Kindergarten class size?

[Ragana]

I was wondering what your child's kindergarten class size is.

My daughter started K this week in a Spanish immersion program. There were supposed to be 10 Spanish speakers and 10 English speakers in the class. Now after a week of school there are 26 kids in the class with 1 teacher and 1 aide. Only about 3-4 kids understand both English and Spanish, meaning that almost 1/2 the kids need extra explanations and help for the time being until they get some rudimentary understanding of Spanish, which is spoken all day.

I realize that in many city schools this is normal, but this is a language immersion class, which brings with it some challenges (good ones, I think, but challenges nonetheless). 20 seemed reasonable to me, but 26 seems like a lot.

What do you think? We are going to talk to the teacher about this.

[triboys]

That is alot of kids,even with a full time aide. My ds had 28 kids in his kindergarden class with a ft aide it was hard for him. My friend that is a kindergarden teacher said that when the numbers get that high alot of kids that cant keep up dont get the help they need. If you can volunteer in the classroom that helps the teacher alot or if you cant do that the teachers sometimes send home stuff the parents can cut out for the class.
I hope this helps. Kristin

[LisainCalifornia]

My daughter is in a public school in the Bay Area. There are 16 children in her class, and there are 2 full-time aides.

I think you are right to be concerned about a class that large--especially an immersion class.

[siddie]

I withdrew my son from a K class with 22 children 1 teacher and and aide for 3 hours. He is now in a K class of 11 with a teacher plus a college student who is an education major assisting. I feel that the smaller class is beneficial because he will get twice the individual attention from the teacher and there are less discipline problems resulting in a more relaxed atmosphere. Smaller K classes result in higher standardized test scores, and children who graduate from High school at a higher rate, more honors students in later grades. This has all been proven in the Tennesse STar study and Wisconsin SAge study. Classes over 20 are deemed to be too big for optimum learning in the early grades.

[Ragana]

Thanks for validating what we thought. I agree that the main issue is discipline - they seemed to spend *a lot* of time the first week going over all of the different "disciplinary" systems.

We'll see what we can do. The problem is that taking kids out now would mean they lose the chance to do bilingual ed. (Spanish speakers couldn't be taken out, I think, just English speakers.) But the positive thing I guess is that we can campaign for extra classrooms because bilingual ed. is so popular! That's encouraging anyway.

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

That does seem like a lot. My son's class has 24 kids with a teacher and 2 aids. It's a regular class in public school. We're in Canada though so maybe that makes a diferance. The teacher was telling me she still thinks the class is to big and wishes the school had more funding.

[KalamazooMom]

My DD just started kindergarten. There are 23 kids in the class, one teacher and no aides that I'm aware of. After reading over the other posts in this thread I'm thinking that is a really high ratio. Other people have told me that it's likely a few of those kids will leave in the coming weeks-- move, transfer schools, etc. Don't know if we can plan on that or not though.

[Ragana]

KalamazooMom,
That's what we've been told, too. In previous years that was true because the immersion program was new in our district. Now that it's been around for a few years, people know what it entails before their kids get in.

[memory maker]

my ds's class is 21 with one teacher and no aides. It seems like a lot to me

[Shantimama]

12 children, one teacher plus the French teacher for 20 minutes every day. It is a small school and all of the classes are small, especially the French immersion classes. ds has 14 in his grade 4 class and dd has 15 in her grade 2 class.

[1xmom]

My DD just started kindergarten. There are 23 kids in the class, one teacher and no aides that I'm aware of. After reading over the other posts in this thread I'm thinking that is a really high ratio.

Same here. My dd has 20 or so in her class and no aide. She seems to be doing okay, and really likes it. We'll see how the first parent/teacher conferance goes.

[momsgotmilk4two]

Ds is in a class with 31 kids, 1 teacher and 1 aide. Funding sucks in CA.

[LoveBeads]

In the DC area, the public school K classes have 25 kids and no aide.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by Ragana

Thanks for validating what we thought. I agree that the main issue is discipline - they seemed to spend *a lot* of time the first week going over all of the different "disciplinary" systems.

teacher here-- that's very, very normal, and a GOOD sign that you have a teacher who is on the ball. by spending a lot of time on discipline in september, you are PREVENTING a year's worth of discipline issues!

parenting is pro-active. positive parenting is teaching kids HOW you want them to act before giving them the chance to do it the wrong way. (i.e. a proactive parent will let her children know before going to the movies that people are quiet in the movies and it's not a good place to yell. a reactive parent wouldn't prep the kids, and would just punish when the child was loud)

in the same way, teachers take A LOT of time in the beginning of the year (ESP K!) teaching the kids how to act in school respectfully to each other. when you have a class of polite children helping each other and sharing with each other and being friends for the rest of the year, the extra time is worth it.

even in terms of negative discipline, the kids test the teacher in the beginning of the year, they find out what's not accepted, and they (usually) stop. that way you don't spend the whole year disciplining. but again, positive discipline takes a LOT of time to start out.

it's generally a bad sign if your child starts K and they jump straight into school work and don't spend a lot of time on discipline and getting to know each other. that class will fall apart within a few weeks.

(unless by some stroke of luck the teacher has a class of kids who all just naturally do the right thing and never try inappropriate things)

as for the ratio-- of course i'm a fan of small classes. at my school we have 3 Ks, 2 asperger's inclusion classes (12 kids, 4 with ASD, 8 general ed-- with 2 teachers, student teacher, and push-in therapists) and our larger inclusion class (i believe it's allowed to be 20 gen ed and 8 non-ASD special ed?) is about 25 right now i think. of course, even that class has 2 teachers, a student teacher, and a lot of outside help.

this is an inner-city Title 1 high poverty school in nyc.

(if you can't tell, i LOVE my school, i've worked at the good, the bad, and the ugly)

[applejuice]

The private school I worked at had 10-15 K to a class.

The rest of the school had classes capped at 20.

[Satori]

My dd's school caps K classes at 20, right now they just created a new class and there's 18 kids. Parents are really PO'd that there kids had to be moved 3 weeks into the year into a new class. I can't figure it out, I'd rather have my kid in a class with 18 vs 26!

[onthemove]

there are 14 kids in dd's K class, she was originally going to a French immersion K but the class size was about 25 and the school week is 4 days so we chose to put her in private school with smaller class sizes and a 5 day school week.

[Ragana]

Originally Posted by Altair

teacher here-- that's very, very normal, and a GOOD sign that you have a teacher who is on the ball. by spending a lot of time on discipline in september, you are PREVENTING a year's worth of discipline issues!

You're definitely right. I can see how that needs to be on-track with 26 kids.

The thing that gets me about it is that the regular kindergarten classes have fewer - one has 15 or so kids. They just don't seem to want to add more immersion classes even though there is a waiting list on top of the 26 kids already in it.

We'll see what happens!