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Helping You Make Sense of Schooling Today

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Published by
The Center for Education Reform
Jeanne Allen, President

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It sounds great: "from now on classes will have no more than 20 children each." Lately, national leaders have been making promises to hire more teachers and reduce the number of children in classrooms, especially in the primary grades.
          While that might sound good to you, you need to beware of this glittery proposal; studies show there is little gold in it. Class sizes have been steadily falling since the 1950s (down 35% in the last 45 years), but there has been no improvement in student achievement. On the contrary, standardized test scores have fallen dramatically across the board. Furthermore, of the more than 300 studies that have been done on class-size, very few have shown that fewer students in class leads to greater achievement. The studies that suggest smaller classes help kids show the benefits evaporating after the second grade.
          Although conventional wisdom seems to support this expensive policy mandate, regulating the number of children in classes can be dangerous. Hiring teachers on the federal or state level, which some governors want to do, will interfere with local control of schools. Mandating uniform class size would tie districts' hands to use funding for more effective programs. Rather than require schools to maintain certain class sizes, it might be more effective to apply resources to after school programs, reading tutors, or increased teacher salaries. Furthermore, the class size debate obscures other issues that hinder students' learning. Students react differently to different teaching styles, educational approaches, environments, etc. It could be the instructional program in her class that is slowing your daughter's progress-not the number of her classmates. Class size is simply not the only issue.
          Studies show that instead of more teachers we need better-qualified teachers. It is a simple matter of quality versus quantity-100,000 new teachers who do not know their subject matter well will not help our children learn any better. As it is now, more than one third of public school teachers teach subjects in which they neither majored nor minored in college. The money that the federal government wants to spend to hire 100,000 new teachers could be used to give every teacher in America a $4500 tuition credit to take more courses in his or her specialty.
          The money could also be used to bring more qualified people into the profession. To get certified to teach in public schools, prospective teachers must take lots of courses that have little to do with the subject they will eventually teach. Well-educated liberal arts majors, math and science majors or older experts cannot teach in public schools without these extra education classes-regardless of their experience or proven expertise in the field. Understandably, many qualified candidates do not have the time, energy and money to jump through the bureaucratic hoops that stand between them and the classroom.
          Mandated smaller classes will not instantly solve our education woes. Parents need to be wary of such claims and question whether class size should be their first concern. While fewer students in class sounds great, we need to understand what kind of difference it will really make and what bureaucratic hassles it might bring. Many experts believe that more effective approaches to improving education exist. We owe it to our children to guarantee that educational policy changes will produce better results.

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