Class size Student Teacher Ratios in VUSD

One of our ANTI friends Vista Watchdog 1 blogged today about student teacher ratios in VUSD. He was confused by classroom teachers saying that they had 30 or more students per class when he figured there were many less by his calculations.
Read here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_5d484135-59db-577e-8f37-22631a428030.html?mode=comments

Here was my response to his question:


VWdog writes about a common confusion regarding student teacher ratios when he posted on January 29 at 5:15am the following: "if you take the most recent enrollment numbers and divide by the currently listed number of teaches you arrive at a student/teacher ratio of about 18/1. Yet, I keep hearing teachers claiming they have classes of up to 30 students"

VWdog is making a mistake because he is not taking into account the difference between certificated personnel and REGULAR classroom teachers.

All classroom teachers are certificated but not all certificated personnel are classroom teachers.

Other certificated personnel who are NOT regular classroom teachers are district administration, principals, vice principals, counselors,psychologists, school nurses, teachers on special assignment (junior administrators who are paid as teachers but have no classroom duties), reading specialists, special education teachers with small case loads and class sizes, etc.

Any school district has many more certificated personnel than they have regular classroom teachers. This fact is why dividing up the number of students by the number of certificated personnel does not reflect the true average number of students in a classroom.

In the past many school districts in California did divide the TOTAL number of certificated personnel by the total number of students to try to show they had small classes in their district. Even though their might be 30 to 40 in regular class rooms, districts could claim a 18 to one student to certificated personnel ratio. District admin likes to try to frame their student teacher ratio in the best possible light. Most parents like small ratios, hence the use of the TOTAL number of certificated personnel rather than the actual number of classroom teaches.