Class Size Reduction

As Aristotle once noted, "the fate of empires depends on the education of youth" (Russo, 2010). It should be comforting that voters regularly rank education as a top priority. Yet, despite countless reform experiments, public schools continue to be bogged down with the same problems today that troubled them twenty years ago. Of all the solutions people have come up with to solve these issues, one of the most popular appears to be class size reduction. Kirk Johnson, Ph.D., a senior policy analyst from the Heritage Foundation reported, “70 percent of adults believe that reducing class size would lead to significant academic improvements in public schools” (2000). The implication is that voters are willing to pay for class size reduction. Because of the support of taxpayers all across Minnesota class sizes in grades K - 2 should not be more than 15 students per class to provide student and teacher an optimum learning environment.

Research on class size along with instruction goes back to a series of studies from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, performed at Teachers College, Columbia University, and at the University of Texas at Austin. The studies looked carefully at several classroom conditions both in smaller and larger classes. Some of the data hints at some kind of threshold effect in considering how many students can be in a classroom before achievement starts to drop. This threshold can vary by socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Glass and Smith used meta-analysis as they looked at all studies that had been done about the effects of class size on achievement there conclusion was “that the optimum class size is less than 15 and that the effects are greatest for children under 12 years of age” (1979).

The issue of course is not ...

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...on for their children. For teachers, class size reduction decreases their workload and has the potential of lowering classroom discipline problems. It would appear class size reduction has something for everyone including and, maybe most importantly, for children.

It seems it is self-evident that by protecting the rights of children we protect everything about our society that we hold dear as well as make more possible everything about our society we would like to improve. There are not many clear-cut ethical choices in life, but I would argue this is one of them; it is a simple pick really. Think of a kid you know. Does he or she deserve a qualified well-educated teacher? Does he or she deserve to be provided with adequate space and resources? Lastly, does he or she deserve to receive positive attention and interaction while also being educated? Case closed.