Speaker Quinn’s push for mandatory Kindergarten in NYC, now being considered in the NYS Legislature, is likely to send thousands of new children into a schools system that is already struggling with Kindergarten waiting lists, overcrowding, and increasing class sizes. Our analysis here and below suggests what the impact may be, and proposes that the […]
Class sizes keep increasing in all areas of the city, despite the Contracts for Excellence (C4E) law passed by the state in 2007, requiring the DOE to reduce class sizes in all grades. We are now in the fifth and final year of the city’s class size reduction plan, only class sizes in the early […]
Recommendations on School Governance by the Parent Commission NYC • March 2009 The only good thing to come out of the governance debate and well worth reading for anyone interested in the problems with mayoral control. https://classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/parent_commission_Final_Report.pdf These recommendations were endorsed by: Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence Brooklyn Society of Ethical […]
The Independent Parent Survey: Views of New York City public school parents and parent leaders on class size, testing, and Mayoral control February 2008
How to make the city’s new five-year capital plan for school construction…. A Better Capital Plan October 2008 A Report from: Class Size Matters/The Campaign for a Better Capital Plan/The Manhattan Task Force on School Overcrowding The Center for Arts Education/The United Federation of Teachers https://classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/A_Better_Capital_Plan_final_final.pdf
How Crowded Are Our Schools? New Results from a Survey of NYC Public School Principals Prof. Emily Horowitz (St. Francis College) & Leonie Haimson (Class Size Matters) October 3, 2008 Click here to download the report [PDF]
High School Discharges Revisited: TRENDS IN NEW YORK CITY’S DISCHARGE RATES, 2000-2007 By Jennifer L. Jennings and Leonie Haimson, April 30, 2009 https://classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/High_School_Discharge_Report_FINAL.pdf Here is a NY Times article about our findings: Number of Students Leaving School Early Continues to Increase, Study Says. This report led to a 2011 audit from the NY State Comptroller’s […]
See this DOE press release on their “new” revised amended five year capital plan, which they try to spin as a major restoration, but is really a major cut. In the Feb. 2010 plan (which was adopted in June), the DOE said they would fund 30,000 new seats at $4 billion, which we knew […]
September 22, 2010 Revelations concerning SED’s secret backdoor deal with DOE on class size See today’s Juan Gonzalez column here, about the backdoor deal made nearly seven months ago between State Education Commissioner Steiner and Joel Klein, to allow the city to nullify its legal and moral commitments to reduce class size, and to let […]
The only information out of the unrealiable 2009-2010 school progress reports that I would trust is the list of schools that got an “F” for environment, based predominantly on poor ratings from the parent and teacher learnng environment surveys, and in the case of middle and high schools, student surveys as well. Here is a […]
Sign here to urge NYC to implement a real, multi-year strategy to lower class size, as the law intends, without exempting up to half or more of all students.
Talk out of School radio show and podcast airs Sunday night at 7 PM on WBAI 99.5 FM or online at www.wbai.org when Leonie Haimson and Daniel Alicea interview guests and discuss issues affecting public schools in NYC, the state level and nationally. You can stream or subscribe to the podcast here; or at iTunes, Spotify or Google.
We held our annual Skinny award dinner Wed. June 28, 2023, honoring Rep. Jamaal Bowman, former Bronx principal and now a progressive trailblazer who is fighting in Congress to protect and improve our public schools. More photos on Facebook .
