School authorities often complain that classes are too large. They claim that teachers cannot be expected to give their students the individual attention they need if there are too many students in the class. At first glance, 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 a smaller class size does not guarantee that children receive a better education. The pupil-to-teacher ratio in public schools in the mid-1960s was about 24 to 1. This ratio dropped to around 17 to 1 in the early 1990s, meaning that the average size of classes dropped by 28 percent. However, over 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, student academic performance (as measured by SAT scores) decreased as class sizes decreased.
Eric Hanushek, an economist at the University of Rochester, examined 277 published studies on the effects of teacher-student ratios and class size averages on student achievement. It found that only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement in performance with a smaller class size, 72 percent found no statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a negative effect on performance.
It seems to go against common sense that students’ academic performance could decline with smaller classes. One reason this happens in public schools is that when class sizes decrease, schools have to create more classes to cover all students in the school. Then the schools have to hire more teachers for the greater number of classes. Yet public schools across the country are already having trouble finding 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 are doing in school. William Sanders of the University of Tennessee studied this topic. It found that teacher quality is nearly twenty times more important than class size in determining students’ academic performance in class. As a result, reducing class sizes can have the opposite effect of hurting students’ education, rather than helping.
Similarly, a study on class size by policy analyst Jennifer Buckingham of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Studies found no reliable evidence that students in smaller classes do better academically or that teachers pass significantly more time with them in these classes. Buckingham concluded that a 20 percent reduction in class size cost the Australian government an additional $ 1,150 per student, but added just two additional minutes of instruction per day for each child.
Reducing class sizes cannot solve the underlying problems of public schools. No matter how small classes get, nothing will help if teachers are poorly trained or their teaching methods are useless or destructive. For example, if teachers use full-language or “balanced” reading instruction, they can cripple students’ ability to read no matter how small the classes are. Even if classrooms had a teacher for each student, that child’s reading ability could still be affected if the teacher used these methods of reading instruction. In fact, smaller classes could give the teacher more time to (unintentionally) damage each student’s reading ability.
Here’s an analogy on this issue of class size vs. Teaching Methods: Suppose a riding instructor teaches a girl to ride. This instructor’s teaching method was to tell the bewildered girl to sit back on the horse, facing the horse’s rump, and control the horse by holding it by the tail. Does it matter that the student to teacher ratio in this riding lesson is one to one if the instructor is an idiot or uses bad teaching methods?