What Research Says About
Small Classes and Their Effects
By
Bruce J. Biddle
University of Missouri-Columbia
&
David C. Berliner
Arizona State University
Education Policy Reports Project
(EPRP)
Education Policy Studies Laboratory
College of Education
Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Box 872411
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2411
Winter, 2002
EPSL-0202-101-EPRP
|
This research report is
part of a series entitled IN PURSUIT OF BETTER SCHOOLS: WHAT RESEARCH SAYS
that is supervised by Bruce J. Biddle and David C. Berliner and supported by
The Rockefeller Foundation. The
series provides timely and trustworthy summaries of research on major issues
facing education today, with special emphasis on how America’s poor and
minority students are affected by educational policies. Each report in the series reviews and
evaluates research and scholarship on a specific topic and concludes with
recommendations based on research knowledge available at the time of writing. Printed copies of reports from the series may be ordered from The Rockefeller Foundation {please consult for instructions}. Further information about the series and downloadable versions of this report may be found at the following website: http://edpolicyreports.org.The views expressed in each report are the sole responsibility of its authors and may not reflect the views of The Rockefeller Foundation or the site supervisors. |
Small Classes and Their Effects
Bruce J. Biddle
&
David C. Berliner
Interest in class size is widespread today. Debates often appear about "ideal" class size, and controversial efforts to reduce class size have appeared at both the federal level and in various states around the nation. Moreover, a good deal of research has appeared on class size, and controversies have also arisen about that research and its findings. What types of research have appeared on class size to date, what findings have surfaced from that research and how can we explain those findings, why have those findings provoked controversy, and what should we conclude now about class-size policies from research on the topic?
The Issue
Conflict has often appeared concerning ideal class
size. Educators have long argued that
students do better in smaller classes, but fiscal conservatives and those who
want to reduce public school funding have claimed that students do just as well
in larger classes, and politicians often quarrel about whether we should spend
additional tax dollars to reduce class sizes.
Responding
to this debate, a large amount of research has also appeared on the impact of
class size--indeed, more studies may have surfaced for this topic than for any
other question in education! One might
assume that this huge research effort would have now provided clear answers
about the effects of class size, but--no--sharp disagreements have also
appeared about findings from these studies.
Consider the following only-too-typical quotes about class size from
scholar-activists:
This
research leaves no doubt that small classes have an advantage over larger
classes in reading and math in the early primary grades.
Jeremy
Finn and Charles Achilles (1990, p. 573)
There is no
credible evidence that across-the-board reductions in class size boost pupil
achievement.
Chester
Finn and Michael Petrilli (1998, p. 2)
Or these from reviewers of
class-size studies:
Large
reductions in school class size promise learning benefits of a magnitude
commonly believed not within the power of educators to achieve.
Gene
Glass, Leonard Cahen, Mary Lee Smith,
and
Nikola Filby (1982, p. 50)
This
article has concentrated on the limited task of reviewing the evidence on ...
reducing class size. The surprising
finding is that the evidence does not offer much reason to expect a systematic
effect from overall class size reduction policies.
Eric Hanushek (1999, p. 158)
Or these from advocacy groups:
Taken
together, these studies ... provide compelling evidence that reducing class
size, particularly for younger children, will have a positive effect on student
achievement.
Dan
Murphy & Bella Rosenberg--writing as
representatives
of The American Federation
of Teachers
(1998, p. 3)
There's no
evidence that smaller class sizes alone lead to higher student achievement.
Nina
Shokraii Rees & Kirk Johnson—
writing
as representatives of
The
Heritage Foundation (2000, p. 1)
It
is easy to understand why The American Federation of Teachers and The Heritage
Foundation would sponsor such conflicting judgments. After all, the former group speaks for public-school teachers who
strongly favor smaller classes, whereas the latter stands foursquare against
unions in education and increases in public spending. But why on earth have scholars and reviewers come to such
divergent views about research on class size, and what does the evidence really
say? Further, if small classes generate
benefits, why should such benefits appear, and do those benefits apply to all
(or merely some) students, levels of education, topics of instruction, and
forms of advantage?
Studies and Their Findings
Early Small Field Experiments
To answer these questions we must look at several traditions of research beginning first with early experiments on class size. As a rule, experiments are created when investigators are able to assign research subjects to "experimental" and "control" treatments randomly and then compare results for those conditions. Experiments are popular because they involve intervention in the natural world and are thought to provide information about causes and effects. Some experiments with people are done in laboratories where environmental conditions may be controlled, but experiments on class size are nearly always done in field settings, such as schools, where external conditions can intrude into the design and also affect results. (Researchers have learned over the years that schools are very messy contexts in which to conduct experiments, although they continue to try to do so.)
