“Reducing class size is one of the most important investments we can make in our children’s future.  Recent research confirms what parents have always known – children learn better in small classes with good teachers, and kids who start out in smaller class sizes do better right through their high school graduation.   Rockford, Illinois, the third largest district in the state, with a 76 percent school poverty rate, invested just $797,963 to hire 17 additional teachers for primary grades.  The result:  It reduced the number of students in 43 other classrooms, including 35 first grade classrooms.  Without federal support, average class size would have had about 26 students per teacher.  With CSR funds, Rockford reduced class size in third grades to 17-18 students per class.   Washington, DC targeted its $5.6 million allocation to 32 schools identified as low-achieving.  Each site that received a grant hired one additional teacher.  Henley school used its money to hire an additional teacher for the first grade, allowed it to reduce class size from 24 to 18 in all four of this first-grade classrooms.  The school met all six of its performance objectives for the year, including increase in the number at both the proficient and advanced levels in both reading and math.  First-grade teachers in Hendley report greater satisfaction with students’ achievement, motivation, and skills when they are able to provide instruction to smaller number of students.”   http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/ClassSize/class.doc “We should be trying to hire more teachers rather than firing more teachers, to reduce classrooms.” First-grade teachers at Hendley report greater satisfaction with students’ achievement, motivation, and skills when they are able to provide instruction to a smaller number of children.”

Excess Classroom Capacity:

Close schools/save money?

News media have a solemn obligation to provide its viewers and listeners the best information available about public issues that affect their lives, and judgments they are asked to make by public officials.  "Structuring Our Schools for Success - Making the Vision Work for All Students" is a collective responsibility.  Citizens for Better Schools is committed to sharing the best educational research available to the public, our media, school officials and other policy makers.  We are persuaded that to create "Good Common Schools" for Birmingham City Schools, class size reeducation and creation of smaller schools are essential, a  sine qua non. Closing more schools is counter productive and harmful to the core purpose of public schools, high quality education to foster democracy and equip our youth for productive citizenship in a global society.

School closings proposals, furtively developed, by the ALSDE and BCS staff are deficient for the purpose of creating "Good Common Schools."   We share the following in order to inform the public and media on these critical school development issues.

Print media has reported "excess classroom capacity" in Birmingham city Schools as sufficient reason to close more schools.  This conclusion is not warranted or true.  “Excess space in a school building does not necessarily mean that a school is too costly to operate or is inefficiently used.  In some instances “excess classroom space can be directly attributed to and is caused by factors other than decline in enrollment, e.g. administrative changes in attendance zones or other program usage decisions.

While Birmingham and state school officials may worry about a third of its school buildings being “underutilized,” i.e., empty, no attention is being paid to the real issue: How best to retain and attract students to city schools.  The old factory model of schooling, large plants with crowded classrooms is long since passé – over!  Time is long past to recognize the virtues of smallness, authentic neighborhood schools, properly scaling school size to first, and foremost, advance academic achievement of its students in poverty who are struggling academically. Seventy-nine percent of Birmingham students qualify for free or reduced lunch, federal surrogates for poverty in schools.  No other urban school district in this state faces this challenge.

School administrators must take especial care in addressing the question whether Birmingham is “Downsizing, Rightsizing, or Capsizing" our school system by stacking and packing students into ever larger schools, with the inevitability of even larger student/teacher ratios, and school social dysfunction, witness the mega-sized Jackson Olin High School.

Informed by empirical education research, modern school administrators welcome the educational benefits smallness brings to the school house.  Although enrollment in previously overcrowded buildings has declined, albeit without administrative intention, Birmingham school administrators must not view proposed school closings as just another whimsical restructuring to replicate its past errors. 

Citizens, and school administrators, must inform their judgments before deciding whether to close and consolidate more schools.  In the past four years the Board of Education has closed nine schools, premised to save money and operate more efficiently.  The same premise was used in 1989 after a “Blue Ribbon” study premised on the assumptions that the district had too many schools that were “too costly to operate”, too many administrators, teachers and staff, declining enrollment, and sagging academics.

Flash forward, aren't these the same conditions school leaders claim to address today?  Will doing the dame thing, the same way, produce any different operational and academic results?  It doesn’t take an Einstein to know the answer.

This time, administrators must realign schools to neutralize the paralyzing effect poverty has on academic achievement among inner-city poor, black, and special needs students.   Administrators must also realize and take into account the diseconomies of scale large schools bring, debunking the myth that small schools cost more or are incapable of delivering high quality education.  With only 232 students, well below the number ALSDE will fully fund principal and other administrative staff positions, Princeton Elementary (not targeted for closing as cost inefficient) post some of the highest test scores among City elementary schools.

Of course, however, school board member Willie May publicly stated, “Everyone knows Princeton is special; and all the children there are special too.”  So are the children in neighborhood schools slated for closing.

To ignore modern education research is, again, to court disaster in our schools.  Media must also explore this aspect of school restructuring and prod district leaders to answer critical questions of how current staff proposals differ from past failed realignments. What happens in succeeding fiscal years as enrollment declines further?  Close more schools, fire more teachers, or create on great school system and merge with Jefferson County’s school system?

Good education leaders will work to make schools and class sizes smaller, equipping these smaller schools with highly qualified teachers in all classrooms.  This is the formula for success, not a return to big, box, factory sized school houses.

