Upward Trend in Class Size Sparks Education Worries

In Dallas, schools opened this fall with stormy demonstrations protesting teacher layoffs and class sizes of 40 or more students.

In Alaska, citizens outraged over classroom crowding plan to put the issue to voters.

Los Angeles is greeting 10,000 more students this month--with 2,147 fewer teachers. Class sizes, already among the nation’s biggest, will near 40 in the early grades.

In districts from Maine to Oregon, returning students need only look around their overcrowded classrooms for a cram course in how the worst state and local budget problems in a decade are affecting school life.

Class sizes are headed upward most dramatically in big-city districts across the country, but also in states such as California, Oregon, Florida and Alaska, which are gaining students but lack funds to hire enough new teachers, a check by the Associated Press found.

The combination of more students and fewer teachers could mark at least a temporary reversal of a steady, four-decade decline in average class sizes, said Vance Grant, a researcher with the U.S. Education Department.

Reformers fear that many schools will be hard-pressed to give students the individual attention needed to foster the critical thinking skills that President Bush and others say are key to realizing national goals for educational excellence.

Yet for all the alarms being sounded, 40 years of research has not ended the debate over whether smaller classes help student performance, or if bigger classes necessarily harm it.

Factors such as the subject being taught and the grade level may be as important as class size in determining achievement.

A report by the Educational Research Service in Arlington, Va., analyzed 100 studies of class size conducted around the country between 1950 and 1985 and concluded:

* Smaller classes clearly benefit students in elementary grades, but generally mean far less in high school.

A study of the Riverside, Calif., school district in 1967 found that class size made a big difference in first-grade reading achievement, but much less by third grade. At the high school level, the overwhelming majority of studies found students doing better in larger classes or showed no difference.

* Ten of 15 studies found that the achievement of disadvantaged students was up significantly in smaller classes.

* Overall, the impact of class size on student achievement was not all that dramatic until the size was reduced to fewer than 15 students or raised to more than 40.

And everyone--teacher union leaders included--agrees that smaller classes alone do not mean much if teachers teach 15 kids exactly as they would a class of 40.

“Any time you increase class size, it’s a disaster, when you consider that students are coming into classes with more difficult problems each year,” said Keith Geiger, president of the 2.1 million-member National Education Assn.

But he agreed in an interview that smaller classes alone will not solve the problems of student achievement unless teachers tailor their methods to individuals.

Although decrying the impact that overcrowded classes have on teachers and students, Deborah Walsh, associate director of the American Federation of Teachers, said her union “has come to the conclusion that reducing class sizes alone will not save our schools. We are calling for radical reconfiguration of schools.”

“When class size bumps up, in the existing structure, the sizes are horrible. Increasing them is even more horrible,” she said. “But one of the reasons that some of the research hasn’t found a difference is that teachers teach the same way when class sizes go down.”

In Alaska, frustration over crowded classes has prompted a citizens’ group to begin an initiative campaign to get a class-size limit on the November, 1992, ballot.

“Quite frankly, I think we’re at the point now where it’s no longer possible not to impact the classroom, and we’re going to start doing some real harm,” Fairbanks Supt. Rick Cross said.

In suburban Enfield, Conn., high school lab classes are up to 25 instead of the desired 20, said Supt. Louis Mager, reflecting a 12% cut in high school teaching jobs over the last two years.

Florida schools are greeting about 82,000 new students this fall, bringing total enrollment to about 2 million. But districts have little money to hire new teachers, state Supt. Betty Castor said.

“Class sizes are going to be significantly larger, particularly in our larger districts,” teacher union leader John Ryor said.

Thousands of Dallas students and residents demonstrated as school opened to protest the firing of 257 of 8,500 teachers after a $47-million cut in state aid. Teachers agreed to give up their sick days to save the jobs of 127 colleagues, and other budget juggling saved the remaining jobs.

No nationwide statistics exist on average class size. But NEA data shows that the average pupil-teacher ratio of the nation’s elementary and secondary schools--calculated by dividing the number of students by the number of all classroom teachers--dropped from 27.8 in 1950 to 17.2 in 1989.

Such ratios understate actual class size, however, since they include music, art, physical education and special education teachers, as well as counselors.

Still, critics like Chester Finn, a former assistant U.S. secretary of education, cite such statistics to back their contention that lowering class sizes has not led to better student performance.

Geiger and other educators say those arguments ignore classroom reality: Students come to school with more problems than ever, are harder to discipline and speak many more languages than in the past.

Pat Gardner, a teacher of hearing-impaired pupils at Ashton Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., said she expects the worst this year, now that she has to deal with 16 children instead of the dozen she had last year.

“A lot of things won’t get done,” she said.