Small
experimental (or quasi-experimental) studies of the impact of class size are
easy to organize and have been conducted for years in America. The first such studies seem to have appeared
in the 1920s, and more than 100 of them have since been reported. Informal reviews of these efforts began to
appear in the 1960s, and most of these stressed that, based on evidence then
available, differences in class size seemed to have but little impact. However, by the late 1970s a more
sophisticated technique for reviewing had been invented, meta-analysis, and
reviewers quickly applied this technique to results from these early
experiments.[1] Although the authors of these reviews have
quarreled about details of their conclusions and the best way to apply
meta-analyses to class-size studies, a consensus has gradually emerged from
their efforts about findings these studies had developed:
-- Short-term exposure to small
classes had been found to increase measured student achievements, but the extra
gains it had generated were often minor;
--
Extra gains associated with small classes had appeared mainly when class
size was reduced to less than 20
students;
--
Extra gains associated with small classes had been stronger for the early
grades; and
-- Extra gains associated with
small classes had been stronger for students who came from groups that were
traditionally disadvantaged in education.
However, these early class-size experiments had usually involved only small samples, short-term exposure to small classes, but one measure of student success, and a single educational context (such as one school or school district)--and some had employed poor designs which made their results questionable--so it was difficult to assess what would happen if students were exposed to small classes for longer periods of time and whether early small-class advantages were limited in scope and sustainable. Different kinds of research would presumably be needed if one were to answer these latter questions.
Surveys and Econometric Studies
Another tradition of research, based
on survey designs, has also provided evidence on class size and its
effects. This second type of research
relies on the fact that naturally occurring differences in school and classroom
characteristics appear in American education and asks whether these differences
are associated with student outcomes.
To answer this question, investigators collect and compare survey data
from students, teachers, school administrators, and public records.
When
well-designed, surveys can examine a broad range of educational contexts and
topics and offer opportunity to study the impacts of variables that can not (or
should not) be manipulated in experiments--such as gender, minority status, and
childhood poverty. On the other hand,
survey research has difficulty establishing relations between causes and
effects. Why should this be so? Let us assume that a survey examines a
sample of schools where average class size varies and discovers that those
schools with smaller classes also have higher levels of student achievement. Does this mean that the former necessarily
generated the latter? Hardly. Those schools with smaller classes might
also have had more qualified teachers, better equipment, more up-to-date
curricula, newer school buildings, more students from affluent homes, a
more-supportive community environment, or other advantages, and these latter
factors may also have helped to
generate higher levels of achievement.
Thus, to establish the case for a causal relation between class size and
student outcomes with survey data, one must use statistical processes which
weed out (or "control for") the competing effects of other variables
that might also be affecting students.[2]
Bearing
this argument in mind, we look now at survey evidence on the effects of class
size. Serious surveys on American
education may be said to have begun in the 1960s with the famous Coleman
Report.[3] This massive, federally funded study
involved a national sample and took on many issues then facing educators and
politicians in the country. Today it is
more often remembered, however, for its startling claim that although student
achievements are strongly influenced by the qualities of their families and
peers, the qualities of their schools and classrooms have but little impact.
This
claim was greeted with dismay by educators and was endorsed with enthusiasm by
fiscal conservatives and those critical of public education. But somehow, amidst the welter of subsequent
disputes, neither group seemed to have noticed that the methods reported in the
Coleman Report's study were seriously flawed and its supposed findings were
even then being challenged by thoughtful critics. So, instead of questioning it, the public began to assume that
the Report's peculiar claim about the supposedly weak effects of schools and
classrooms was an established "fact."
Since
then scores of more modest surveys have been conducted seeking to establish
whether differences in school funding or those things which funds can buy--such
as small-class sizes–are or are not associated with desired educational
outcomes. Many of these have come from
economists who wanted to test mathematical models for predicting educational
outcomes, and most have involved questionable design features and small samples
that did not represent the wide range of American schools, classrooms, or
students.
Nevertheless,
enough of these surveys had appeared by the late 1970s that reviews seemed to
be in order, and in the early 1980s Eric Hanushek, also an economist, began to
publish a series of articles reviewing these works and discussing their
supposed implications. Hanushek seems
to have been committed, from the beginning, to a version of economic theory
which argues that public schools are ineffective and should be replaced by a
marketplace of competing private schools,[4] and it is
small wonder that his reviews have regularly concluded that differences in
public school funding--as well as things that funds can buy--are not
associated with educational outcomes.
Most of the studies Hanushek has reviewed did not provide evidence on
class size, but some seemed to focus on the class-size issue, and after
reviewing the latter too, Hanushek has announced that class size also appears
to have little impact.[5]
However,
Hanushek's methods and conclusions have been challenged on several
grounds. Meta-analysts, such as Larry
Hedges and Rob Greenwald, have pointed out that Hanushek merely counts the
number of effects he finds that are "statistically significant," but
since most of those effects are based on studies with small samples, it is
nearly inevitable that he would find but few "significant"
effects. In contrast, when those
effects are added together in meta-analyses, the overall results suggest that
differences in school funding and those things that funds can buy--such as
smaller classes--do, indeed, have an impact.[6]
Another
economist, Alan Krueger, has also observed that Hanushek does not base his
findings on the number of studies he reviews but rather on the number of
different findings reported in those studies--a procedure fraught with
potential bias--and that results supporting the importance of class size pop up
quickly if one corrects for these biases.[7]
And
several commentators[8]
have pointed out that many of the supposed "class-size" studies Hanushek reviews do not examine
class size directly but rather a proxy measure presumed to represent
it--student-teacher ratio, defined as the number of students divided by the
number of "teachers" reported for a school or school district. The troubles with this latter measure are
that it ignores how students and teachers are allocated to classrooms and often
includes counts of administrators, nurses, counselors, coaches, specialty
teachers, and other professionals who rarely appear in classrooms at all. Such a ratio is, then, a poor way to
estimate the number of students actually taught by teachers in specific
classrooms, and it is the latter we need to know about if we are to study the
effects of class size.
