Reduction in Class Sizes Called Education’s Top Priority

Reducing the size of California’s public school classes is the No. 1 priority among a long list of education-reform recommendations, the chairman of a statewide study commission said Friday in Fullerton.

Dorman L. Commons, chairman of the California Commission on the Teaching Profession, spoke before a town meeting at Cal State Fullerton.

His talk was essentially a reprise of the landmark education study his commission completed and made public in November. That report, comprising two years of intense research, made several major recommendations, including changing teacher education and certification.

But Commons told the Orange County audience that clearly the key item in the report is the call to lower the number of students per classroom.

Lowest Ranking

The report says: “California’s classrooms are so overcrowded that the state ranks 50th in the nation in its student-teacher ratio, and the situation in many communities is getting worse. In the elementary grades, this ratio is nearly 24 to 1, while the secondary (school) ratio is just over 28 to 1. The national average student-teacher ratio is just over 18 to 1.”

(In some Orange County schools, there are 30 or more students per teacher.)

“First and foremost, we must reduce California class size so that teachers can relate to their students as individuals,” Commons said in his Cal State Fullerton-sponsored talk. “There’s no question in my mind or in the mind of the commission: Reduction of class size is No. 1 (in priority).”

Commons added: “It will be costly.”

Commons, a business executive who was on the California Board of Education for 10 years, did not put price tags on the items listed in the report, formally titled “Who Will Teach Our Children?”

But other speakers at the town meeting said the expense will be considerable. State Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim), a member of the Senate Education Committee, predicted that state aid per student will have to double or triple.

State Aid Figures

State aid, which is derived from a formula using ADA (average daily attendance), varies slightly among school districts but is currently about $2,000 a school year per child. Seymour said state aid might have to be hiked to about $5,000 or $6,000 a year per child. “That obviously is a very serious commitment,” he said.

Seymour said, however, that the public will demand reform in education before supporting all the costs of the needed changes.

Reforms recommended in the commission’s report include establishing peer review of teacher performance and making tenure more difficult to obtain. Two speakers at the forum predicted that teacher unions would balk at some of the suggested reforms.

Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), also a member of the Senate Education Committee, said she has introduced two major bills in Sacramento to implement many of the recommendations made by the commission. “By improving standards, we will attract our best and our brightest (into the teaching profession),” she said.

And in agreeing with Commons’ call for reduced class sizes, Bergeson said the improved teaching that will result from smaller classes will lower the need for other programs, such as remedial education.