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Myth: We need smaller class sizes
February 09, 2004Many people think we need smaller class sizes to improve education.
It seems to be a no-brainer, and what teacher wouldn't want fewer papers to grade?
Spokespeople point to high-performing (private) schools with smaller class sizes, as if to say, "See?" Yes, there will always be overpriced private schools on the Main Line where they boast of a class size of 10 or 15. So what? That's what parents get for their $20,000 yearly tuition.
The sad reality is that public school class sizes have historically never been lower.
We were at a party where we ran into a friend who attended Philadelphia public schools in the 1950s. The discussion turned to class size, and he laughed, "We had 48 kids in our classes, six by eight!" His point was that class size was no big deal, but we were intrigued at how quickly he rolled off the dimensions of the seating plan.
Putting on our deerstalker's hat and cloak, clenching a large Meerschaum pipe in our teeth, we investigated a Philadelphia middle school built in the 1930s, one that was considered overcrowded by 21st century standards.
Picking a classroom at random, we counted the black marks in the hardwood floor, showing where the desks used to be bolted down. We counted six rows of eight.
We wondered, how come this school today (with a maximum class size of 33) could be considered overcrowded with a current population of around 1,300 students, if the classrooms used to support 48 fifty years ago? If the class size were increased to 48, the school population would be around 1,900 students.
For example, where would they put all their stuff? Surely this school couldn't have enough lockers. A quick stroll around the hallways revealed 2,100 lockers, enough for each class of 48 to have five extra.
So why all the drama about overcrowding?
One other detail we noticed gave us a hint: down the middle of all the hallways was a faded yellow line.
It struck us between the eyes. In our classroom teaching experience, there's one quality that can make a class of 33 seem small or a class of 15 seem crowded. Student behavior! A building with 1,900 relatively well-behaved kids may well have felt smaller than 1,300 rambunctious ones, hence 1,300 is "overcrowded."
If "calmly walking on the left" would reduce psychological overcrowding in the hallways, what about the classroom? There's no way you could fit 48 desks if 33 desks barely fit today!
Well, they did fit 48, and that was by bolting them to the floor.
This almost sounds Draconian by today's standards. In fact, in Colleges of Education, the phrase "bolted-down desks" is supposed to conjure up the same cold, industrial imagery as "factory model school."
But, heaven forbid, it worked. It allowed the desks to stay in neat rows, and allowed the room to fit more students. (Today, there is some mysterious repulsive force inside desks that prevent them from staying in "quads" or rows for very long.)
A few other points to note. Back then, we had teacher-directed classrooms, today we have student-centered ones. Back then the teacher was the source of all instruction, today we have "cooperative learning" where the students are supposed to learn from and collaborate with each other.
Today we have "overcrowded" classrooms of 33, back then we had economy of scale with 48.
In Barbarians Inside the Gates, Thomas Sowell pointed out that at PS 161 in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, students were doing amazingly well. "Professor [Diane] Ravitch found that four-fifths of the third-graders there met state reading standards for their grade. In fact more than one-third of these third-graders met the state reading standards for the sixth grade." (emphasis ours)
He then focuses on the squabbling over class sizes:
At P.S. 161, for example, class sizes range up to 35 children per class. In some of the high-quality black schools I studied 20 years ago, class sizes were even larger.Yet for decades the same tired actors read their lines from their script, proclaiming that what we really need to solve our educational crisis is smaller class sizes.
But smaller class size is a political symbol, as well as a means of creating more jobs for teachers, so it is promoted to the public as a sacred goal and to the union's membership as a trophy of victory.
If all this cynical politicking over education did nothing worse than waste some more money, it would hardly be worth getting upset about. But, for many of the poorest children, education is their one ticket out of poverty. If they miss that train, they miss everything: They are history before they are teenagers.
1) Increase the demand for teachers by demanding smaller class sizes. 2) Decrease the supply of teachers by requiring inane teacher certification programs.
It's a great recipe for inflating teacher pay.
Roy W. Wright February 10, 2004 02:42 PMA good teacher with 40 students is better than two poor teachers with 20 students each. It's even better than one good and one poor teacher - that still leaves 20 kids behind.
This doesn't necessarily extrapolate indefinitely. I doubt the median homeschooling parent is nearly as good a teacher as the median professional, but they do get better results. Here you have the ultimate in parental involvement + a really small class size.
markm February 10, 2004 03:25 PMOur charter school has relatively small class sizes in the 6th and 7th grade, and adding me to the faculty made the math classes even smaller. The students are all doing much better now, but it's not because the classes are smaller now. It's because the students are now grouped by ability level. The more advanced students are not bored, and the students that need help now can get it because the teacher is not distracted by the competing needs of so many different ability levels.
Wacky Hermit February 16, 2004 11:14 AMYou gloss over a couple of important items. In the old days (and in some minds even today) teaching was little more than delivering information to students. If teaching is nothing more than delivering information, then yes, class size is irrelevant. University lectures often have hundreds of students, the professor delivers the lectures, the students learn, take exams, do well, etc. Of course, a long weeding out process occurs that helps ensure that students who are in this type of classroom can learn in that manner.
Some students can cope with this lecture style of teaching because they are properly supported at home or intrinsically motivated or have the appropriate learning styles. They have strategies for actively engaging with the information, processing it, assimilating it, etc. In the old days anyone who couldn't cope was either expelled (if their academic failings led to behavioral problems like we have today) or eventually dropped out - and dropping out is still an option that far too many students are using to deal with a failure to learn.
I know for a fact that in New York City, a lot of those "successful schools" that are traditional and structured and so on are also selective. Some, for example, have entrance exams that weed out anyone who doesn't already have a proven ability to learn. Others are selective by virtue of their location in ways that are too complicated to explain in this short response.
This is a complex issue that deserves an open-minded discussion without name calling and looking for sleazy ulterior motives on the part of the parents and teachers who are now demanding for their urban children what suburban parents take for granted.
But, if the smaller class sizes found today do not yield improved results, we are clearly not attacking the real problem.
From the educrat jargon found in Michael's comment above I suspect he is part of the current educational establishment. I am not necessarily calling for a return to the educational styles of the (early) last century, but those styles did take individuals with varying ethnic and cultural backgrounds and turn out persons who could function in wider society...something that we often fail at today...despite shrinking class sizes and ever expanding budgets.
If those of us distressed with the output of the public schools today seem to be simply trying to throw out the current class of educrat, it is because today's system has proven to be so resistant to rational reform.
Bill Beeman February 20, 2004 07:26 PM>>>From the educrat jargon found in Michael's comment above I suspect he is part of the current educational establishment.
I am a New York City public school teacher in a seriously overcrowded Title 1 school. What exactly is an educrat anyway? In New York City, when Mayor Bloomberg wanted to throw out the old 32-district administrative system, the right-wing press in supporting him constantly referred (derisively) to the status quo district office staff as "educrats" impeding the course of enlightened progress set forth by Bloomberg & Company. Now they refer to the new administration as "educrats" any time they disagree with a policy or decision. So if anyone is guilty of throwing around jargon to duck the issue it is you.
The point of my comment was not to brandish education jargon as a weapon, but to raise the issue of selectivity in an article on class size. I defy anyone to come to my overcrowded school, take it over, maintain the same student body and same overcrowded conditions (1900 students), increase class sizes, and turn the school around. You can fire all the current teachers and administrators and hire your own highly qualified staff of 100 teachers – Oops, since you are increasing class size to 40, you will only need 75 teachers - and bring in your own curricula. And then replicate the model. Since that isn't feasible, show me some examples of places where it has been tried and succeeded.
Michael Gatton February 21, 2004 01:11 PM