Hanushek
has not responded well to such criticisms; rather, he has found reasons to
quarrel with their details and to continue publishing reviews, based on methods
that others find questionable, which claim that level of school funding and the
things those funds can buy--such as
smaller classes--have but few discernable effects.[9] These efforts have endeared Hanushek to
political conservatives who have extolled his conclusions, complimented his
efforts, and asked him to testify in various forums where class-size issues are
debated. And in return, Hanushek has
embedded his conclusion about the supposed lack of class-size effects in a
broader endorsement of conservative educational agenda.[10] Given these activities and allegiances, it
is no longer possible to give credence to Hanushek's judgments about the impact
of class size.
But
does this mean that one should now conclude that small, econometric surveys do
confirm a class-size effect? Actually,
this is also unwise. Many of these
small surveys have used inappropriate samples, most have not employed controls
for other classroom or school characteristics whose effects might be confused
with those of class size, and nearly all have used measures of student-teacher
ratio rather than class size. Thus, the
bulk of this literature has provided very little information about the effects
of class size in the real world.
Fortunately,
a few well-designed, large-scale surveys have appeared on the subject,
and we may gain ideas about class-size impact by looking at their findings.[11] To illustrate, in 1966 Ronald Ferguson and
Helen Ladd reported a survey in which they examined average gains in
achievement scores for fourth-grade students from all schools in the
state of Alabama. After controlling for
various measures of home advantage and teacher qualification, they found sizable
effects for class size. In addition,
results from the Ferguson and Ladd study suggest that small-class advantages
for fourth-grade students are likely to appear for more than one type of
subject matter.
Or,
to take another example, Marta Elliott recently reported a large survey of
mathematics and science achievements for eighth-grade students, based on
data from across the country obtained in the National Education Longitudinal
Survey of 1988. She found that more
student achievement was associated with higher level of qualifications
possessed by their teachers and the use of more effective pedagogic techniques,
but it was not significantly associated with small-class size.
These
results suggest two modifications for findings we expressed earlier:
-- Long-term exposure to small
classes in the early grades has also been found to increase measured student
achievements, and the extra gains it generates may be substantial; and
-- Extra gains associated with
small classes may not appear at all at the upper- grade, middle-school, and
secondary levels.
Two additional problems should also
be noted about survey efforts to date.
For one, authors and reviewers of these studies have often seemed to be
unaware of experimental research on the
effects of small classes. This is too
bad. Experiments and surveys generate
differing but complementary types of evidence, but theories and policy
recommendations concerned with small classes and their effects must surely
accommodate all types of evidence on the subject.
For
another, surveys can make a particularly strong contribution when they explore
how events vary among different sectors of the population. When applied to the study of small classes,
for example, this means that survey evidence should eventually be able to tell
us whether small-class effects differ among students depending on their gender,
race, poverty status, or home condition; among various types of classrooms and
schools; among differing educational topics; and among city-center, suburban,
and rural communities, various states or regions in the nation, and differing
ethnic and national contexts.
Unfortunately, broad survey evidence concerning these issues has so far
been hard to find.
Trial Programs and Large Field Experiments
Fortunately, some of the
shortcomings of survey studies have been partly dealt with by other types of
small-class research. In the 1980s
political debates about the effects of small classes began to appear in
America's state legislatures, and some of these have generated trial programs
or large-scale field experiments. We
turn now to some of these latter efforts.
Indiana's
Project Prime Time. We begin with a
trial program in Indiana that is known
today as "Project Prime Time."[12] This effort began in 1981 when the Indiana
legislature allocated $300,000 for a two-year study of the effects of reducing
class size in the early grades within a sample of 24 public schools. But after two semesters the results of this
initial study were so impressive that additional funds were allocated to reduce
class sizes in all state schools beginning with first-grade classes in
the 1984-85 school year, and the program was gradually extended so as to
involve grades K-3 by 1987-88.
In
its latter form, Project Prime Time reduced class sizes to an average of 18
students per teacher (compared with more than 25 students per class before the
project began), but since this treatment was applied to all K-3 classrooms in
the state, it was not possible to compare results for small classes with a comparable
group of larger classes. However, some
schools in the state had experienced small classes before Project Prime Time
began, so it was possible to compare achievement records for the latter with
those from schools which had reduced class sizes. This comparison was made for second-grade achievement records
(sampled from six school districts that had, compared with three that had
not, reduced class sizes), and the analysts found substantially larger
gains for reading and mathematics achievement for students where class size had
been reduced.[13]
This
sounded promising, but critics soon pounced on the design of Project Prime
Time, decrying the fact that within it students had not been assigned to
experimental and control groups on a
random basis, pointing out that other changes in state school policy had also
been adopted during the project, and suggesting that teachers in the state knew
how results from the trial program were
supposed to come out, so they were motivated to make certain that small classes
did, indeed, achieve better results.
