Editorials

It’s one thing to read statistics about the sorry state of education in California, but it’s another to talk to someone who’s in the trenches trying to cope with it. At a party this weekend I met a woman who’s bucking for sainthood as a teacher in the Los Angeles public school system. She’s an energetic, lively person, who’s successfully raised two kids of her own. At the age of 60, after a pleasant career which included a Ph. D. and a series of administrative jobs, she decided to “give something back” to society by resuming the school teaching career she’d given up at an early age. (She’s a red diaper baby—maybe that explains her desire to be socially significant.) 

She teaches sixth and seventh grades in a regular public school, in Sherman Oaks, a middle-class area of L.A. County. “So,” I said, making polite conversation. “How many kids do you teach?” Well, she said, it’s down to 48 this year, though last year it was 50. “Fifty kids every day,” I said, “that’s not too bad.” No, she said, 50 in the classroom at a time. 

Fifty pre-pubescents in a classroom at one time? I had to sit down, contemplating what it must be like. It’s been a few years since my kids finished in the Berkeley public schools, but surely they didn’t have anything like 50 kids in their junior high classes. I remembered statistics indicating that average class size was now under 30.  

And so it is: In California, in 2003-2004 for grade 6 it was 29.4, and for grade 7, 26.5. But the devil is in the definition: Average class size is the number of students enrolled in classes divided by the number of classes. Observe: Average class size is not maximum class size. That’s why my new friend, who teaches health education, has to try to manage 50 kids at a time. 

“Sometimes there aren’t even enough chairs for all the kids,” she told me. She said that’s a real problem when the subject matter is supposed to be sex, and the students are crammed into a too-small class room, cheek by jowl as it were, pretending to have a serious discussion of what’s already on their minds all the time, and they’re supposed to behave themselves. She said she figures it’s been a good day when no one gets hurt at school, but no, they aren’t learning much. And she can’t do much about it. She intended to teach for 10 years, of which three have passed, but she’s not sure she can stick it out. As a politically astute person, she knows the solution must be political, but not what it is. 

Are things that bad in Berkeley? We’ve had a couple of letters calling attention to the distinction between average and maximum class size in the reports we get from the teachers’ contract negotiations, but I don’t remember hearing anything about 50-student classes. The main topic in the contract dispute seems to be raises, but it’s hard to imagine a percentage pay raise which would compensate a teacher for having to cope with 50 kids at a crack. And fair compensation for teachers isn’t the only goal of the system: education for the kids has to be the real objective of the public schools.  

My granddaughter in Santa Cruz has 32 kids in her fourth grade class, and according to her mother, who volunteers in the classroom a lot, it isn’t working very well. 

Many children come to school carrying the problems of society with them. Even in small classes teachers would have a hard time providing everything these kids need—and with 32 individuals to cope with, they certainly can’t do it. 

The Planet has reported on a couple of recent local cases where high-school age young people have demonstrated big problems. One girl was caught with a gun in her backpack—and the excuse was that her father gave it to her to keep it out of the hands of younger siblings. A 16-year-old was arrested this weekend for slashing the throat of a total stranger on a pleasant spring evening at the Berkeley Rose Garden. These are problems teachers can’t solve in the classroom. 

The contract negotiations in the Berkeley Unified School District continue to be hot and heavy. Teachers are becoming more militant, working to rule by refusing to provide their professional services outside of the formal contact hour schedule. Whether this is a good PR move for the teachers’ union is debatable. The union president has sent out letters complaining that BUSD’s perspective gets better airtime on the Parent-Teacher Association e-mail tree—but that could just be a reflection of how the parents are viewing the controversy. It seems unwise for the Berkeley Federation of Teachers to suggest shooting the messenger.  

There’s no easy answer to the question of whether a teachers’ union is good or bad for students. The all-time worst teacher any of my three kids had in the Berkeley Public Schools was a high official in the union—but, to make it more complicated, so were two of the best. In the ideal world, a teachers’ union should advocate for both teachers and students, but in the real world it seems sometimes that the kids come second. 

Sometimes seriously inadequate teachers who really should move on to another profession are protected by the union for much too long. 

Maximum class size is one of the key elements highlighted in the latest round of communications from teachers. This seems to be one place where teachers and parents could agree, and could join together to make the point to the school administration. And the students, particularly the always articulate Berkeley High students, should be playing an important role in the discussion as well.  

But putting a lid on class size, even if that’s needed in Berkeley, won’t solve all the problems of the public school system today, nor will giving teachers raises, even if they deserve them. The disintegration of public education in California has much deeper roots, and the solution, as my new teacher friend recognizes, is ultimately political. 

—Becky O’Malley 

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