School authorities often complain that classes are too large.
They claim that teachers can't be expected to give their
students the individual attention they need if there are too
many students in the class. On the surface, this excuse seems
to have some merit. Common sense tells us that in smaller
classes, teachers can give more time and attention to each
student.
However, many studies show that smaller class size does not
guarantee that children get a better education. The
pupil-to-teacher ratio in public schools in the mid-1960s was
about 24 to 1. This ratio dropped to about 17 to 1 by the early
1990s, which means the average class size fell by 28 percent.
Yet, during the same time period, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude
Test) test scores fell from 954 to 896, a decline of 58 points
or 6 percent. In other words, student academic achievement (as
measured by SAT scores) dropped at the same time that class
sizes got smaller.
Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist, examined
277 published studies on the effects of teacher-pupil ratios
and class-size averages on student achievement. He found that
only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement
in achievement with smaller class size, 72 percent found no
statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a
negative effect on achievement.
It seems to go against common sense that student academic
achievement could drop with smaller class sizes. One reason
this happens in public schools is that when class sizes drop,
schools have to create more classes to cover all the students
in the school. Schools then have to hire more teachers for the
increased number of classes. However, public schools across the
country are already having trouble finding qualified teachers to
fill their classrooms. As a result, when reduced class sizes
increase the need for more teachers, schools then often have to
hire less-qualified teachers.
As we might expect, teacher quality is far more important than
class size in determining how children do in school. William
Sanders at the University of Tennessee studied this issue. He
found that teacher quality is almost twenty times more
important than class size in determining students' academic
achievement in class. As a result, reducing class sizes can
lead to the contrary effect of hurting students' education,
rather than helping.
Similarly, a study on class size by policy analyst Jennifer
Buckingham of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Studies
found no reliable evidence that students in smaller classes do
better academically or that teachers spend significantly more
time with them in these classes. Buckingham concluded that a 20
percent class-size reduction cost the Australian government an
extra $1,150 per student, yet added only an additional two
minutes of instruction per day for each child.
Reducing class sizes can't solve the underlying problems with
public schools. No matter how small classes become, nothing
will help if the teachers are ill-trained or their teaching
methods are useless or destructive. For example, if teachers
use whole-language or "balanced" reading instruction, they can
cripple students' ability to read no matter how small the
classes are. Even if classrooms had one teacher for every
student, that child's ability to read could still be crippled
if the teacher used these reading-instruction methods.
Here's an analogy on this issue of class size vs. teaching
methods: Suppose a horseback-riding instructor was teaching one
little girl to ride. This instructor's teaching method was to
tell the bewildered girl to sit backwards on the horse, facing
the horse's rump, and control the horse by holding its tail.
Does it matter that the student-teacher ratio in this
horseback-riding class is one-to-one if the instructor is an
idiot or uses bad teaching methods?
Article Copyrighted ? 2005 by Joel Turtel.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Joel Turtel
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