Indiana students probably did benefit from the project, but a
persuasive case for small classes had not yet been made. Clearly, a better experiment was needed.
The
Tennessee STAR Project. Such an
experiment would shortly appear in a study known today as the Tennessee STAR (Student/Teacher
Achievement Ratio) Project.
This study was arguably the largest, best-designed, field experiment
that has ever appeared for education and has provoked a great deal of
interest, so we shall describe it carefully.
(Major persons involved in organizing and promoting the STAR project
have included Charles Achilles, Jeremy Finn, Helen Pate-Bain, Tennessee State
Representative Steve Cobb, Frederick Mosteller, and Alan Krueger.)[14]
The
STAR Project was begun in the mid-1980s when the Tennessee legislature funded
an initial four-year study seeking to compare achievements for early-grade
students who would be assigned randomly to one of three treatment conditions: standard
classes (with one certificated teacher and more than 20 students); supplemented
classes (with one teacher and a full-time, non-certificated teacher's aid);
and small classes (with one teacher and about 15 students). It began with a cohort of students who
entered kindergarten in the Autumn of 1985, and the study design called for
each of those students to attend the same type of class for four years. To control for unwanted effects associated
with schools and communities, each school participating in the study was to
sponsor all three types of classes, and students and teachers within those
schools were to be assigned to treatment conditions randomly. Participating teachers were given no prior
training for the type of class they were to teach.
Primary
schools from throughout the state were invited to be in the study, but each
school had to agree to remain in it for four years and to have at least 57
kindergarten-age children available to participate (so that at least one of
each type of class could be set up within the school). Participating schools were also to receive
no additional support other than funds to hire additional teachers and
aids--both available within the state at that time--and each school had to
supply the classrooms needed for the project. These constraints meant that troubled schools and those which
disapproved of the study--as well as schools that were too small, too crowded,
or too underfunded--would not participate in it, and in fact the sample for the
first year of the project involved "only" 79 participating schools,
328 classrooms, and about 6,300 students.
Those schools came from all corners of the state, however, and
represented urban, inner-city, suburban, and rural school districts. As well, the student sample contained both
majority students and a sizable number of African-Americans as well as students
from impoverished homes who were then receiving free lunches at their schools
under federal support programs.
By
the beginning of the 1986-87 school year, the second year of the study, several
events had cropped up which meant that the sample for the project had to be
revised. For one thing, American
families move around a lot, and this meant that some families whose children
had participated in STAR classes the previous year were by then living elsewhere. For another, some students had been forced
to drop out of the study for reasons of poor health or because they had been
held back for a second year of kindergarten.
These factors meant that there were vacant seats in all three types of
STAR classes at the beginning of year two, but other families had also by then
moved into districts served by STAR schools, and their children were available
to fill those vacant seats. As well,
attending kindergarten was not then mandatory in Tennessee, and this meant that
some new students in STAR districts were actually entering school for the first
time that year.
These
factors meant that new students were placed in all three types of STAR classes
at the beginning of the second year of the study. In addition, some parents sought to move their children from one
type of STAR class to another, but these requests were resisted by school
authorities and those conducting the study (although in a few cases students
were allowed to move from a standard class to a supplemented class
or vice versa). Similar, although less
dramatic, shifts in the sample were also to take place at the beginning of the
1987-88 and 1988-89 school years. By
the end of the initial, four-year study,
then, some students had been
exposed to a given type of STAR class--small classes, for example--for
four years, but others had spent only three, two, or one year in such
classes. These shifts in the student
sample might possibly have biased STAR results, but Alan Krueger performed a
careful analysis of student migration during the four-year experiment and
concluded that such bias was minimal.[15]
To
assess how well students were doing in the STAR study, towards the end of each
year they were given the Stanford Achievement Test battery which generated
separate achievement scores for reading, word-study skills, and
mathematics. When results from these
tests were examined, a number of findings appeared. First, it quickly became clear that results from standard
classes and supplemented classes were quite similar. (Thus, few advantages appeared merely
because untrained aids were added to classes of standard size.) However, results for small classes were far
more dramatic suggesting that:
--Long-term exposure to small classes (in the early
grades) had generated substantially higher levels of achievement; and
--The extra gains associated with
long-term exposure to small classes (in the early grades) were greater the
longer students were exposed to those classes.
These
two effects are displayed in Figure 1 which expresses the advantages found in
STAR for small classes, when compared with standard classes, as months of
greater reading achievement for average students.[16] To illustrate, when comparing reading
achievement scores for students who were exposed to small versus standard
classes over the four years of the study, STAR investigators found that the
former were 0.5 months ahead by the end of the kindergarten year, 1.9 months
ahead at the end of first grade, 5.6 months ahead in second grade, and 7.1
months ahead by the end of grade three.
Note also that achievement advantages were smaller, although still
impressive, for students who were only exposed to three, two, or one year of
small classes. (Similar results
indicating small-class advantages were also obtained for word-study skills and
mathematics, although details for the three topics differed slightly.)
