County Teachers Give an ‘A’ to Smaller Classes

Teacher Judy Bowers doesn’t need test scores to prove that smaller classes are worth the effort. She only needs to hear her students reading.

While her Thousand Oaks first-graders struggled with simple, declarative sentences in September, such as “The dog barked,” her students are far more advanced now. Seven-year-old Carleigh Conejo demonstrated, reading assuredly from “Rainforest.”

“Long ago in a village right in the middle of the Congo, there lived a man and his wife who were always causing mischief,” she said. Without so much as sounding out the words, Carleigh read difficult words including “temper” and “fervently.”

Although it’s too early for test scores to prove whether student performance has improved, Ventura County educators say the state’s billion-dollar investment in a class-size reduction program is already paying dividends.

“The teachers involved are really happy and there’s an old saying, ‘Happy teachers make happy kids,’ ” said John Weiss, president of the Ventura Unified Education Assn. “Talk to the teachers that have 20 [students] and those that have 30 and I think you’ll see a big difference.”

According to a survey of more than 900 county teachers, the benefits of class-size reduction this year far outweigh the hassles.

Since the advent of smaller primary grade classes, teachers have found more time to work with students individually, or in small groups, according to a poll conducted in February by the Ventura County superintendent of schools office.

“It’s a bad analogy, but having 32 or 36 students is like the too-many-rats-in-the-cage syndrome, not that students are rats,” said Bowers, echoing the sentiments of many of her colleagues. “But they’re all vying for my attention, vying for space, vying for materials, vying for time. With [20] students, everyone is heard, everyone gets attention.”

Contrasted with a year ago, teachers say they are less stressed, more inclined to call a parent with a concern or compliment, and less likely to refer students to special education. Discipline eats up less class time. Papers get graded more promptly and computers are fired up more often.

Teachers have seen the improvements in student learning this year and say test scores will back them up in future years.

Since last summer, when Gov. Pete Wilson announced the incentive program to pare class sizes, 18,764 students--or about 48% of Ventura County’s kindergartners to third-graders--attended classes with 19 or fewer peers.

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Yet creating smaller class sizes did not occur without its sacrifices, and in some cases, emotional turmoil.

Along with hiring 343 teachers and purchasing 147 portable classrooms in the county, educators had to make their own commitments.

In some cases this meant temporarily placing 40 students in one classroom with two teachers, losing library and computer laboratory space, or even converting a day-care center into a classroom for half the day.

In the 3,408-student Fillmore Unified School District, first-grade students were shifted to their smaller class sizes during the middle of the school year.

“We had people in tears,” Fillmore Supt. Mario Contini said. “Parents have chosen those teachers and all of a sudden you have plans that uproot those kids and disrupts their progress, causing people to give up the classrooms they’ve grown attached to and have decorated.”

The results, however, have been favorable enough that all county school districts plan on maintaining or expanding the class-size reduction efforts made in the past year.

East County Schools Take Biggest Steps

Eastern Ventura County school districts such as the Conejo Valley and Moorpark unifieds went the furthest, reducing classes from first to third grades. Conejo may add kindergarten classes at five elementary schools this fall.

The Oxnard School District, the county’s largest elementary district, stopped after first grade, in part because of a space shortage. The district received voters’ approval earlier this month on a $57-million bond measure to build several schools.

But it will probably be another year before the district can create the space to reduce class sizes.

“It couldn’t be done that quickly and when you add more portables you still cut into space at school,” Oxnard Supt. Bernard Korenstein said. “There’s only so many portables you can put on a campus.”

As two other school districts that received approval for school bonds this year, Ventura and Fillmore plan to expand the program next year.

By the fall all second-grade students in Ventura should be in class sizes of 20 or fewer students with the help of portable classrooms, district officials said.

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Fillmore plans to make space for reduced second- and third-grade classes by bumping sixth-graders to middle school, and purchasing more portable classrooms.

Part of Fillmore’s $12-million school bond money will go toward completing the middle school started a decade ago but never finished after funds ran short.

“If we had not passed the bond this year, chances are extremely good that we not only would not have had class-size reduction next year, but it’s highly likely we would have gone to double-session or multitrack [schedules],” Contini said. “The bond literally saved us.”

While the districts are busy planning for next year, teachers throughout the county are taking stock of their first year of class-size reduction.

At Oxnard’s Kamala School, Teresa Reynolds’ second-grade students sat quietly at their desk and read their favorite books or worked on a math problem.

In Spanish, Reynolds asked whether students at a cluster of tables needed help. She went from desk to desk until she reached all 20 students in her bilingual class, rewarding correct answers with a sheet of silver stickers.

