Class sizes in city schools are ballooning in violation of the law, dooming kids to “a second-rate education,” according to an advocate who filed a complaint with the state Wednesday.
The signers of the complaint to the state Education Department, including parents from all boroughs, city Public Advocate Letitia James and advocate Leonie Haimson, say the city has failed to stick to the plan it made a decade ago shrink class sizes.
In fact, the city’s own data show class sizes are up systemwide — and especially in grades K-3, where classes are 18% bigger now than they were when the law was passed in 2007.
Class sizes were biggest in Queens and Staten Island, and in high schools and middle schools, Haimson said.
The trend flies in the face of educational research that shows students thrive in smaller classes and suffer in larger classes, said Haimson, the founder of Class Size Matters.
“More than 300,000 students citywide are in classes of 30 or more, where they’re unable to receive the attention and support they need from their teachers,” Haimson said. “They’re doomed to a second-rate education.”
The city submitted its plan to reduce class sizes in all grades in response to the state’s mandate a decade ago. But Haimson said the city hasn’t stuck to its word.
The program would have reduced class sizes on average to no more than 20 kids for kindergarten through third grade, 25 students for high school and 23 for other grades.
In reality, average public school class sizes exceeded those benchmarks for all three categories as of November 2016, Haimson said.
State Education Department officials said Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia would review the complaint. City Education Department spokesman Will Mantell said the city would review the complaint as well.