In addition, STAR investigators found that small-class advantages
appeared for all types of students participating in the study and were quite
similar for boys and girls. However,
those advantages were greater for impoverished students, African-American
students, and students from inner-city schools. Thus:
Although all types of students
experienced extra gains from long-term exposure to small classes (in the early
grades), those gains were greater for students who are traditionally
disadvantaged in education.
These initial STAR findings were
certainly impressive, but would they “last”?
Would students who had been exposed to small classes early on retain
their extra gains when returned to standard classes in grade four? To answer this question, the Tennessee
legislature authorized a second study to examine outcomes during subsequent
years for students who had originally attended STAR classes.
It
is useful to provide a time perspective for this second study. If they were not "held back" for
any reason, STAR students would have been in fourth grade during the 1989/90
school year, grade six in 1991/92, grade eight in 1993/ 94, and twelfth grade
in 1997/98. During most of these years
their end-of-the-year achievements were assessed by means of another test
battery, the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, which provided scores for
four topics: reading, mathematics, science, and social science. Once again, it was possible to express these
scores as months of average achievement for students from the different types
of STAR classes, and when this was done, it was found that average students who
had attended small classes were months ahead of those from standard
classes for each topic assessed at each grade level. Results for some of these years are displayed in Figure 2 which
shows, for example, that
when typical students who had
experienced one or more years of small classes in the early grades reached
grade eight, they were 4.1 months ahead in reading, 3.4 months ahead in
mathematics, 4.3 months ahead in science, and 4.8 months ahead in social
science.
Students
who had attended small classes also enjoyed other advantages in the upper
grades. They earned better grades on
average, fewer of them had dropped out of the schools they were attending, and
over the years fewer of them had been retained in grade. And once they entered high school, more
small-class students opted to learn foreign languages, more took advanced-level
courses, more were to be found in the top 25% of their classes, more graduated
from high school, and more volunteered to take the ACT and SAT exams (the major
tests now taken by high school seniors who aspire to enter colleges and
universities). Moreover, initial
published results have suggested that these upper-grade effects were also
larger for students who are traditionally disadvantaged in education.[17]
To
examine merely two of these effects, look at Figure 3 which displays the
percentages of students who, having experienced small classes or standard
classes in the early grades, opted to take the ACT or SAT when high-school
seniors.[18] As can be seen, among all students, roughly
44% of those from small classes took one or both of these tests whereas only
40% of students from standard classes did so.
However, the difference was far greater for African-American
students. In the latter case, roughly
40% of small-class students took the ACT or SAT whereas for students from
standard classes the figure was only 32%.
(Or to put this latter finding differently, early attendance in small
classes allowed black students to overcome more than half of the
traditional disadvantages they have displayed in rates for participation in the
ACT and SAT testing programs.)
These
results indicate additional STAR findings:
-- The extra gains found for
long-term attendance in small classes (in the early grades) continued to appear
when students were returned to standard classes in the upper grades;
-- Extra gains associated with
long-term attendance in small classes (in the early grades) appeared not only
for tests of measured achievement but also for other measures of success in
education; and
(Initial results indicate that) the greater
gains experienced by students from groups that are traditionally disadvantaged
for education were retained when those students were returned to standard
classes.
Taken
together, findings from the STAR project have certainly been impressive, but
lest we be tempted to conclude they are "definitive," we should also
think about questions that have been raised about STAR. For one thing, the student sample involved
in the STAR project did not quite match the American population; very few
Hispanics, Native American, and immigrant (non-English-speaking) families were
living in Tennessee in the middle-1980s, thus few students from such groups
participated in STAR. For another, news
about the greater achievement gains of small classes leaked out early during
the STAR project, and one wonders how this affected participating teachers and
why parents whose children had been assigned to standard and supplemented
classes did not then demand that their children be reassigned to small classes. And for a third, schools participating in
STAR had volunteered to do so, and it is possible that the teachers and
principals in those schools had particularly strong interests in new ideas and
innovation. Questions such as these do
not imply that we should reject findings from STAR, but they serve to remind us
that STAR project was but a single study and that other evidence would also be
needed to nail down class-size effects.
Wisconsin's
SAGE Program. As findings from STAR
have gradually become known, they have prompted class-reduction efforts in
various venues around the nation. One
type of effort has focused on the idea that Americans can provide targeted help
for disadvantaged students by increasing the number of small, early-grade
classes in neighborhoods where those students are clustered.
An
early example of such a program began in Tennessee in 1989 and was conducted
under the supervision of STAR investigators.
Within this program, class sizes were reduced for grades K-3 in 17
school districts where average family income was low and the numbers of
students receiving free lunches in schools was high. Results indicated that students from small classes in these
districts improved their achievement scores for both reading and mathematics
(when compared both with previous performances by students in those districts
and with other schools in the state), but this program did not involve control
groups of classrooms, thus it was more a demonstration program than an
experiment.
Other
projects, focused on small classes in the early grades and influenced by STAR
results, were begun in North Carolina, in 1991, within Burke and Guilford
Counties where many students were then receiving subsidized lunches. These projects compared results for small
and standard classes and found small classes to be superior for various
measures of academic achievement.[19] However, the projects were quite small in
scope.
