NEW YORK – New York City schools continue to flaunt state laws on class size limits, with students last school year sitting in classrooms with more students than when the city set reduction goals in 2007.

The trend is due in part to “dramatic increases” in foreign-born students – primarily Chinese, Mexican and Dominican youth – in some areas of the city over the last decade.

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A recent study by the nonprofit Education Law Center shows that since state lawmakers approved a “Contract for Excellence” (C4E) law in 2007 that tasked city schools with developing and implementing a class size reduction plan, class sizes have steadily increased to unacceptable levels, the New York Daily News reports.

According to the report issued Wednesday:

  • Average class sizes in all grade spans have increased every year since 2008-09;
  • In 2015, only 14% of early elementary students in Manhattan, 6% in Brooklyn, 3% in the Bronx, 2% in Staten Island, and 1% in Queens were in schools with average class sizes that met the C4E class size plan goals;
  • In 2015, the number of grade K-3 children in classes of at least thirty had nearly doubled since 2011;
  • Citywide, in 2015, only 12% of grade 4-8 students were in schools with class sizes that met the C4E goals. Twenty-two percent of Manhattan students were in schools with appropriate average class sizes compared to 16% in the Bronx, 14% in Brooklyn, 4% in Queens and 4% in Staten Island;
  • In 2015, more than half of all students enrolled in City high school English, Math, Science and Social Studies courses were in classes with 30 students or more.

In 2007, the city set average class size goals at 19.9 for kindergarten through third grade, 22.9 for fourth through eighth, and 24.5 for high school. Last year, there were an average of 24.6 students in kindergarten through third grade classrooms, an average of 26.2 students in fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, 27.1 students on average in junior high classes, and an average of 26.7 students in high school classes, according to the Daily News.

In total, about 800,000 – or roughly 80 percent of NYC students – attend classes that exceed class size standards, the news site reports.

“By refusing to reduce class sizes, the city is depriving students and also violating its obligations under the law,” ELC senior attorney Wendy Lecker said. “They’re jeopardizing students’ education.”

Advocates at Class Size Matters certainly agree.

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“This report succinctly analyzes the increase in class sizes in our public schools and points out how both the city and state have ignored their legal obligation to provide school children with an essential resource for a constitutional sound basic education,” executive director Leonie Haimson said, according to a ELC release.

“Parents and advocates wholeheartedly agree with the report’s conclusion that the ‘time is overdue’ to lower class sizes for all students, but most urgently for low-income and students of color.”

The task is not an easy one, considering that it’s low-income “students of color” who are flooding into the city’s school system.

A white paper produced by the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools at New York University in December shows that “between 2000 and 2013, the foreign-born population in New York City increased by nearly seven percent.

“The three largest immigrant groups in the city – Dominicans, Chinese, and Mexicans – all experienced disparate rates of change during this time period,” according to the paper. “The largest immigrant group, Dominicans, grew by about four percent. Meanwhile, Chinese-born residents increased by 35 percent and Mexican-born residents increased by 49 percent during the same time period, far exceeding the city-wide increase.”

The areas of the city with the greatest increase in foreign-born residents also correlate to the areas of the city where schools are struggling the most to control class sizes.

“Since 2000, the Chinese-born population increased significantly in Queens and the southeast area of Brooklyn. Growth in the Dominican-born population occurred almost exclusively in the Bronx – especially the far northern areas of the borough,” according to the NYU paper.

“Growth in the Mexican-born population was more widespread than growth in the other two groups, with all five boroughs experiencing at least some increase in the Mexican population. The Mexican population grew most dramatically in the southern and central areas of the Bronx, with several neighborhoods in the area experiencing growth of 200 percent or more since 2000. Mexican residents also tended to settle in the northern shore of Staten Island and the East Elmhurst area of Queens.”