Class Size Doesn't Matter

So says NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks

Every teacher in the city, in the country, in the world can tell the difference between large and small class sizes. Everyone with a lick of common sense knows that smaller class size means more attention from teachers. And most people understand the importance of adult role models in the education of children.

Yet Chancellor David Banks, who works at the pleasure of Mayor Eric Adams, has declared parents don’t care about class size. I recall, years ago, on one of the vaunted DOE surveys, that parents declared otherwise. Does Banks have a survey of parents to support his contention? Not at all.

Shortly before, Banks spoke at a Police Athletic League luncheon in Manhattan along with billionaire businessman and Harlem native John Catsimatidis.

Banks drew on his and Catsimatidis shared experience through the city’s public-school system, saying they grew up in “overcrowded” classrooms and turned out more than fine.

Well, there you go. Banks polled exactly one parent, a billionaire who donated $515,000 to the 2020 Trump campaign. You know, a typical New Yorker. Do you imagine Catsimatidis sent his kids to a regular public school with 34 kids in a class?

Here’s the other evidence Chancellor Banks provided:

Banks noted that according to the state’s guidelines, classes at Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School are “overcrowded” — yet “everyone is doing extraordinarily well.”

You probably know that Stuyvesant is not precisely a cross-section of NYC kids. There is a rigid test to get in, and I know people who’ve had their children prepping since early childhood for that test. They pay to send their elementary-age kids to special classes for it. Anyone who thinks that the highest-performing students in NYC are a representative sample is an idiot.

I will not speculate here as to whether or not Banks is an idiot. What’s clear to me is that he is a liar, desperate for an argument and willing to hold onto just about anything to make his case. And of course, as always, he throws teachers under the bus, tossing out the old canard about teacher quality:

“But what is better than class sizes is a high-quality teacher, because I can give you a class with 15 kids, but if you have a mediocre teacher, you’re going to get mediocre results,” Banks said to the packed room at Mutual of America in Midtown.

Here’s the thing—Banks is in charge of hiring teachers. If the teachers are bad, it’s his fault. I taught a whole lot longer than Banks did, and as chapter leader of a large school, I’ve met and dealt with a whole lot of teachers. There is, in fact, no zombie plague of bad teachers. The larger issue in the city is with bad administrators, and Banks is certainly among them. He continues his diatribe:

“But with a phenomenal teacher, everybody learns. I grew up in classes that were packed.”

What exactly has that done for Banks, a man who’s just made one of the most spurious arguments I’ve ever seen? Banks has two concerns I can detect. One is that he wishes to save his boss money. For decades, NYC has failed create space to keep up with enrollment. That’s why I spent decades working in what was likely the most overcrowded school in the city.

We were one of few comprehensive high schools that survived the Bloomberg purge. Was it because my colleagues and I were the best teachers in the city? No, it was not. Do the best teachers create the best test scores? I’d argue that the best zip codes create the best test scores. I’d argue that if you were a great student, even a poor teacher would not stand in your way.

Michael Bloomberg famously wanted to double class sizes. He equated it to real estate. Location, location, location. Oddly, the best locations are where the rich people live. You know, zip codes. Bloomberg did not make the connection that the best test scores are in the same locales. Instead, he chose to blame teachers for test scores.

Curiously, Bloomberg chose to send his kids to private schools. If people like Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Bill Gates and all the other self-appointed education experts had to send their kids to public schools, you’d better believe they’d not have been allowed to fester and deteriorate as they have. You’d better believe there’d be more space, and that class sizes would not have been allowed to remain at 34 for well over 50 years.

Wealthy parents choose to opt their kids out of schools with huge class sizes. Those schools are for the bootless and unhorsed. But all children need the benefits of smaller class sizes. If you’re a teacher, you’ve had to sit through PDs and lectures about equity. This is fair, that is fair, this is right, that is unjust.

A real injustice is having a school leader who trots out a billionaire as representative of NYC’s parents. Banks is concerned with saving money for Eric Adams, and neither he nor the mayor wants to fritter away money taking care of the children of NYC.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s not overlook the fact that UFT Unity has failed for decades to improve class sizes contractually. Let’s not overlook the fact that the UFT Contract is the only instrument that has controlled class sizes at all. Let’s not overlook that no other measure has worked, ever.

The current class size regulation is embattled, and I would not bet on its chances for success. How do we remedy that?

We need a better mayor, and we need a better union leader. Let’s make 2025 a great year for NYC education.