Still
other small-class initiatives have appeared in other corners of the nation,
such as Michigan, Tennessee, Nevada, and Buffalo, New York. However, a much larger trial program,
focused on the needs of disadvantaged students and reflecting leadership by
Alex Molnar, began during the 1996/97 school year in Wisconsin.[20] This effort, termed the Student Achievement
Guarantee in Education (SAGE) Program, was designed as a
five-year pilot project for K-3 classes in school districts where at least 50%
of children were living below the poverty level. Although all schools in these districts were invited to apply for
the program, only one school in each such district was allowed to participate
at the beginning (except in Milwaukee County which was allowed up to ten SAGE
schools), and no additional schools were to be added after the program had
begun. Funding was set at $2,000 per
low-income student enrolled in SAGE classrooms. No school district applying to participate was turned down, and
30 schools (in 21 districts) began the program at the kindergarten and
first-grade levels in 1996. Second
grade was added for these schools in 1997/98 and third grade in 1998-99.[21]
In
theory, the initial SAGE program involved four interventions: (a) reducing
average class size to 15 students per
teacher for grades K-3, (b) establishing "lighted school-house"
procedures in participating schools from early morning through late evening,
(c) developing "rigorous" curricula, and (d) creating a system of
staff development and professional accountability. However, and for various reasons, only the class-size-reduction
intervention was uniformly implemented among SAGE schools. This was accomplished mainly by assigning 15
or fewer students to teachers within standard classrooms, but (because trial programs and field
experiments are done in real-world settings) in a few cases other strategies
were also employed for reducing student-teacher ratios. The latter included assigning two teachers
to larger classrooms, fitting temporary walls within large classrooms so as to
create space for "two small classrooms," and employing "floating
teachers" who provided supplementary instructional help for reading,
language arts, and mathematics instruction.
Outcomes
of the program have been assessed by comparing results for SAGE schools that
adopted small classes with results for other schools from the same districts,
having normal class sizes, that resemble SAGE schools in average family income,
prior records of achievement in reading, K-3 enrollment, and racial
composition. Findings so far available
have indicated larger gains for students from small classes--in achievement
scores for language arts, reading, and mathematics--that are roughly comparable
to those from the STAR Project. In
addition, as in STAR results, relatively larger gains have been found for
African-American students. (In
contrast, preliminary analyses suggest that assigning two teachers to larger
classrooms and employing "floating teachers" did not create larger
gains for students.)
Since
findings for the initial SAGE effort were announced, the Wisconsin legislature
has come under pressure to expand the scope of their small-class initiative,
and they have now extended the SAGE program to other primary schools in the
state. Thus, what began initially as a
small trial project has now blossomed into a statewide program that makes small
classes in the early grades available for schools serving needy students.
The
California Class Size Reduction Program.
The SAGE program began in 1996/97, and the same year saw the beginning
of a far more controversial class-size-reduction program in California.[22]
Numbers of immigrant, non-English-speaking families have soared within
"The Golden State" in recent years while per-capita fiscal support
for public education has been declining, and by 1996 California schools were
suffering many problems and were ranked last in the nation by major measures of
achievement. However, a fiscal windfall
became available that year, so in May of 1996 California's then Governor, Pete
Wilson, announced a new policy that provided $650 each per student (later
increased to $800) for all primary schools that would agree to reduce class
size in the early grades from the state-wide average of more than 28 students
per teacher to not more than 20 students in each class.
Several
problems with this program quickly surfaced.
For one, the definition it mandated for "small classes"
differed from that recommended elsewhere and investigated in the studies we
have reviewed above. Under this
definition, in fact, California primary schools were being asked to set up
"small classes" which matched the sizes of "standard
classes" in some other states! On
the other hand, some schools in California had previously been trying to cope
with 30 or more students per classroom in the early grades, so for them a reduction
to 20 students was actually an improvement.
For
a second, per-student funding for the program was clearly inadequate. (Contrast the $2,000 per student provided
under SAGE with the $650 or $800 per student being offered under the California
initiative.) Nevertheless, the lure of
additional funding has proven seductive, and most California school districts
have now applied to participate in the program. This has imposed serious consequences on poorer school districts
which have had to abolish other needed activities to find the extra funds
required to pay additional teachers to staff "small" classes. In effect, then, the program has created
(rather than solved) problems for underfunded school districts.
In
addition, in the mid-1990s California's education system was facing several
problems that threatened the class-size-reduction initiative--among them
serious overcrowding in many of its primary schools and a huge shortage of
well-trained, certificated teachers. To
cope with the first of these problems some schools have created spaces for
"small classes" by cannibalizing other needed facilities--special
education quarters, child care centers, music and art rooms, computer
laboratories, libraries, gymnasia, and teachers' lounges for example--whereas
others have had to tap into their operating budgets to buy portable classrooms
which has meant delays in paying for badly needed curricular materials or
repairs for deteriorating school buildings.
To cope with the second, many school districts have had to hire new
"teachers" for their "small classes" who were not
certificated and had no prior training for their jobs.
So
far, results from the California program have been only modest. Informal evidence suggests that most
students, parents, and teachers are pleased with the smaller classes that have
appeared in their schools. And
comparisons between the measured achievements of third-grade students from
districts that did and did not participate in early phases of the program have
indicated minor advantages for "small" classes. However, these latter effects have been
smaller than those reported for the STAR and SAGE programs.
