There is a movement in New York City to legislate smaller class size. More than 114,000 people signed the petition, only to have Mayor Bloomberg push the vote off of the November Ballot with his referendum on nonpartisan elections. Smaller classes in our city's classrooms are critical at the present time, because there is a great amount of disarray due to the new administration, mayoral control, teachers who are unhappy, etc. All this lack of planning and strategy at the top filters down to the children, who see a large number of teachers absent from the classroom while they give tests somewhere else, or teachers who are trying to teach curricula that even they are not familiar with. Too many substitute teachers are not capable, and with 34-40 kids in a class of diverse abilities, the situation our kids are in can truly be described as chaotic and against Union work rules.

Leonie Haimson has been leading the smaller classes movement here in New York, and has a website explaining the issue and what is being done here in New York City.

From Leonie:

1- Finding volunteers to help out with our campaign.
2- The endorsement of your PTAs or President's Councils
3-literature to hand out
and/ or a recent article for the Gotham Gazette

MANHATTAN: CLASS-SIZE MEASURE REJECTED New York City officials rejected a proposal for a referendum in November on creating a commission to consider writing class-size limits into the City Charter. The city clerk wrote that the corporation counsel said the proposal could not move forward because the mayor's own Charter Revision Commission was already posing ballot questions. Gifford Miller, the City Council speaker, and Randi Weingarten, above, the president of the teachers' union, vowed to fight the decision. Elissa Gootman (NYTimes)

Alan Krueger has two Working Papers on the economic reality of smaller class size, and the effect on black student achievement