Class Sizes Rise: Will the NY Times likely notice what’s going on in their backyard?

You see, all this money spent on testing SHOULD be spent on....."We find that both smaller class sizes and teachers with more experience improve long-term outcomes,"  Lisa

Original Message-----
From: Leonie Haimson <leonie@att.net>
Subject: [nyceducationnews] Research Shows a Good Kindergarten Education Makes Dollars and Sense

 

See far better NSF reporting below of recent study that the NY Times put on its front page, with students in smaller classes in K making $2,000 more on average by age 27, w/ higher graduation and college-going rates.  The study also pointed out the value of having experienced teachers, which the Times reporter left out.

 

By the way, the researchers offered no evidence, nor did they ever imply, that paying a Kindergarten teacher $320,000 would lead to better outcomes, or that firing more teachers would help, contrary to the inferences made by the Times reporter, who instead used the study to push the currently fashionable policy proposals coming out of DC and the Gates/Broad/Walton foundations.

 

In fact, there is no correlation between higher pay and more effective teaching, and this sort of salary increase would likely lead to far worse outcomes since class sizes would have to be so radically increased.

 

No, this study underlines once again that we know of only two ways to produce more effective teaching: providing experienced teachers with smaller classes.

 

By the way, class sizes are expected to increase yet again in classrooms across the city this fall; esp. in Kindergarten, for the third year in a row.  But will the NY Times likely notice what’s going on in their backyard?  Don’t hold your breath.

 

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117493&org=NSF&from=news

Related Websites
PowerPoint briefing: How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings?: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/STAR_slides.pdf

 

Press Release 10-138
Research Shows a Good Kindergarten Education Makes Dollars and Sense

Harvard University's John Friedman discusses how kindergarten learning affects adult success

A good kindergarten learning experience can equate to about $1,000 more a year in adult earnings. Credit and Larger Version

August 10, 2010

View a video with John Friedman of Harvard University.

There isn't a lot of research that links early childhood test scores to earnings as an adult. But new research reveals a surprising finding: Students who learn more in kindergarten earn more as adults. They are also more successful overall.

Harvard University economist John Friedman says he and a group of colleagues found that students who progress during their kindergarten year from attaining an average score on the Stanford Achievement Test to attaining a score in the 60th percentile can expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than students whose scores remain average.

Taking into account all variation across kindergarten classes, including class size, individuals who learn more--as measured by an above-average score on the Stanford Achievement Test--and are in smaller classes earn about $2,000 more per year at age 27.

Moreover, students who learn more in kindergarten are more likely to go to college than students with similar backgrounds. Those who learn more in kindergarten are also less likely to become single parents, more likely to own a home by age 28 and more likely to save for retirement earlier in their work lives.

"Kindergarten interventions matter a great deal for long-term outcomes," said Friedman. "For instance, being in a smaller class for two years increases the probability of attending college by 2 percent.

"We find that both smaller class sizes and teachers with more experience improve long-term outcomes," he said. "We believe that other teacher characteristics, as well as various characteristics of a student's peers, also have significant impacts on later life outcomes, but the data did not allow us to measure those effects well."

Friedman and colleagues from Harvard, Northwestern University and University of California, Berkeley, used a well-known education experiment conducted in Tennessee as a starting point to measure adult outcomes of early childhood learning. In the mid-1980s, the Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project placed students in classes of different size to determine how class size affects student learning. Results showed that students in small classes learn more and have greater academic success.

This new study, funded by the National Science Foundation's Division of Social and Economic Sciences, examined adult outcomes of nearly 12,000 students who took part in the original study and who are now 30 years old. It allowed the research team to go beyond what children learned during their year in the STAR project to see how their kindergarten learning experiences affected their lives. Researchers recently presented results of the new study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass.

To learn more about what the researchers found, see John Friedman discuss the recent study in the accompanying video.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Bobbie Mixon, NSF (703) 292-8070 bmixon@nsf.gov

Program Contacts
Nancy A Lutz, NSF (703) 292-7280 nlutz@nsf.gov

Co-Investigators
John Friedman, Harvard University (617) 495-8628 john_friedman@harvard.edu

Related Websites
PowerPoint briefing: How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings?: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/STAR_slides.pdf

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2010, its budget is about $6.9 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 45,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes over 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

Meanwhile we are likely to see sharp increases in class size, with a loss of 2,000 teaching positions and an increase of 18,000 students.

The city has $200 million from the edujobs legislation that they want to save, unspent.

What’s wrong w/ this picture?  Who is looking out for the kids?

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School Year to Begin and More than 1,700 Teachers Without Permanent Jobs

Thursday, September 02, 2010

By Beth Fertig

Enlarge

(flickr user billerickson (cc:by-nc)/ a>)

New York City has 1,779 teachers still without permanent positions who remain on the payroll. The teachers lost their jobs, in many cases, because their schools were closed or had to cut their budgets. They work as substitutes while waiting in what's called an “excess pool” (or Absent Teacher Reserve) of staffers who can apply for jobs at other schools while receiving their salaries.

The Department of Education say s a total of 3,000 teachers were in this excess pool over the summer and almost half did find other positions. But it says 59 percent of those who didn't find jobs haven't attended a recruitment fair or applied for a single position. The department also says there are 726 teachers who have been in the pool since before the spring of 2010, and that hundreds of them have been without permanent positions for more than two years without searching for permanent positions.

The excess pool costs $100 million annually and the Bloomberg administration has been pushing for a one-year limit on how long teachers who lose their positions can remain on the payroll. The teachers' union, however, blames the city for creating the excess pool. Union President Michae l Mulgrew also says Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has the power to assign those out-of-work teachers to any vacancies.

There are currently 1,242 vacancies, which isn’t enough to employ the 1,779 excess teachers. Many of the positions also require specialized licenses. Meanwhile, the city has a hiring freeze on new teachers to encourage principals to hire from the excess pool. But there are exceptions for teachers in hard-to-staff areas such as special education, science and bilingual education.