Reasonably, however, school planners often build “extra capacity” to prepare for increased birth rates and potential growth.  School populations are planned, as much as practicable, knowing that birth rates ebb and flow as does enrollment rates.  Extra space also holds down the need to face escalating construction cost for adding classrooms when enrolment in grades increases.  Having built mega size high schools in the face of a huge dropout rates in Birmingham schools, coupled with decline in enrolment overall, accounts for much of the excess capacity reported in city schools.  Turn the drop out rate around and much of this "excess capacity" goes away.  School districts need not panic merely because they find "extra capacity."

Parents with money have options.  They will not tolerate over-crowded class sizes.  They prefer, and will demand, seek and find, small teacher-student ratios.  Parents in poverty too often are not equipped to demand and secure similar educational services.  Here, the education news media can be of its grandest service, simply by asking why not?  Poor children are entitled to class sizes that match suburban school districts.

Analyze This:

Research You Can Use to Improve Results
Section 2. Management and Organization

2.3 District

2.3.2 District Leaders Are Guided by Research when Making School Size Decisions

District leaders:

a. Know that research favors smaller learning environments over larger ones for superior student achievement, attitudes, and social behavior, as well as teacher and administrator morale.

b. Know that larger schools do not necessarily have lower per-pupil costs or better curricula than smaller schools, and that smaller schools are actually the most economical, per pupil graduated, because of their far lower dropout rates.

c. Bring research on the effects of school size to bear on decisions regarding consolidation (of schools or districts), division of schools into smaller units, creation of house plans within schools, and establishment and/or maintenance of alternative schools.

d. Work with schools to help young people who are not succeeding in school to explore other options, including small alternative schools.

In districts with large schools, support efforts to create smaller and more intimate environments for learning and interpersonal support.

f. Encourage school personnel to make use of effective schooling practices frequently found in smaller schools - team teaching, integrated curriculum, multiage grouping, cooperative learning, experiential learning, flexible scheduling, and performance assessments.

Key references
Berlin and Cienkus (1989); Burke (1987); Cotton (1996b); Foster and Martinez (1985); Fowler (1989, 1995); Fowler and Walberg (1991); Gregory (1992); Gregory and Smith (1983); Haller (1992); Howley (1994); Jewell (1989); Johnson (1990); Lindsay (1982); McGanney, Mei, and Rosenblum (1989); McGuire (1989); McKenzie (1983); Monk (1987, 1992); Monk and Kadamus (1995); Nachtigal (1992); Ornstein (1990); Ramirez (1992); Raywid (1995, 1997); Smith and DeYoung (1988); Smith, Gregory, and Pugh (1981); Stockard and Mayberry (1992); Stolp (1995); Walberg (1992); Williams (1990)

2.3.3 District Leaders Support the Establishment and Maintenance of Small Classes

District leaders:

a. Know that small classes-those between 15 and 20 students-significantly promote achievement in grades K-4, and that this beneficial effect is greatest for poor and minority children.

b. Know that class size reduction is most effective when there are adequate facilities for the increased number of classes and fully certified teachers to teach them. They include strategies to address these needs as part of their class size reduction plans.

c. Seek ways to limit class size for children in grades K-4 to between 15 and 20 students

d. Review policies regarding the use of teacher aides, since research shows that their presence does not enhance students' academic achievement.

e. Recognize the potential of class size reduction for reducing the dropout rate and include consideration of lowering class size when formulating dropout prevention plans.

f. Consider part-time class size reduction as a compromise between having students spend all their time in either small or large classes.

g. Provide professional development experiences to enable students to make optimum use of small classes.

Key references
Achilles, Harman, and Egelson (1995); Altenbaugh (1995); Bingham (1994); Blatchford and Mortimore (1994); Finn (1998); Hymon (1997); Illig (1997); Lewis (1997); Mitchell (1989); Mosteller (1995); Ogawa, Stine, and Huston (1998); Polansky and Johnson (1996); U.S. Department of Education (1998); Wenglinsky (1997);

2.3.4 District Leaders Support the Creation and Maintenance of Safe, Supportive School Facilities

District leaders:

a. Are familiar with research showing that the learning and behavior of students is affected by aspects of the physical environment, especially air quality, heat control, lighting, space, and availability of equipment and furnishings.

b. Provide resources to keep school facilities and grounds in good repair, clean, and reasonably attractive.

c. Provide resources for schools to deal with graffiti or other vandalism in a timely manner.

d. Periodically gather input from schools about their needs regarding obsolete equipment, furniture; repair, refurbishing, lighting, heat, and other facilities needs. They also seek input from teachers, students, and parents when designing new schools.

e. Are knowledgeable about facilities design research findings (regarding personal space, territoriality, privacy, variety, color, etc.) and bring that knowledge to bear on school construction and remodeling decisions.

f. Make special efforts toward the modernization and upkeep of older school buildings.

g. In larger districts, utilize a district-level school facilities manager, who oversees construction, maintenance, risk management and student safety.

Key references
Berner (1993); Bowers and Burkett (1989); Chan (1996); Cooze (1995); Doll (1992); Earthman and Lemasters (1996); Earthman and VanBerkum (1995); Meek (1995); Moore and Lackney (1994); Andrews  (1988); Sutton (1996); Taylor and Warden