Reducing Class Size Improves Student Achievement

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Recommended: effects of smaller class sizes.

What determines classroom size? Researchers have looked at records going all the way back to the first public schools to find a solution. Does classroom size have an impact on student performance? Are teachers able to handle large groups of students at one time? Does smaller class size help students learn? Is there another way to improve student achievement besides changing class size? A vast majority of adults believe that class size reductions are an excellent way to improve the quality of public schools. Reducing class size was the most prevalent choice among parents of public school children and the second most prevalent choice among individuals without children. (Rockoff 2009)

Is this subject pertinent to people or just parents? Alternatively, is it something that is to get people to pay attention to education around election time? For example, the Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools. A survey representative of the U.S. population age 18 and over asked respondents, what they would do to improve public schools if they could change one thing, for most of them reducing classroom size was the most prevalent choice. (Rockoff 2009) Interesting was that it was also the second most prevalent choice among individuals without children. The reasoning for that could be that a majority of the people in the survey at one point or another were in an overcrowded classroom in their youth. The fact that both groups show how the issue is not limited to parents and teachers. It is one issue that will never go away.

A parent feeling strongly about this issue is not a surprise. Children are essential to parents, and as a result, their education is crucial to the parents. Various parent teacher organizations and sc...

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...s' learning." Oxford Review of Education 32.2 (2006): 213-234. EBSCO MegaFILE. EBSCO. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.

9. Pelham E, William et al. "Impact of Group Size on Classroom On-Task Behavior and Work Productivity in Children with ADHD." Journal of Emotional & Behavioral Disorders 19.1 (2011): 55-64. EBSCO MegaFILE. EBSCO. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.

10. Ratnesar, Romesh, and Elaine Rivera. "Class-size Warfare." Time 6 Oct. 1997: 85. Web. 13 Mar. 2011.

11. Rockoff, Jonah. "Field Experiments in Class Size from the Early Twentieth Century." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 23.4 (2009). Print.

12. Sidelinger, Robert J., and Melanie Booth-Butterfield. "Co-constructing Student Involvement: An Examination of Teacher Confirmation and Student-to-Student Connectedness in the College Classroom." Communication Education 59.2 (2010): 165-184. EBSCO MegaFILE. EBSCO. Web. 20 Mar. 2011.

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