St. Paul Union Using Class Size Smokescreen to Preserve Teaching Jobs and the Flow of Dues Dollars
by Education Action GroupST. PAUL, Minn. – Does time stand still in the St. Paul school district?
If it does, that would explain why its teachers union, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, is using contract negotiations to insist on a hard cap on class sizes.
For nearly a decade, there has been a consensus among education experts that when it comes to student achievement, teacher quality is far more important than class size. The research has so consistently downplayed the value of smaller class sizes that most scholars consider it a settled matter.
Assuming that the St. Paul Federation of Teachers is not stuck in some bizarre time warp, why is the union ignoring the research and insisting that strict class size limits be written into its new teachers’ contract?
According to SPFT President Mary Cathryn Ricker, capping class sizes is a way to guarantee St. Paul families that their children will receive personalized attention from their teachers, which she says is a necessary ingredient for a student’s success.
“This proposal is about meeting the needs of our students so that we can … quickly close this achievement gap,” Ricker told TwinCities.com.
Eric Hanushek, a leading scholar in the field of class sizes and teacher quality, offers a different theory.