Increase Class Room Sizes

By Fester:

Increasing class room sizes is most likely good policy. 

We are entering a fiscal cycle of very limited resources as tax revenues look like they are cratering at the local and state level.  Almost all local and state governments have balanced budget requirements.  Most/all of these entities have some space to play with bond issues, rainy day funds and 'accidental' deficits.  However those are temporary fixes which will be quickly exhausted unless there is a massive infusion of federal dollars to the state and local governments.  State and local governments will continue to cut their budgets.  K-12 education, cops and prisons will be the areas that are politically toughest to cut as each has both a significant internal constiuency and significant public support.

However the variable portions of state budgets that are not tied to these three areas only have so much room for cuts.  These areas will be under pressure to either reduce expenditures or freeze growth rates so as to allow inflation to eat into the real value of services.  Ideally, the reductions in services will occur in ways that have minimal impacts on outcomes.  For instance, diverting marijuana possession convicts from prison to intensive probation and counseling may be such an approach.  Another is ending the trend towards smaller class room sizes.

Smaller classroom sizes is an intuitively popular program.  The theory behind it is simple --- teachers are important to educational success, and the more 'teacher experience' that a child receives, the better.  Furthermore, reducing classroom sizes reduces the probability of hard to handle trouble maker networks as three troublemakers are exponentially harder to handle than one or two and a class of 25 kids is more likely to have three or more troublemakers than a class of 17 kids, and the smaller classes reduce the number of unique learning styles so more customization is possible.  Teachers like smaller classes as their jobs become easier and it provides more jobs.  Parents like it for the above intuitive reasons.  Politicians like it because everyone else likes it, and who wants to vote against the children....

Reducing classroom sizes produces statistically significant but small positive academic improvement outcomes.  HOWEVER, it is a very expensive intervention.  Teachers are the largest single short term cost while increased capital spending to build more rooms is a significant long term cost for this intervention. The return on investment is fairly low. 

In a flush budgetary environment paying for effective but inefficient programs and interventions may be defensible, but in tight times, we need to think of something different.  Dr. Yeh at the University of Minnesota, in a talk I attended this week, and in several publications, argues that other interventions have lower initial and sustaining costs while producing similar or greater academic improvement outcomes.  He advocates for a rapid assessment/iterative loop learning system but others such as positive behavioral support also show results that are as effective and more efficient as reducing classroom sizes and student:teacher ratios.  Extending the school year in districts or basins with high levels of disadvantaged youth is another intervention that should produce significant results at lower costs as the killer for academic achievement in disadvantaged areas is the summer slide of knowledge as there are far fewer reinforcing and enriching activites available for these youth. 

Increasing classroom sizes is a policy that we should strongly consider as those resources that are currently devoted to reducing student:teacher ratio have higher and better uses.  In a tight budgetary environment, we need to think creatively on how we can get the best outcomes on a smaller budget.  Low student:teacher ratios is not the preferred system. 

Comments

[smintheus]

Fester, Care to summarize what those small improvements are from reduced class size? The Wiley site requires registration.

My very limited experience with teaching in schools suggests that the biggest problem is disruptive students. Smaller classes may help to control that somewhat, but what's really needed is for the teachers (collectively) in a school to use the right approach (setting a tone that just doesn't tolerate disruptive behavior), and for the school administration and school board backing them up. Without that, small classes achieve little.

[fester]

Smintheus --- the gains that I have seen were increases in DIBELS reading scores in a randomized controlled experiment, changes in standardized test scores and the other standard academic assessment systems.

I agree that the best indicators of performance are behavior management systems (such as PBS that I mentioned) where a positive learning environment can be maintained and enhanced.

[tft]

smintheus gets it. I teach 2nd grade, have for years. Teachers have little recourse with disruptive students as it is. Putting more students in a room simply reduces the amount of teaching and learning that will go on. You really do get what you pay for on this one.

[fester]

Right now the evaluation literature does not support the notion that reducing class room sizes is a superior intervention on cost-effectiveness grounds on the price per improvement in standardized scores and externally validated assessments. Smaller classes help, but it is an expensive intervention for small improvements when there are other systems which will produce larger student achievement gains for less cost.

[MaryMom]

My 4th grader is enrolled in a Minneapolis public school. He has 32 children in his classroom this year. Aside from managing 32 bodies in a small space, his teacher works about 70 hours a week to keep up with lesson plans and correcting papers. If we keep classroom sizes this large, we need to compensate these teachers with overtime pay.