School authorities often complain that classes are too large. They argue that teachers cannot be expected to give their students the individual attention they need if there are too many students in the class. On the surface, this excuse seems to have some merit. Common sense tells us that in smaller classes, teachers can devote more time and attention to each student.
However, many studies show that small class sizes do not guarantee that children will receive a better education. The student-teacher ratio in public schools in the mid-1960s was about 24 to 1. This ratio dropped to about 17 to 1 in the early 1990s, meaning that the average size of classes was reduced by 28 percent. However, during the same time period, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test scores fell from 954 to 896, a decrease of 58 points or 6 percent. In other words, students’ academic performance (measured by SAT scores) decreased at the same time that class sizes shrank.
Eric Hanushek, an economist at the University of Rochester, examined 277 published studies on the effects of teacher-student ratios and average class sizes on student achievement. He found that only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement in performance with smaller classes, 72 percent found no statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a negative effect on performance.
It seems to go against common sense that the academic performance of students could decrease with smaller class sizes. One of the reasons this happens in public schools is that when class sizes decrease, schools have to create more classes to cover all the students in the school. Schools then have to hire more teachers for the greater number of classes. Yet public schools across the country are already struggling to find qualified teachers to fill their classrooms. As a result, when small class sizes increase the need for more teachers, schools often have to hire less qualified teachers.
The quality of teachers and teaching methods are much more important
Unsurprisingly, the quality of teachers is far more important than class size in determining how children do in school. William Sanders of the University of Tennessee studied this issue. He found that the quality of teachers is nearly twenty times more important than class size in determining the academic performance of students in class. As a result, reducing class size can have the opposite effect of hurting students’ education, rather than helping.
Similarly, a study of class size by policy analyst Jennifer Buckingham of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Study found no reliable evidence that students in smaller classes perform better academically or that teachers spend much more time with them in these classes. Buckingham concluded that a 20 percent class size reduction cost the Australian government an additional $1,150 per student, but she added just two extra minutes of instruction per day for each child.
Reducing class size cannot solve the underlying problems of public schools. No matter how small classes become, nothing will help if teachers are poorly trained or if their teaching methods are useless or destructive. For example, if teachers use whole language or “balanced” reading instruction, they can cripple students’ reading ability no matter how small class sizes are. Even if classrooms had a teacher for every student, that child’s reading ability could still be affected if the teacher used these methods of reading instruction. In fact, smaller class sizes could give the teacher more time to (unintentionally) harm each student’s reading ability.
Here is an analogy on this topic of class size vs. Teaching Methods: Suppose a riding instructor was teaching a young girl how to ride. This instructor’s teaching method was to tell the bewildered girl to sit backwards on the horse, facing the horse’s rump, and for her to control the horse by holding it by the tail. Does it matter that the student to teacher ratio in this riding class is one to one if the instructor is an idiot or uses poor teaching methods?