Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Class sizes of 60.

DETROIT (AP) -- State education officials have ordered the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools to immediately implement a plan that balances the district's books by closing half its schools.

The Detroit News says the financial restructuring plan will increase high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidate operations.

Detroit Schools Closing: Michigan Officials Order Robert Bobb To Shut Half The City's Schools

This is not intended as an indictment of Detroit, of the governor, of the state itself, of the teachers or of the unions. It's everyone's fault and it's no one's fault. The town went belly-up for multiple reasons. Bad contracts, sure, but Detroit also lost a huge percentage of their population and another huge percentage of those remaining have no jobs and pay no taxes as a result.

I would appreciate it if this thread did not turn into a fault finding mission or a finger pointing exercise. There are several other threads available for that or someone can start one if they're unhappy with those already available.

I want to know where everyone expects this to move forward to...what they think is going to happen to the children (gasp! yes, I know.....Not THE CHILDREN.) But this IS about the children. Not just Detroit's children but all of our children. The end result of any cutbacks, salary freezes, tax cuts, pension removals, etc., is going to be that class size increases as the number of teachers decreases.

And so, my questions are these - how do kids learn anything in a class of 60? How does a teacher even teach 60 kids at one time? Do you think that good teachers will even stay on the job when the reality of trying to get to know and contain this ungodly number of kids becomes their primary concern and teaching is, out of physical necessity, relegated to the back burner.

To those of you who are parents or grandparents, is this satisfactory to you? Are you ok with your child being 1 of 60? Do you think he or she will get a good quality education sitting in a classroom designed for half the number of bodies now crammed into it?

The logistics of even a parent/teacher conference day boggles my mind. An entire day of scheduled conferences would allow each child's parent a whole 5 minutes of the teacher's time.

You are talking about forcing teachers not only to take pay cuts, pay more in health and pension benefits, but to work twice, maybe three times as hard and take on several hours more worth of work each day just in grading papers and checking assignments.

Is this acceptable to you, as parents? As citizens who are going to be impacted by the kind of graduates set loose upon graduation?

If not - what are the solutions?

mcgraw_wv

Last night I watched Freakonomics the Documentary, A great program. One of the chapters they ran a test to pay students to bring up their grades, every month, if they achieved all C's or more, they got 50.00, and then 1 student out of those with grades can win 500.00.

The Idea was great, as an economist, his job was to find the right incentive to make kids care more about their grades. In the end 50.00 resulted in 5-7% more kids passing 9th grade.

They ran this with 900 kids, that equates to 45-63 more kids who passed, at a potential cost of 45000 a month if all 900 passed ( which they didn't ) so I don't know what the total costs were.

The end result was that the incentive wasn't really what the kids were looking for, and they felt that it was money better spent by incentivizing kids to learn at an early age as when you wait for 9th grade, they are already stuck to their level of moditivation for learning.

I mentioned this becuase my wife and I discussed this last night, ( her mom is a teacher ) and she felt that the money spent directly to kids could go to hiring another teacher and make the class size smaller.

I said "Ahhhh! But Class size does not factor into a KIDS incentive, I don't think they would care much more if they had a smaller class size. We need to find out what incentive most kids want to achieve, which is important to them"

If you figure that out, you fix education.

My idea, For all students who achieve a 3.0 or better have 1 hour less of school a day. OR... They don't have to show up on Fridays.

Giving 1 day for teachers to focus soley on the struggling students, and rewarding those good students with more free time and social interaction with friends, which IS what motivates Kids.

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Not a bad idea, and I thank you for playing nice!! LOL

My only devil's advocate question is this:

Given the current state of economics and the fact that many families are single parent families and that the necessity even in most two parent families is that both parents work - won't that create a babysitter crisis? Granted, it is not the school's job to babysit, but the fact is, parents rely on a 5 day, set amount of school day hours and schedule their work day around it in many cases. Cut the school day by an hour and there's a babysitter/after school program that's going to need to be found and paid for by the parents - cut an entire day and that's more money to be scrounged around for. Either that or you've got unsupervised kids running around and that's not good, either.

I'm not saying your idea is a bad one - I actually think it's pretty good - but there are practical considerations which need to be recognized.

My own parent's bribed me to pass geometry by promising me I could drop out of school at the end of the semester if I passed.

It worked.

But looking back, I wouldn't recommend it.

PatriotsReign

One of the biggest challenges to our educational systems is the acceptance that school is not day care. Teachers & school systems aren't responsible for anything other than EDUCATION. If the school closes and your child needs day care, in the eyes of public education, the answer should be "Oh well"

Parents' needs should never influence educational policy.

__________________
"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Spoken like a true non-parent.

Be that as it may, PR, the fact that parents use school hours to their own advantage is a fact of life right now that you're not going to be able to change just because you, personally, don't believe it's right. That fact alone doesn't make it go away. The way to deal with problems is to recognize them, acknowledge them as valid, and work towards solving them.

"Get over it," is not a solution.

mcgraw_wv

I think most high school students already stay home by themselves. Parents that both work, or single parents that work, typically don't get home until 5 or 6, high school students are typically out at 3 - 4, so they are already for the majority staying home by themselves. I did it when I was younger, and I assume the 15 kids who get off the buss at 3:30 in my neighborhood aren't going home to moms waiting for them.

Again, not the schools responsibility.

Here is why I love my idea. It's a double win. First, you offer 1 day a week where the struggling kids get more personalized attention. Second, the School would instantly save a ton of money becuase they don't need as many lunches 1 day a week, as well as a whole host of costs that are associated with a reduced amount of kids in the school. Also, I bet Teachers Morale is improved as they have an easier day by not dealing with full class loads.

It's win win because politically your creating savings, as well as providing better, more focused attention to those who need it.

PatriotsReign

We can not deny that the sole "Raisson D'etre" of our educational system is to educate our children. The challenges they face are many and the last thing they need is to worry about day care needs.

I'm not saying parents don't have their own challenges, but I don't believe our educational system can afford to make their needs a part of educational strategy.

__________________
"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"

PatriotsReign

I used to go home with both parents working by the time I was 12. A lot of kids did and nothing has changed to make anything different today other than parents over-protecting their children.

__________________
"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"

mcgraw_wv

I'm also only talking about High School Students... and I bet that most High School Students do not have a parent, baby sitter, or Day care they go to until their parents are at work.

Yes it may effect some students, and it's not like those students who can take Friday off HAVE to... They can go to school and act as a tutor on those days or learn other job skills while at the school by helping in other non class room areas of the school...

PatriotsReign

If a parent of a high school student won't let their child go home by him/herself, then they have "issues" they need to deal with.

__________________
"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"