“We know that it goes against any developmental practice, and we know it goes against every practice good schools have thought to implement,” she said. “If [teachers] pick up the slack after several colleagues have left, and are trying to service children in smaller classrooms with larger group sizes, the effects are going to be devastating on children.”
Glendale Unified is considered a high-performing school district in part because it scored 830 on the Academic Performance Index last year, and has demonstrated consistent growth year-to-year. Scores range between 200 and 1,000, and marks above 800 indicate high-performing schools, according to the California Department of Education.
A lower teacher-to-student ratio will likely cause that API score to drop, experts said. Up to 30 kids in elementary grades could also exacerbate racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.
“All of those give us great concern,” Glendale Unified Supt. Michael Escalante said. “The only way we can survive is by doing these absolutely horrendously bad things, all of them we disagree with.”
Many school districts in California have already increased class sizes, or are considering doing so, to offset cuts from Sacramento, experts said.
“If it was just Glendale it’d be very sad, but it’s everywhere; it’s the whole state,” Belgrad said.
Children’s brains develop most rapidly in kindergarten through third grade, experts said.
So increasing the number of students in a class puts more pressure on the teacher, and decreases his or her ability to meet all students’ individual needs.
