It has long been advocated that smaller class sizes will boost student performance.
Supporters, which include many parents and instructors, contend that smaller classrooms allow for more individualized attention for each student, which boosts test scores, grades, and behavior problems. However, opponents of class-size reduction initiatives contend that such changes just divert funds from other priorities without significantly improving students' academic performance.
“No one’s going to argue against the substantive argument for reducing class sizes, right?” says Douglas Ready, a public policy and education professor at Columbia University in New York. “It sounds great. Teachers want it. Parents want it. Everybody wants it. The issue is paying for it and finding teachers to do it.”
Benefits and Challenges of Smaller Classes
According to Ready, there have been sizable, randomized control trials, which are typically regarded as the gold standard in study design, looking at the impacts of class-size reduction. These research discovered a link between reduced class sizes and higher test scores.
The Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project, a Tennessee experiment, began in 1985. It placed 7,000 kindergarten students in 79 schools in classrooms of varied sizes.
According to a report on the study published in the scholarly journal Teachers College Record, after four years, the students who had been assigned to small courses were between two and five months ahead of their counterparts in bigger classes. The smaller group pupils continued to gain advantages even after the trial was over and the students were placed back in regular classroom settings. They nearly had a full school year on their classmates by the seventh grade.
Then, in 1996, Wisconsin carried out a related study comparing adolescents in classes of 12 to 15 kids with those in classes of 21 to 25 students, with a focus on schools serving low-income students. Again, a federal review of the study found that kids in smaller classes performed better on tests.
“The research is crystal clear that smaller classes lead to better student outcomes in every single way that can be measured,” says Leonie Haimson, executive director of the nonprofit organization Class Size Matters, which promotes smaller class sizes.
However, the outcomes of more recent research utilizing various methodologies have proved conflicting.
For one, reducing class sizes means hiring more teachers, which has long been a challenge for districts, Ready says.
Many of the increases in test scores, according to a study of class-size reduction in New York City public schools from 2009 to 2013, were countered by reductions brought on by the "new teacher effect." According to the paper, class size reduction can "significantly boost student achievement," but only if schools can accomplish it without jeopardizing the caliber of their teachers.
California started a program in 1996 to decrease class sizes by giving districts $650 for each pupil in kindergarten through third-grade classes with 20 or fewer children. Approximately 30,000 new teachers were promptly employed by districts, but the program cost the state billions of dollars.
Inexperienced and uncertified teachers made up a large portion of those educators, according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California. And in schools with a high percentage of low-income pupils, where nearly 25% of students had a teacher with two years of experience or less and 30% had a teacher who was not fully credentialed, the issue was particularly serious for Black students. Only 12% of white pupils at schools with fewer impoverished students had a teacher with two years or less of experience, and only 5% had a teacher with incomplete credentials.
However, a review of studies on the class size reduction initiative reveals that it “had a positive and significant influence on student achievement,” according to a Princeton University researcher. “Black students seem to have benefited” from class-size reduction “more than any other racial or ethnic group.”
Alternatives to Reducing Class Size
Some education experts contend that raising teacher wages would be a better use of the millions of dollars needed to fund widespread attempts to reduce class sizes, “thus increasing the size (and arguably the quality) of the teacher labor pool,” Ready wrote in a report.
Even while experts dispute reports of a statewide teacher shortage, many school districts have had trouble filling positions because of the pandemic. Federal data show that in January 2022, 44% of public schools reported having at least one vacancy, and 61% attributed the rise in teacher and staff vacancies to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the years, fewer individuals have chosen to pursue careers as teachers. According to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, there were more than 200,000 undergraduate education degrees given each year in the 1970s, but less than 90,000 were awarded in 2018.
“We are in a moment of extreme teacher shortage, and it’s likely to get worse,” According to Bryan Hassel, co-president of the education advocacy organization Public Impact. “The idea that we would say now in that environment, ‘You need to find and keep another 25, 30, 40% more teachers,’ is a recipe for disaster because who’s going to fill those slots?”
Instead, states and school districts should try to increase their capacity for small-group tutoring by hiring paraprofessionals, such as teaching assistants, Hassel argues.
“There is strong evidence that having small groups learn from a teacher or a paraprofessional in a tutoring setting is very effective,” Hassel says. “Schools really should be trying to increase the amount of that that goes on, but that can happen in a larger class. You can have 25 kids in a room. Some are working intensively in a tutoring environment with the teacher; the others are doing projects, doing other work.”
What Parents Can Do
Haimson advises parents to talk to political authorities, school board members, and principals about studies showing the advantages of smaller classes.
“Whether you're talking about academic achievement or social, emotional recovery from the pandemic, the best way to ensure that happens for all kids is to be able to offer them small classes,” she says. “We hope that parents will act as their children's advocates and push for that at the local level.”
In the meantime, Ready advises parents to concentrate on teacher quality.
“If a district can afford to have smaller class sizes and maintain teacher quality, great," he says. "But in most parts of the U.S., there are trade-offs."
Ask the instructor or other school personnel if you have questions about your child being in a large class "what plans they have to ensure that kids are getting individual attention even though the class is large, such as small-group work within the large class" or having more paraprofessionals, Hassel says.
"The value of small classes likely comes from the extra attention students get," he notes, "and so there are other ways to get students that attention if you're stuck with a large class."
