Last month, Michael Bloomberg wrote an oped in Bloomberg News that was reprinted int the Washington Post and the NY Post, vociferously attacking the new NY class size law. Below is a copy of my oped in today's Washington Post AnswerSheet with a couple of charts and the image of a Michael Bloomberg campaign flyer added. In this piece, I dispute Bloomberg's claims and analyze why he appears so passionately opposed to lowering class size, despite the fact that he campaigned for smaller classes when he first ran for Mayor.
Why a new attack on small class size doesn’t add up
Washington Post Staff writer September 26, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
In 2014, I wrote this: “Every now and then someone in education policy (Arne Duncan) or education philanthropy (Bill Gates)
.... will say something about why class size isn’t really very
important because a great teacher can handle a boatload of kids.”
Well,
some can do that, but anybody who has been in a classroom knows the
virtues of classes that are smaller rather than larger even without the
research that has been shown to bear that out.
Now
the issue is back in the spotlight, this time in New York City, where a
new state law requires the public school system — the largest in the
country — to reduce class sizes over five years. Opponents of the law
are pushing back, especially Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City
from 2002 to 2013. He called for smaller class sizes in his first
mayoral campaign but has now changed his mind.
In
an op-ed in several publications, Bloomberg says students don’t need
smaller classes but better schools — as if the two were entirely
unrelated — and he ignores research, such as a 2014 review of major research that found class size matters a lot, especially for low-income and minority students.
This
post, written by Leonie Haimson, looks at the issue, and Bloomberg’s
position. Haimson is executive director of Class Size Matters, a
nonprofit organization that advocates for smaller classes in New York
City and across the nation as a key driver of education equity.
The knives are out against the new class size law,
overwhelmingly passed in the New York State Legislature in June 2022,
requiring New York City schools to phase in smaller classes over five
years, starting this school year. The law calls for class sizes in
grades K-3 to be limited to no more than twenty students; 23 students in
grades 4-8, and 25 in core high school classes, to be achieved by the
end of the 2027 school year. The law was passed despite the opposition
of the city’s Department of Education officials, who insist that it will
be too expensive, and somehow inequitable, because, they say, the
highest-need students already have small enough classes.
Most recently, Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and an adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, published identical opinion pieces in three major outlets: Bloomberg News (which he owns), The Washington Post, and the New York Post,
inveighing against the goal of lowering class sizes. His piece is
clearly meant to sway opinion leaders and legislators to repeal the law,
and because of his prominent position, some may listen without knowing
about fundamental problems in his op-ed.
Class
size reduction has been shown as an effective way to improve learning
and engagement for all students, especially those who are disadvantaged,
and thus is a key driver of education equity. The Institute of
Education Sciences cites lowering class size as one of only four
education interventions proven to work through rigorous evidence; and
multiple studies show that it narrows the achievement or opportunity gap
between income and racial groups.
Bloomberg
claims that because of the initiative, “City officials say they’ll have
to hire 17,700 new teachers by 2028.” Actually, the estimate from the
New York City Department of Education (DOE) itself is far smaller. In
their draft class size reduction plan,
posted on July 21, DOE officials estimated that 9,000 more teachers
would be required over five years. While it’s true that the Independent Budget Office
estimated the figure cited by Bloomberg, this large disparity between
the two figures appears to stem from the fact that, as the IBO pointed
out, the DOE’s budget already includes 7,500 unfilled teaching
positions, which schools have not been allowed to fill. While Bloomberg
claims the cost will be $1.9 billion for staffing, the DOE’s own plan
estimates $1.3 billion — and these costs could be considerably lower if
they redeployed teachers who are currently assigned to out-of-classroom
positions to the classroom to lower class size.
The legislature passed the new law
in recognition that the city’s DOE is now receiving $1.6 billion in
additional state aid to finally settle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity
lawsuit launched more than 20 years ago. In that case, the state’s
highest court found that, because of excessive class sizes, the city’s
children were deprived of their constitutional right to a sound, basic
education.
Yet since his election, Adams has repeatedly cut education spending, and now threatens to cut it even more, by another 15 percent.
As a result of these cuts, class sizes increased last year and will
likely be larger this year. Hiring enough teachers to meet the law’s
requirements will be a challenge in any case, but it will be impossible
to achieve if the administration’s repeated cuts and hiring freezes are
implemented. Yet in the end, smaller classes would likely strengthen
teacher quality by lowering teacher attrition rates, especially at our
highest-need schools, as studies have shown.
In
his op-ed, Bloomberg claims that creating the additional space
necessary to lower class size will cost $35 billion, which is
misleading. DOE did include this estimate in its original May 2023 draft class size plan. However following pushback by critics who pointed out that this figure bore no relation to reality, they deleted that inflated estimate in their more recent July class size plan.
If DOE equalized or redistributed enrollment across schools, this would
likely save billions of dollars in capital expenses. Right now, there
are hundreds of underutilized public schools, sitting close by
overcrowded schools that lack the space to lower class size.