Giving Each Child One-on-One Attention

Last year more than 30 students crowded her classroom. Reynold’s was uncertain whether some pupils grasped the material, especially the shy ones. But with only 20 students this year, she typically speaks to each child one on one, twice a day.

“I feel good about where the students all are,” she said. “With 30, some students are easy to overlook. With 20 it’s easier to see who is not participating and go there and see if they’re just shy or not feeling well or just don’t understand.”

Before last year’s initiative, county teachers would grow disheartened when comparing their class sizes with those of teachers they met at national conferences. Colorado, Illinois and a number of other states have long had a 20-1 ratio for the primary grades.

Teachers from other states always said the biggest difference was the class size, said Judy Hodson, a second-grade teacher at Ventura’s Pierpont School.

“But we were expected to do the same things they were and it was always so depressing,” she said.

Hodson, who has taught for 25 years, used to drive home frustrated and exhausted, wondering whether there were students she was allowing to fall through the cracks.

“I’m doing the best I can and I hope I’m reaching everyone,” she would tell herself.

“Now I know I’m reaching everyone and I can see the difference,” she added.

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In the past year, the Ventura district began requiring all elementary school teachers to assess their students reading levels both at the beginning and end of the school year with the San Diego Quick reading test.

While the district won’t finish compiling all the results until August, the teachers already know how their own students fared. All of Hodson’s students made at least one year of growth in reading this year.

Colleague Donna Miller, a first-grade teacher, has seen more dramatic progress.

In the past, few of her students read above first-grade level by the end of the year. With the 20-1 teacher-student ratio in her class this year, two now read at the sixth-grade level, one at the fifth-grade level, one at the third-grade level and nearly all reached at least the first- or second-grade level. “I’ve never had that happen before,” said Miller, who said this year’s students did not start out exceptionally brighter than her past students.

“Just having a smaller group to work with, they just get more time to read and that’s basically it,” she said.

One of the most noticeable differences teachers often link to class-size reduction is that discipline problems are down.

At Piru School, nestled in Los Padres National Forest, Chris Pavik dismissed his 20 first-graders. Pavik told of a Spanish-speaking boy he had in his first-grade class. At the beginning of the year, with more than 30 students in the class, Pavik watched as the child constantly distracted other students and paid little attention to the assignments.

By October, the class had been reduced to 20 students. With increased attention, the student got into fewer problems. Soon the youngster who could barely read began writing six or seven sentences at a time without help and without grammatical errors.

Parents Getting More Progress Reports

In addition to praise from educators, the lower teacher-to-student ratio has garnered praise from parents who say they have received more reports on their child’s progress or shortcomings this year.

In the 1995-96 school year, Chris Cone spoke with his son’s teacher at San Cayetano School in Fillmore three times. This year he received a weekly performance report on his first-grade son, detailing the child’s strengths and weaknesses.

“Instead of being treated as an object, he’s being treated as an individual,” Cone said. With better reports from the teacher it’s easier to know what areas his son needs more help on at home.

“We can push him a little more in math, but we might need to spend a whole night working with reading,” Cone said.

But class-size reduction did not come without a price.

Most schools had to play the shifting game. The Pierpont School made space for class-size reduction by moving one teacher for half the day into the day-care center. The speech therapist had to conduct her program on the cafeteria stage. Another teacher conducted class in the library.

Although crunched for space at Oxnard’s Kamala School, administrators hope to keep their classrooms out of the commonly shared areas.

Instead they opted for a 40-2 student-teacher ratio in three of their classrooms.

As lunch period ended, 40 first- and second-graders pumped with adrenaline scrambled back into Leslie Maple) and Marti Barrett’s classroom.

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The two teachers sharing the room say it’s a sacrifice they were willing to make.

“It’s very difficult under the situation, but it’s working as effectively as it can be,” Maple said.

The downside, she added, are times when the second-graders try to wield too much authority over the first-graders.

“I’m dying for my own room,” Maple said. “It’s just too crowded. I think [the students] require more personal space.” Ventura County Schools Supt. Charles Weis has concerns the class-size reduction program may follow the state lottery, which provided a lot less revenue than schools had anticipated.

“When people voted for [the lottery], they dusted their hands off, and said they didn’t have to worry about school funding,” Weis said. “And they didn’t worry. And the lottery provided less than 3% [of school budgets] and we were literally being starved by inflation.

“So that’s my fear. People may say we have class-size reduction [so] we don’t need to provide you with other materials. You’ve got your piece.”

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