Multiple local teachers union locals—coordinated by the parent organization, the Washington Education Association (WEA)—have organized illegal teachers strikes against the state legislature over the past few weeks, suggesting that the legislature is not spending enough taxpayer money to improve education for “the children.” Specifically, the WEA is not happy that neither the Democrat-controlled state House nor the Republican-majority Senate fully fund its money-grab initiative from last year, I-1351.
Of course, the WEA only publically attacks Senate Republicans for their budget. The union has gone so far as to absurdly claim Republicans want to increase class sizes. The fact that a Democrat governor has signed every state budget for the last 30 years – and that Democrats have controlled one house of the legislature for 28 of those years while adequate education funding was being ignored – is not something the WEA wants to highlight since they have poured millions of forced-dues dollars into Democrat campaigns during that time.
Both budgets limit funding of I-1351 to kindergarten through the 3rd grade. That’s because studies have shown that smaller class sizes make a difference in grades K-3. Simply put, smaller classes are not as effective as is so often assumed in later grades, though it does generate more dues dollars for the WEA.
In a recent report, the Washington Policy Center points out that spending billions of public dollars to reduce class sizes statewide is not the best way to improve student learning. The lack of effectiveness is important to understand because “spending on class-size reduction means less public money is available for education policies that do benefit children.”
After studying class size reduction policies in California, Florida and other states, the left-leaning Center for American Progress concluded that these policies are not cost-effective and offer a “false promise.” Via the Washington Policy Center,
“Large-scale CSR [Class Size Reduction} policies clearly fail any cost-benefit test because they entail steep costs and produce benefits that are modest at best…
“Assuming even the largest class-size effects in the research literature, such as the STAR [Tennessee] results that indicate that a 32 percent reduction in class size increased achievement by about 15 percent of a year of learning after one year, CSR will still fail this test because it is so expensive. Reducing class size by one-third, from 24 to 16 students, requires hiring 50 percent more teachers.”
The Brookings Institution concurred with the Center for American Progress’ finding. Researchers at the Brookings Institution also refute the results of “studies from the 1980s, like the STAR Tennessee study, often used by advocates to extrapolate findings to the modern day and across an entire state.” The Washington Policy Center,
“Brookings Institution researchers also raise warnings about other states’ experiences with statewide class size reduction efforts. California reduced class sizes in the late 1990s by 10 students, down to 20 students in the lower grades. Brookings analysts report the policy hurt student learning when schools were forced to hire unqualified teachers to hit certain number targets. The Brookings Institution also examined Florida’s class size reduction effort, and found that effort delivered no improvement in student learning.”
So what, if not smaller class sizes, would improve the quality of education? The Brooking Institution recommends “paying good teachers more to provide additional hours of instruction, funding a longer school year, providing summer school services for disadvantaged students.”
But, in the end, all researchers arrive at an ultimate conclusion: “Having a good teacher in the classroom is much more helpful to students than reducing class sizes.” As the Washington Policy Center puts it, “Good teachers provide about one year and a half of learning benefits to students, while a bad teacher may provide students less than half a year of learning… Research found that students who have the misfortune of being assigned to a bad teacher three years in a row may never catch up.”
The WEA continues to ignore this reality, proving it is not truly concerned with children’s futures or improving the quality of education. Rather, the WEA is concerned with what it has always been concerned about: itself. For the WEA, smaller class sizes means more employees to fill its ranks and pay union dues.
Once again, the WEA is placing its selfish ambitions before children and the quality of their education. This time around it’s in the form of illegal teacher strikes.