Bloomberg,
echoing an erroneous DOE claim that funds spent on lowering class size
will not help the highest-need students, wrote: “Under the new mandate,
only 38 percent of the highest-poverty schools would see class sizes
shrink, compared to nearly 70 percent of medium- to low-poverty schools …
it won’t help the students who need it most.”
Actually,
only 8 percent of schools with the highest poverty levels (with 90
percent or more low-income students) fully complied with the class size
caps last year, according to an analysis by Class Size Matters. Thus, 92
percent of these schools would see their class sizes shrink if DOE
complied with the law, rather than the 38 percent that Bloomberg claims.
Moreover,
by solely focusing on schools with 90 percent poverty levels or more,
his claims are misleading. A piece in the education publication Chalkbeat
attempted to make a similar argument, by using class size data provided
by DOE that shows that 68 percent of classes in the highest-poverty
schools met the class size limit. This is far different than Bloomberg’s
claim that 68 percent of these schools are achieving the limits in all of their classes.
In addition, the class size data, analyzed in conjunction with DOE demographic
data, shows that there are many more NYC public schools in the other
two categories summarized by Chalkbeat, “Low-to-Mid Poverty” (schools
with 0-75 percent low-income students) and “High Poverty” (schools with
75 percent to 90 percent low-income students), than those in their
“Highest Poverty” category. Most importantly, these two categories of schools enroll a supermajority of our highest-needs students.
In
fact, 79 percent of low-income students, 78 percent of Black students,
74 percent of Hispanic students, and 74 percent of English-language
learners are enrolled in these other two categories of schools, while
only 21 percent to 26 percent of these students are enrolled in the
“Highest Poverty” category.
This
further indicates that without a citywide mandate to lower class size,
smaller classes would likely never reach most of our most disadvantaged
students.
Indeed,
the highest-needs students, including students of color, low-income
students, and English-language learners, have been shown to gain twice
the benefits from smaller classes in terms of higher achievement rates,
more engagement, and eventual success in school and beyond, which is why
class size reduction is one of very few education reforms proven to narrow the achievement or opportunity gap. Thus, by its very nature, lowering class size is a key driver of education equity.
There
is also no guarantee that the smaller classes in our highest poverty
schools will be sustained without a legal mandate to do so. In July, DOE officials omitted the promise in their May class size plan that schools that had already achieved the caps would continue to do so, as pointed out by a letter
signed by over 230 advocates, parents, and teachers. In fact, we found
that fewer of the schools in every category achieved the class size caps
last year compared to the year before.
Only
69 schools citywide fully met the caps in the fall of 2022, compared to
89 in the fall of 2021, and the number of students enrolled in those
schools declined from 18,248 to only 13,905, a decrease of nearly 25
percent. Fewer still will likely do so this year.
So
given that the data does not back up his claims, why is Bloomberg so
apparently enraged at the notion that public school students would be
provided the opportunity to benefit from smaller classes.
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Bloomberg campaign flyer
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One
should recall that when he first ran for mayor more than 20 years ago,
Bloomberg himself promised to lower class size, especially in the early
grades. His
2002 campaign kit
put it this way: “Studies confirm one of the greatest detriments to
learning is an overcrowded classroom … For students a loud packed
classroom means greater chance of falling behind. For teachers, class
overcrowding means a tougher time teaching & giving students
attention they need.”
Yet
class sizes increased sharply during the Bloomberg years, and by 2013,
his last year in office, class sizes in the early grades in public
schools had risen to the highest levels in 15 years. By that time, he had long renounced his earlier pledge, and had proclaimed in a 2011 speech that he would fire half the teachers and double class sizes if he could, and this would be a “good deal for the students.”
Bloomberg’s
main educational legacy in New York City was a huge increase in the
number of charter schools as a result of his decision to provide them
free space in public school buildings, and his successful effort to
persuade state legislators to raise the charter cap. During his three
terms in office, the number of charter schools in the city exploded from 19 to 183.
Since leaving office, Bloomberg has continued to express his preference for charter schools, and has pledged $750 million
for their further expansion in the city and beyond. A close reading of
his op-ed suggests that one of the main reasons for his vehement
opposition to the new law is because lowering class size may take
classroom space in our public schools that, in his view, should be used
instead for charter schools.
Indeed,
he concludes the op-ed by saying “it would help if Democratic leaders
were more supportive of high-quality public charter schools,” and goes
on to rail against a recent lawsuit to
block the Adams administration’s decision to co-locate two Success
charter schools in public school buildings in Brooklyn and Queens — a
lawsuit filed on the basis that it would diminish the space available to
lower class size for existing public school students.
Of the $750 million Bloomberg pledged for charter expansion, $100 million was specifically earmarked
for Success Academy. Regarding the lawsuit, launched by the teachers
union along with parents and educators in the affected schools,
Bloomberg writes, “It was an outrageous attack on children, and
thankfully, it failed.”
Misleading
people about the value of small classes to teachers and students as
well as about class size data seems to be an attack on opportunities for
New York City public school children, who deserve better. Class Size
Matters hopes these efforts fail.
