Does class size matter?
Research has shown that it does, if certain nuances are observed. 

At issue is whether class size affects learning. Intuitively one would think so.  After all, time spent by a teacher maintaining order is taken away from, well, teaching. With less time to spend on each student, it’s easy to let individuals tune out and fall behind. 

But intuition isn’t always the royal road to correct policy. Class size reductions in California and Florida have had disappointing results at rather high cost.  What’s going on?  Research in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Tennessee has turned up some very useful insights:

• Classes need to be very small - 15 or fewer - to make a worthwhile difference. Reducing class sizes by ten percent in all grades will just waste a lot of money.
• Class size reductions matter the most in primary grades - especially the first three years of school. Children who attended small classes in lower grades perform better, have fewer discipline problems and a lower dropout rate in higher grades even if class sizes there were not reduced.
• Classroom space makes a difference.  Teachers in lower grades need to be able to reshape classroom layout.  Crowded classrooms require tightly packed rows of desks and make reading circles, etc. impossible.
• Small classes can actually erase the usual low-income and limited-English performance differential. 
• (Above information reported in the Chicago Tribune on 14 September 2003)

“The Research was extraordinarily clear: small classes give teachers a chance to teach.  But people never paid much attention to the research.  There’s a right way to do this, and there’s a wrong way.” - Charles Achilles, researcher and author

The finding that small class sizes in primary grades can erase the low-income and limited-english differential bears upon the more punitive aspects of “No Child Left Behind” policy which actually takes funding away from poorly-performing schools. Parents can take their vouchers (funding) away to better-performing schools. This has the effect in the receiving school of (drum roll, please) ... increasing class size. This is an example of the law of unintended consequences.

Question: what effect might small class sizes in higher grades have on teacher retention?  Teaching is exhausting work, especially as the kids get bigger and have other interests. Keeping good teachers in the classroom is a mounting challenge. 

- George Wiman

Find Tennessee’s project STAR data here: http://www.heros-inc.org/data.htm

Find Wisconsin’s class-size data here: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CERAI/sage.html

NEA report on class size: http://www.nea.org/classsize/research-classsize.html

Putting Kids First, Finally, by Charles Achilles, researcher on class size

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