By Tom White
On Monday, Spencer put up a post about Initiative 1351 in which he described the dramatic decrease in the number of relationships within a classroom when class size drops from current levels to those proposed by the Initiative. While this is certainly a novel approach to thinking about class size and the effect it has on the complexities within a classroom, I have two concerns.
First of all, Spencer seems to treat all relationships within a classroom equally. As if Aaliyah’s relationship with Travis, for example, is as important as her relationship with her teacher. I don’t think that’s true. I can certainly accept that she and Travis should have some relationship, and I agree that having more kids in the room might crowd out that relationship, but the primary relationship for both Aaliyah and Travis is that which they have with their teacher. Therefore, while it’s true that the number of relationships is a quadratic function of the number of people, the number of primary relationships – those between a student and her teacher – increases much more slowly as class size creeps up. While I agree that more students means less attention for each student and I agree that less students per class is preferable, I don’t accept Spencer’s dramatic math.
Furthermore, simply lowering class size doesn’t necessarily mean that instruction changes. I teach 28 fourth graders this year. If Initiative 1351 passes, I’ll eventually have only 25 students in my classroom. I honestly can’t promise that my lessons will be noticeably different with three fewer students. They won’t need to be. I’ll still construct and implement my lesson plans in much the same way, using much the same activities. True, I’ll have slightly more contact with each kid during each lesson, but the activities won’t be much different. I’m well aware that in the lower grades and in high poverty schools, class size will drop enough to actually change the learning activities, but in most classrooms – including mine – we’ll be spending an awful lot of money for pretty much the same lessons.
That said, I’ll be voting yes, mostly as a matter of principle, and I hope it passes, but I worry about the cost.
You’re right, Spencer, classroom relationships are dynamic. And I think we can also agree that lower class size yields more teacher-time per student, which also means more “words.”
I love the phrase dramatic math. I also appreciate your points about the different impact that students may have and that the teacher is absolutely the most primary of all relationships. The math required to examine classroom relationships is dynamic. I’ve had one student (and so has every teacher) who does manage to impact everyone else – maybe a few of them – but certainly not all. This analysis is a simplification to be sure, but it does illustrate something.
Though your lessons may not be different, your ability to interact with fewer students can not be denied. Further, your classroom is not being reduced significantly because the need to reduce your classroom size is not significant. This initiative isn’t about my classroom either. This is much more about confronting early childhood education gaps and providing opportunities for students who are entering school behind.
How about these statistics from the Campaign for Grade Level Reading:
Children from low income families have been exposed to 30,000,000 fewer words than middle income children by 3 years of age. 61% of low income students live in households without children’s books. By kindergarten many low income students are behind their middle income peers by 12-14 months in language and pre-reading skills. Incredibly, or perhaps not to incredibly, 80% of low income students cannot read by the end of 3rd grade.
How is that going to affect 4th grade teachers? How does that impact the entire K-12 system? I’m not saying that this initiative is the cure, but it is certainly some medicine.