In
many ways, the California initiative has provided a near-textbook case of how not
to reduce class size within a specific state.
Within California: no trial program was conducted to explore
class-size-reduction options; a definition of "small classes" was
adopted that contradicted prior evidence and the experiences of other states;
inadequate funds were provided to pay for the initiative; and serious problems were ignored associated
with overcrowded schools and a shortage of qualified teachers in the
state. Given such an event history, it
is small wonder that outcomes of the California initiative have been weak. Indeed, this example should serve to remind
us that smaller classes are not an educational panacea--that in order to be
effective, programs for reducing class size should be planned with care and
with thought given to the other needs and strengths of existing school systems.
What Do We Know About Small Classes
Today?
Major Conclusions
Given findings from these different
types of research, what should we conclude today about the effects of small
classes? Although the results of
individual studies are always questionable, a host of different studies have
now appeared on the effects of small classes, and those studies suggest a
number of general conclusions:
! When it is planned thoughtfully and funded
adequately, long-term exposure to small classes in the early grades generates
substantial advantages for students in American schools, and those extra gains
are greater the longer students are
exposed to those classes.
! Extra gains from small classes in the early
grades are larger when class size is reduced to less than 20 students;
! Extra gains from small classes in the early
grades are found for various academic topics and for both traditional measures
of student achievement and other
indicators of student success;
! Extra gains from small classes in the early
grades are retained when students are returned to standard-size classrooms, and
these gains are still present in the upper grades, the middle school, and the
high school years;
! Although extra gains from small classes in the
early grades appear for all types of students (and seem to apply equally to
boys and girls), they are greater for students who have traditionally been
disadvantaged for education;
! (Initial results indicate that) the greater gains
associated with small classes in the early grades for students who have
traditionally been educationally disadvantaged are also carried forward into
the upper grades and beyond; and
! Evidence for the possible advantages of small
classes in the upper grades and high school is so far inconclusive.
Tentative Theories
Why should small classes have such
impressive effects when employed in the early grades? On the face of it, to reduce the number of students in classes
during the first four years of school would seem to be a mechanical step. Why should such an action generate extra
gains for students, why should it provoke such a wide range of gains, why
should those gains persist when students are older, and why should they be
greater for students who have come from educationally disadvantaged groups?
Theories
concerning these issues have fallen largely into two camps. Most theorists have focused on the teacher
and have reasoned that small classes work their magic because interactions
between the teacher and individual students are improved in the small-class
context. To exemplify such theories, we
turn first to Frederick Mosteller who argued that:
Reducing
[the size of classes in the early grades] reduces the distractions in the room
and gives the teacher more time to devote to each child.... When children first come to school, they are
confronted with many changes and much confusion. They come into this new setting from a variety of homes and
circumstances. Many need training in
paying attention, carrying out tasks, and interacting with others in a working
situation. In other words, when
children start school, they need to learn to cooperate with others, to learn to
learn, and generally to get oriented to being students. (1995, p. 125)
Thus,
reducing class size in the early grades "works," at least in part,
because it is in these grades that children are first learning about the rules
of standard classroom culture and forming ideas about whether they can cope
with education. Many children have
difficulty with these tasks, and their efforts are greatly aided when they can
interact with teachers on a one-to-one basis--a process more likely to take
place when the class is small.
(One-to-one interaction allows teachers to learn more about individual
students and their needs, thus to help students to develop more useful habits
and ideas about themselves and their abilities.) In addition, teachers in small classes have higher morale, and
this enables them to provide a more supportive environment for initial student
learning. But learning how to cope well
with school is basic to educational success, and those students who solve this
task when young will thereafter carry broad advantages, in the form of more
effective habits and more positive self-concepts, that will serve them in later
years of education (and presumably the wider world beyond).
The
need to master this task confronts children from all walks of life, but it is
often a more daunting challenge for children who come from impoverished homes,
ethnic groups that have suffered from discrimination or are unfamiliar with
American classroom culture, or urban communities where home and community
problems interfere with education.
Thus, children from such backgrounds have traditionally had more
difficulty coping with classroom education, and they are more likely to be helped
when class size is reduced.
This
theory also helps to explain why reducing class size may not generate
significant advantages if introduced in the upper grades. Older students have long since developed
both good and bad habits for coping with standard classrooms and evolved both
effective and ineffective self-concepts relevant to academic subjects, and
these are not likely to change just because class size is reduced. Thus, if reducing class size has effects at
all in the upper grades, those effects would presumably reflect factors other
than the ones suggested in this first theory.
The
theory also suggests limits for the extra gains one should expect from small
classes in the early grades. Clearly,
students are likely to learn more and develop better attitudes towards
education if they are exposed to well-trained and enthusiastic teachers,
appropriate and challenging curricula, and physical environments in their
classrooms and schools that support learning.
If conditions such as these are not also present, then to reduce class
size in the early grades will presumably have but little impact. Thus, when planning programs for reducing
class size, we should also think about the professional development of teachers
who will participate in them and the educational and physical contexts in which
those programs will be placed.
