By Kristin
Increasing class size in public education, something recently recommended by Bill Gates to the National Governor’s Association, would be a big mistake. Keeping class size at a level that allows for relationships, communication with parents, and timely feedback to students is necessary if we want public schools to educate our neediest children.
My own classes in a public Seattle high school have had between 30 and 36 students. With 36 students in a 50 minute period, I have 1.39 minutes for each child. I don’t spend class checking in with each child for 1.39 minutes, but that startling number is evidence of what happens when classes are allowed to get too large – there is not enough time for each child.
The problem with increasing class size in public education as a way to save money is that a teacher, no matter how good she is, can stretch the day only so far.
With 150 students a day, if I assign a piece of writing I have 150 essays to grade. If I move really fast (and not very carefully), spending five minutes on each essay, I will be grading for 12.5 hours. Teachers all across the country do this, but how many could do more than that?
Providing meaningful and timely feedback becomes problematic when class size increases, but so does solving the riddle of how to teach each child.
This year I am teaching honors level language arts. My students are ready to learn every day and want to do well in school. The students in my class of 34 are doing great, as would be the children at Lakeside were their classes increased to 34.
In past years, when I taught standard-level classes, having 34 children was a problem. One year I had a tenth grader I’ll call S, who couldn’t read. I spent my prep period reading his file and learned he missed most of second grade because his mother was an addict and didn’t get him to school. That explained a lot. Second grade is a big phonics year and one that is crucial for reading, so I focused instruction to help S with phonics. I designed extra work for him, changed daily lessons to help him with his specific needs, and tutored him during lunch.
S was one of 40 children that year who were reading and writing below grade level. I spent many hours reading files, examining data and tutoring during lunch. I spent hundreds of hours working with those children and their parents, and even then I did not get those children where I wanted them. Most of the time had to be spent outside of class because, of course, I had only a minute or two for each child during class.
While I had 40 students performing below grade level I also had 110 students performing at grade level, and they too wanted my attention – to ask for help during class, to visit during lunch, to have me write a letter of recommendation, to have their existence acknowledged and to be made to feel important. As the parent of a child in public school, I know how much a teacher’s attention means to a student. I don’t want my students to get less of me, and I don’t want my daughter to get less of her teacher. One cannot simultaneously support public education and reduce the amount of attention each child gets from her teacher.
Good teachers make great sacrifices for their students, but even good teachers run out of time. Increasing class size means there will be children whose riddles are not solved, who do not receive extra instruction or personalized curriculum, and who have teachers unable to find an hour to pick up a book and read about how to improve their craft. It’s not that most teachers don’t want to make time, it’s that there isn’t enough time in the day.
While it’s true that simply reducing class size will not improve achievement, increasing class size hurts those teachers who are already working hard to help children, despite Mr. Gates’s plan to increase the class sizes of exactly those teachers. There are many places to reduce spending in public education, but lifting the cap on class size shouldn’t be one of them.
You’re right, Mark. I think I knew that, but it’s been lost in the whirling quagmire that’s my brain these days.
Sometimes I feel I’m living in a theoretical dimension!
The cap has more to do with the way schools are funded from the state… if I have a building of 100 students, but their funding ratio is pay 1.0 FTE per 25 students, that makes a difference than if they want to pay 1.0 FTE per 20, or per 30, or per 36. Local districts can adjust how that actually translates to class sizes by using alternative funding, but that’s harder and harder to come by.
Many local CBAs also have language about “overload” pay, if a teacher ends up with classes (or a total number of students contacted in a day) which exceed a certain number. Theoretically, that compensates the teacher for the additional time needed to assess work or plan for the increased number of kids in the room, but it does nothing to actually result in additional time one-on-one with the student.
Jason,
even if there’s a cap, at the building level the cap can be overridden.
I’m supposed to have no more than 32, (a ridiculous number if it’s 32 kids who are below standard), but I usually have a class or two with more than that. My biggest was 38. 38! That was crazy.
If the cap is raised, as Bill Gates suggests it be, it ceases to be a building level decision and all classes start at the bigger number.
And I can’t stand the suspense – what are you alluding to in your final line? Here’s as good a place as any to bring it up, then I can think about it.
I’m not really for placing legislative restrictions on school-level organizational issues like this.
That being said, no school offering a traditional structure and program should put 30-35 kids in a room with one teacher at a time. Reasonable people talking about whether “class size matters” should be debating about the difference between 17 and 21 students or 21 and 25. Denying a difference like 15-20 to 30-35 is ridiculous and almost cruel.
I would like to see some more innovative use of mixed class sizes in high schools, but that’s another discussion for another day.
I hear ya, Brian, and I agree to an extent. However, I also feel like the high school level students get somewhat abandoned in this line of thinking, especially since we have the only state tests required for graduation and writing is so difficult for the kids.
30-35 kids in writing classes is horrible, and when the kids also struggle with low reading abilities it just exacerbates the situation.
Brian – I agree!!!!!!
A recent study found that as early as third grade reading ability showed a strong correlation with high school graduation rates. We really need to focus on class size in the early grades. The time it takes to provide feedback at every level is an issue, but when our resources are limited we must concentrate on providing as much help as we can to K-3.
Totally agree, Kristin. While third graders don’t generate much in the way of volume (I can read everything everyone wrote all day long in less than an hour) an increase in class size takes away from the in-class time alloted to each student. I started the year with thirty-two kids, and there were times in which I didn’t get a chance to see a student working until twenty minutes into the lesson, only to find out that they didn’t get the learning.
Class size matters, no matter what they say.
Bill Gates needs to teach mainstream and remedial math, science, English, or history classes in an overcrowded classroom before he continues offering his advice to public education.