Role of Class Size in Success Unclear

About two-thirds of California school districts are taking money from other programs to reduce class sizes in the first three grades, according to a study released Monday.

Despite those efforts, the report’s authors said they could not definitively say that the 20-1 student-to-teacher ratio in those lower classes has spurred the recent academic improvement among California’s schoolchildren.

A consortium of think tanks found that nearly all California public school districts have adopted the size reduction program since the $8-billion experiment began six years ago.

The 162-page study was headed by the American Institutes for Research and the Rand Corp. and covers 1999 to early 2001--before California’s economy began to slide. Now, a statewide budget crisis is forcing many districts to make funding cuts and some are discussing whether to opt out of the class-size program.

The Irvine school system in Orange County has decided to increase its primary class sizes, and even the Los Angeles Unified School District toyed with the idea during budget talks last month.

Even before the current budget problems, most California districts reported that they had to trim other spending, such as teacher training, music classes and library budgets, to help implement class-size reductions, according to the study. A third said they shifted teachers from upper grades, which led to crowding there. Many districts complained that the state wasn’t allocating enough money for the new ratios, leaving local systems to make up an average of $150 per student.

“All of this raises the question of whether some of the money that is used for class-size reduction might not be more productively used elsewhere,” RAND researcher Georges Vernez said. “I think that’s probably a debate that should take place.”

Brian Stecher, the report’s co-author, said it is impossible to separate positive effects of smaller classes from other simultaneous reforms, such as new testing and reading programs.

“The test scores are going up, which means that something good has been going on,” he said. “But what is hard to do is attribute that progress to one thing or another.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, a strong proponent of the class-size plan, said she was unfazed by the report. She noted that the greatest improvements in reading and math test scores are found among elementary school students, despite the disproportionate numbers of inexperienced teachers in the lower grades.

“Would you rather have a new teacher with 20 students or 32 students?” she asked. “I think a little bit of common sense has to be applied here.”

Eastin and the authors of the report said many intangible benefits are hard to quantify. For example, the report found that teachers are spending more time with individual students in smaller classes and have fewer discipline problems.