Florida's ?no-win? class-size situation is a foreshadowing for Ohio, as we're bound to come to the same obvious conclusions about universal class-size reduction (CSR) requirements: does it really add value and even so, how the hell do we afford it?
Voters in Florida approved CSR back in 2002 and actually went so far as to embed it via a constitutional amendment (which now requires another ballot measure to undo it) but, as the Miami Herald reports:
With funding tight ? and the state unable to provide the money it had promised ? school districts across Florida struggled to meet the requirements.
And
When state legislators realized last spring that educational goals and economic realities were about to come head-to-head, they agreed to put the issue back on the Nov. 2 ballot. Voters would be given a chance to loosen the class size requirement and compliance based on schoolwide averages.
And Florida's class-size requirements are meek compared to Ohio's. In last year's budget bill, Ohio's lawmakers stipulated that K-3 ratios shrink to 15:1 by 2014 (Florida mandates 18:1 in K-3). Even worse is the fact Ohio's impending $6-8 billion budget hole makes Florida's fiscal woes pale in comparison (at least according to this estimate that their deficit sits at $2.5 billion).
Most people in Ohio already realize that the state's ?evidence-based? model won't be fully funded (short of some kind of miraculous economic recovery), and that the mandates attached to the EBM won't end up having teeth. But in case you're still skeptical, or still being sentimental about small class sizes, here are few reminders of why Ohio needs to jump off this bandwagon fast:
- - Hiring enough new K-3 teachers to fulfill reduced class-sizes in Ohio by 2014 would require almost 34,000 new teachers and would cost $784 million dollars (annually!);
- - Even if Ohio miraculously had the money, it turns out that Florida's CSR program has had no discernible impact on student achievement;
- - The rampant hiring of so many teachers to meet CSR requirements (a 35 percent increase in public school staff over the decade) is really, really unsustainable in case you hadn't heard ? and it doesn't make sense given that Ohio has actually had a drop in student enrollment over that same period.
Hopefully Ohio will get its head out of the sand faster than Florida has.
- Jamie Davies O'Leary
