funny” part. These limits only apply to the Anchorage School District. Here is the bill’s wording: “does not apply in a district with an average daily membership of 40,000 or fewer students”.
That would leave only the Anchorage school district.
It seems that to the bill’s author class sizes in all but one of Alaska’s K-12 schools does not matter when it comes to student achievement.
What does matter is if we have an effective teacher in every classroom.
What does matter is if students are motivated to learn which effective classroom teachers can instill.
What does matter is if parents are involved in their kids’ education by reading to them at home and monitoring their progress at school.
What does matter is if our children have an effective curriculum without instilling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — DEI — in the lesson plans.
Classroom size matters but not as much as effective teachers, motivated students, parental involvement, and effective curricula.
David Boyle is the education writer at Must Read Alaska.
What/who inspires these brilliant minds? Are these products of our failing schools? Stop digging!
yet, as presented in Bloomberg Buisnessweek on 7/17/2010, “the Gates Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to revitalize the US high schools by making them smaller, only to discover that student body size has little effect on achievement.”!
Many of us in the “Private Sector” are expected to do more with less, taking on additional responsibilities, all the while to perform the same production results if not perform better. We do this by working smarter – leaner and utilizing current technologies. The results have offered cost savings, efficiencies, and smarter work force.
However, in these Guv’Ment institutions, very rarely do we see this evolution of driving smarter and more efficient means and methods. They continue to be stuck in the past (ie: horse and buggy approach). Maybe(?), it’s time for change?
Seems to me class sizes are not Anchorage’s problem anyway.
When I attended school in Anchorage, we had more effective learning and more kids in classrooms.
I remember when getting an A meant getting 92% or better.
I agree wholeheartedly with all of the priorities listed at the end of your commentary, but want to provide some context for the differences in proposed pay increases based on grade level:
If you’ve ever homeschooled or worked in a classroom you know that young students who cannot yet read or work independently require much more hands-on attention than those who can. And let’s just be frank: students today are not the model one-room school attendees of 100 years ago in those pre-politicized days when teachers had much more parent and societal support. Today we have [likely vaccine- and environmentally-injured] kids with compromised learning capacity and other related challenges, along with the behavior problems that are the natural result of absent, neglectful and/or possibly abusive parents. One or two of those students in a classroom change the entire class dynamic. A friend in my [Alaskan] city who taught kindergarten for years reports that recently as many as half the students in her kindergarten class were on IEPs/Individual Learning Plans, i.e. had some sort of learning disability.
None of that excuses the union resistance to reform — but an honest assessment of the difficulties involved in teaching today’s students might go a long way towards building bridges with those on the other side of this debate. When we ignore these legitimate problems aren’t we just doing what they do when they ignore the legitimate points on our side?
Thanks for all your advocacy on the side of school choice and common sense reform. Peace.
Legitimate points.
Maybe we bring back paddling if students – consequences for negative actions.
Maybe we hold parents accountable and expel students who cannot perform and confirm – and send them to “retard” schools.
Or keep allowing disturbed kids ruin the education for well behaved kids from good families.
The Anchorage ISD is failing the majority of students relative to functional literacy.
How in the world did I get a decent elementary education with 32 kids in each class? And in an older school to boot? Here’s a thought: get rid of schools that are not attended, get light of about half of the “administrators” that do pretty much nothing all day, hire a couple more teachers and, voila! We’ve met our budget for the year.
Too much common sense!
Just a thought: wouldn’t it make more sense to use the money to pay for additional classroom support, such as a teacher’s aid, for larger class sizes? Sort of the Dr-PA-Nurse or Dentist/Hygenist model that seems so popular? Or in reverse, have a certified teacher supervise two or three para-professionals and perhaps need fewer teachers and reinvest the savings in more support?
Herein lies the issues…students motivated to learn and parent involvement. It only takes on unruly student to disrupt an entire classroom no matter the size. There is no deterrent for bad behavior as the schools cannot do anything. Many students don’t live with parents so they have no support at wherever they may be living at the moment.
Wen I was in 4-8th grade in North Carolina I was one of 38 students. But we didn’t hold the class back to the slowest student. The classes were tough. From 9-11 I went to a private school; it was a hard test getting in, but then they were teaching calculus, chemistry and physics in 11-12th grade, back when you went to school to learn.