Michael Bloomberg: School Crisis Needs True Leaders

Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg says the tremendous “learning-loss crisis” America’s schoolchildren face cannot be fixed by smaller class sizes.

Smaller class sizes can better engage students—but achievement gains are found through intensive tutoring, early-childhood programs, summer school, state-of-the-art educational technology and charter schools, Bloomberg writes in an editorial on Bloomberg news.

Smaller class sizes ensure job security for teachers because they can cost school districts billions each year, Bloomberg says. Politicians like them, too, because on face value, they appease parents and voters.

But smaller class sizes, as proven by a 2018 summary of 148 reports from 41 countries, only minimally improve students’ knowledge and aptitudes, Bloomberg says.

Furthermore, smaller class sizes will prompt teachers at the highest-poverty schools in the nation to seek jobs, possibly higher-paying, at medium- and low-poverty schools.

Elected officials have failed to address the “historic learning deficits” that grade school children are now burdened with following the three years of remote, videoconference learning they endured during COVID, maintains the three-term New York mayor.

Under new state legislation in New York, New York City, which is the nation’s largest public-school district, will be required starting in 2024 to cap classrooms for grades K-3 at 20 pupils (down from 25 in kindergarten and 32 in grades one through three). Students in grade 4-8 will be in classrooms with a maximum of 23 pupils, and high schoolers will be in classrooms with no more than 25.

The city has estimated that this will mean hiring 17,700 new teachers by 2028 and spending $1.9 billion annually on additional salaries.

This will not help the most disadvantaged students—and may even hurt them, Bloomberg believes.

“The learning-loss crisis demands greater attention from the country’s leaders and more effective policies to address it,” Bloomberg concludes. Smaller class sizes is a “feel-good measure that will enhance the power of teachers’ unions.”

Political leaders and education officials need the courage to ensure America’s schoolchildren are brought up to speed.

Indeed, for many students who were taught on Zoom during the pandemic, or who were truant, it’s as if they weren’t in school at all.