Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Class sizes--elementary school

DD currently has a long-term substitute teacher who is one of those old-school "iron fist" teachers and it seems like the behavior issues in the class are actually getting worse. The teacher is completely stressed out. Maybe some kids respond well to it but DD only is motivated for teachers that are warm and fuzzy toward her. She doesn't act out, she simply refuses to do any work with iron-fist teachers. DS would probably do well with an iron fist (but not overly so or he becomes anxious). So what am I saying? I guess that I'm skeptical that a large class size could ever work well for everyone, given different kids respond differently to different teaching styles.

I wonder if there is an actual article that discusses this? I would love to send it to the school board. Because the district goes on and on about personalized learning, yet they don't seem to care about how that is actually going to work.

I am about to go out or I could try and look for what I remember. This was research done over 15 years ago. This has been a hot topic for a while. Basically it comes down to money, there isn't money in the budget for more teachers and more classrooms.

I am a Baby Buster, when I was in school in the 70/80's classes were small 17/20 even though H.S. But it didn't stay that way for long, entire elementary schools were closed behind me..

Even if students learn more when the average class size is 15 rather than 30, we should ask if a similar expenditure on
(1) extending the school day or year
(2) paying more to attract better teachers

will yield bigger or smaller gains (and if the incremental learning from any of the options is worth the money).

A summary of some research on class size is

http://knowledgecenter.csg.org/kc/content/reducing-class-size-it-worth-investment
Reducing Class Size: Is it Worth the Investment?
By Tim Weldon
February 3, 2011

What that does NOT say, however, is that the sky is the limit.

From a practical standpoint, for example, there is simply NO WAY for a teacher to teach 150 students in high school geometry/English/Biology the way that s/he would teach just 30 or 40 of them.

So there are shifts that occur toward less effective pedagogical practices, toward less individually-appropriate instructional strategies, toward less flexibility.

It's also true that when you reach some class size, there is a sharp DECLINE in quality of educational experience, too.

So while it may be that "15 students in calculus is no better than 25," for example, that is not the same thing as saying that 50 students in that class is just as good for the students as 20 would be.

It's not a logically symmetrical argument, the way that it's researched.

It really angers me that policy-makers and voters tend to misinterpret that data on that score.

School consolidation is the big deal here-- because it, too, saves a lot of money. Heck, there are a million ways to save a buck in operating a school district that serves 10K students, probably. After all, if the students just put in six twelve hour days each week from March through the end of September, that would certainly work to generate the requisite number of instructional hours each year-- and natural lighting is at its peak, so operating expenses are lower, etc.

What the research does suggest, however, is that smaller schools are just plain BETTER for kids, and that the effect is pretty pronounced through middle school, and still measurable even in high schools.

That's not to say that CLASS sizes need to be small in secondary-- just, as noted above, maybe "manageable" in light of the subject, grading load, etc. But I sure get tired of seeing how many ways politicians in my own state can twist this data in order to squeeze a few more pennies out of the Ed budget each year. {sigh}

Jaime Escalante of "Stand and Deliver" fame regularly taught very large AP Calculus classes - over 50 student (granted he was not a typical teacher).

Yeah, well, college faculty do it, too. I'm not saying it cannot be done. I know that it can. I've taught classes of 200+ students.

But there are a lot more things to consider in secondary and post-secondary, too-- development supports better executive function in students, better metacognition, etc. All of those things require very different methods in primary and the first years of secondary. It's an arc.

I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's Goliath book (which I don't particularly recommend) which discussed some of this research. He suggested that class size was an example of a phenomenon he was interested in, that many good things (like reducing class size, if you start at 100) become bad eventually (eg it's hard to get a range of opinions or friends in a class of 10). He claimed that some of the positive research is contaminated by supportive parents managing to get their children into small classes. He didn't, to my mind, go nearly far enough into how hard it is to do good research on this topic. For one thing, the good practice of randomisation is in tension with the obviously important factor of how prepared the teacher is to adapt the teaching style.

Around here (California) they go up and down with the budget. So when DD7 started kindy it was about 34 at the school down the street, a big factor in our going to the charter she got into, which caps firmly at 20 for kindy, 22 for 1-2 and 24 through eighth grade. The local schools are lower now but still can't compete with that (I've taught high school here and we had upwards of 40 in AP courses and yes the essay grading and time limit on things definitely hurt the experience.) We have a small school, too.

We are at a charter school, and elementary class sizes are limited to 22 students. There is one lead teacher, as well as one full-time teaching assistant. Many of the FT assistants also have teaching degrees.

Small class size, and a 12:1 student/teacher ratio are one of the reasons we chose her school. We have been very happy with the one-on-one time DD has had with her teacher this year.