A
second group of theories designed to account for class-size effects focuses,
not on the teacher, but rather on the classroom environment and student
conduct. It has been known for years
that discipline and classroom management problems interfere with subject matter
instruction. It is argued that such
problems are less prominent in small classes, and this means that in them
students are less often withdrawn or obstreperous and are more likely to be
engaged in learning. Moreover, teacher
stress should be less likely in small classes, so in the small-class context
teachers can provide more support for student learning. In addition, studies of instructional groups
within classrooms have found that the small groups can provide an environment
for learning which is quite different from that of the large classroom. (In brief, small groups can create
supportive contexts in which learning is less competitive and students are
encouraged to form supportive relationships with one another.)
Theories
such as these suggest that the small-class environment is structurally
different from that of the large class and that this structural difference
generates conditions favoring education.
Among others, within small classes we should expect to find less time
spent on management, higher levels of student participation, more time spent on
instruction, more teacher support for learning, and more positive relations
among students. And these processes should
lead both to greater subject-matter learning and to more positive attitudes
about education among students. And
again, these effects should be greater for students from groups that are
traditionally disadvantaged for education and more substantial in the early
grades (when students are just learning to cope with classrooms).
The
fact that two types of theories have been stressed here does not mean that
these theories are mutually exclusive.
On the contrary, both--as well as related theories--may provide partial
insights about what typically happens in small classes and why those
small-class environments help so many students.[23] It is also useful to note that such theories
could be assessed directly by collecting other types of evidence, particularly
from observational studies that compare the details of interaction in
early-grade classes of various sizes and surveys of the attitudes and
self-concepts of students who have been exposed to those classes. Unfortunately, good studies of these latter
types have been difficult to find.[24]
In
addition, other research is needed to explore teaching strategies that are most
effective in small classes and to study small-class effects in social settings
and among ethnic groups for which evidence is so far skimpy.
Policy Implications and Actions to Date
Given the strength of findings from
research on small classes, why haven't those findings provoked more reform
efforts? Although many state
legislatures have debated or begun reform initiatives related to class
size, most primary schools in
American today do not operate under policies that mandate small classes
for early grades. Why not?
Several
reasons may be suggested for this lack of impact, among them ignorance
about the issue, confusion about the
results of class-size research, prejudices against poor and minority children,
ineffective dissemination of results from research, and the politicizing of
debates about class-size effects and their implications.[25]
Regarding
the latter, it is easy to detect political agenda in recent national debates
about class size with Democrats generally favoring class-size reduction and
Republicans generally hostile to them.
In his 1998 State of the Union Address, President Bill Clinton
declaimed:
Now we must
make our public elementary and secondary schools the best in the world.... And every parent already knows the key--good
teachers and small-class size in the early grades.... We will reduce class size in the first, second, and third grades
to an average of 18 students in a class.[26]
Responding to this call, the federal
congress set up a modest program, aimed at certain urban school districts with
high concentrations of poverty, which provided funds for hiring additional
teachers during the 1999 and 2000 fiscal years. This program enabled some of those districts to cut class sizes
in the early grades, and informal results from those cites indicated gains in
student achievement.[27]
In
contrast, Republicans have been lukewarm to extending this program--some
apparently believing that it is ineffective or is merely a scheme for enhancing
the coffers of teachers' unions. As a result, Republicans have generally
welcomed President George W. Bush's call for an alternative federal program
focused on high-stakes achievement tests and using results from those tests to
sanction schools if they do not perform "adequately," and the
education reform bill passed by the Congress in 2001 was largely concerned with
the latter.
However,
the major problems standing in the way of reducing class sizes would seem to be
practical ones. In many cases, extra
teachers would have to be hired if class sizes were cut, and--given the looming
shortage of qualified teachers to serve our growing public school
populations--it may be difficult to find those extra teachers let alone the
funds to pay their salaries.
Furthermore, many schools would also have to find or create extra rooms
to house the additional classes created by small-class programs, and this would
require either modifying school buildings or acquiring temporary classroom
structures.
In
many cases, meeting needs such as these would mean increasing the size of
public school budgets, a step abhorred by fiscal conservatives and those who
are critical of public education, so the latter have been tempted to argue that
other reforms would be more "effective" and would cost less than
reducing class sizes. In response to
such claims, various studies have been published trying to estimate the costs
of class-size-reduction programs or comparing their estimated costs with those
of other proposed reforms.
Unfortunately, studies of these types must make questionable
assumptions,[28]
so the results of their efforts have not been persuasive, and as Charles
Achilles points out, some schools can cut class sizes in the early grades by
merely reallocating resources.[29]
Nevertheless,
reducing the size of classes for students in the early grades often requires
additional funds, although sizable educational benefits result when this step
is taken. Students from all walks of
life reap long-lasting advantages, but students from educationally
disadvantaged groups benefit particularly.
Indeed, if we are to judge by available evidence, no other
educational reform has yet been studied that would provide such striking
benefits, so debates about reducing class sizes are basically disputes about
values. If Americans are truly
committed to providing quality public education and a level playing field for
children regardless of background, once they learn about the advantages of
small classes in the early grades, they will presumably find the funds needed
to reduce class size.
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