Poor Elijah’s Almanack: Sizing things up

Everyone’s familiar with the image of the legendary schoolmarm, teaching the entire town from first to eighth grade while she feeds the woodstove with her free hand. Exaggerations aside, class sizes are commonly smaller than they used to be. Where they’re not, many experts urge that they should be. Where they’re growing larger and in many schools, they’re growing markedly larger, other policymakers insist that shouldn’t pose a problem.

Those who question the need for smaller classes recall that, as recently as the 1950s, 30 students in a high school class was typical and considered educationally practical. They complain that reductions in class size during the past 70 years haven’t yielded corresponding improvements in student performance. They also cite Japan and other industrialized nations where classes are larger and test scores are higher than ours.

Any broad comparison involving nations and decades is likely to be misleading. Far more distinguishes the United States from Japan than student-teacher ratios. And far more than smaller classes happened in American schools and society between my 7th and 70th birthdays. If smaller classes haven’t yielded academic gains, one question that needs answering is, “Would achievement today be even worse if classes hadn’t shrunk?”

In addition, class size isn’t the same as student-teacher ratio. Owing to the expansion of special education and school-based social services, you’ll find more adults in school buildings today, usually working in small groups or one-on-one with specific students. That adult-inflation doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll find more classroom teachers or fewer students in regular classrooms.

The surplus of variables has spawned a surplus of expert conclusions going back decades. Some advocates cite initiatives like the 1990s STAR project, which determined “students in small classes consistently scored higher on achievement and basic skills tests.” Skeptics prefer economics professor Eric Hanushek’s finding that there’s “no relationship between class size and student performance.” Mr. Hanushek concluded “achievement for the typical student will be unaffected” by class size reduction and the resulting “dramatic increase” in cost will be “unaccompanied by achievement gains.”

Positioned in the middle, a Johns Hopkins researcher found that shrinking classes from 22 to 18 students probably won’t “make a big difference.” Not surprisingly, reducing from 30 students to 18 will probably “make a much larger difference.”

Overall, a 2016 National Education Policy Center analysis based on an array of studies identified class size as an “important determinant of student outcomes,” with increased school costs offset by “substantial” reductions in future “social and educational costs.”

Those future reductions are necessarily speculative. It’s also important to note that the study doesn’t identify class size as the only determinant of student achievement. However, the existence of other factors shouldn’t be used as a smokescreen or a distraction from the role class size does play in education quality.

For example, a billion-dollar 1990s California class size reduction initiative resulted in improved achievement test scores for students “who had the benefit of both a small class and a veteran teacher.” However, reducing class size often meant hiring “inexperienced teachers” to staff the additional classrooms. Students’ scores in those classrooms tended to decline, so the initiative appeared to have “no appreciable effect” on statewide test averages.

This net result had nothing to do with the benefits or irrelevance of smaller classes. The telling factors instead were administrative. Maybe California should have reduced class sizes by adding classes more gradually. If, as is common, experienced teachers tend to teach already higher achieving students, maybe the problem lies in how teachers are assigned to classes. When there’s a shortage of highly qualified teachers, maybe districts need to heed the guidance of the supply-and-demand marketplace and increase teachers’ salaries, reliance on the marketplace being a popular conservative Republican talking point, except when it involves raising salaries, especially salaries for public sector employees.

California’s experience demonstrates how misleading averages can be and how easy it is to discount or ignore factors affecting student achievement. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, the key difference between Japanese and American classrooms isn’t class size. The problem in American classrooms is “student misbehavior,” coupled with the fact “many public schools do not allow teachers to use effective methods of controlling students.” Commenting on France’s larger average class size, The New York Times observed “many American parents probably would not be satisfied with the regimentation and discipline needed to make large classes productive.”

Critics who oppose reducing class size understandably want to avoid our perennial mistake of throwing money at bandwagon prescriptions for school problems. So do I. On the other hand, it’s simplistic and inaccurate to charge that teachers endorse smaller classes only so our jobs get easier and taxpayers have to hire more of us.

I’ve taught middle school classes as large as 30 students. Conditions vary from group to group, but in my experience, 22 marks the frontier where class size begins to interfere with learning. Fifteen to 20 is ideal. Fewer than that and you begin to lack the fuel for the kind of animated discussion that benefits everybody. I have no data to justify my magic numbers, but I can testify for certain that the number of students in the room makes a difference.

It affects the activities and methods I can employ and how many behavioral brushfires I need to extinguish. It affects how many papers I have to read and grade, how thoroughly I can comment on them, and how quickly I can return them. It affects how many questions I can ask and how many times I can call on each student each day. It affects how many examples students get to practice out loud so I can gauge their understanding. It affects how many opportunities they have to participate in discussions, to test their knowledge, and to hone their skills.

Many other factors influence learning and achievement. Mr. Hanushek holds that “the quality of the teacher is more important than class size.” I’d add that the effort and intention of each student is also more critical. But the existence of arguably more crucial factors doesn’t give us license to pretend that class size isn’t crucial, too.

Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.