Search Institute

It’s always instructive when topics that usually cross our paths in a theoretical way or only in headlines actually enter directly into our own experience. I’m smack dab in the middle of one of those moments right now. My third grader’s school just announced that due to budget cuts his class sizes are increasing to 33 next year.

My reaction to this news is wide and varied. First, going from 31 to 33 is sort of like finding out your car blew up but at least they were able to save the hubcaps. Let’s face it – anything in the 30s is much higher than the ideal.

But my reaction to this runs even deeper. Class size is one of those issues most apt to raise the ire of community members and parents. And rightfully so. But if you read education research for a living (as I do) I’m left pondering whether or not this hand wringing is misplaced.

I think back to this article my Malcolm Gladwell that I blogged about in January. In the article, Gladwell writes the following:

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.

And there’s plenty more research in the academic realm that supports this claim even further.

I KNOW that, so then why does increasing class size still make my brow furrow? First of all, I taught for 12 years. I know the affect that an overstocked classroom had on my teaching, my relationships with students and the profession, and my overall enjoyment of the work. So this is personal.

I also know that more than anything, I want my boys to have really, really good teachers. Ideally, they’d have really, really good teachers with small class sizes. But I want them mostly to have really, really good teachers. This naturally turns my attention away from my own kids and towards the educator. Lost in this conversation about class size is the horrible toll these increases take on the teacher. There is inevitable decreases in positive self-image as educators struggle to perform their job as well as they’d like. There’s decreased daily energy as managing the classroom takes more and more effort. And there’s decreased ability to create positive relationships with young people – the most pivotal and impactful quality of a great teacher.

So as I personally engage in this conversation as it now affects my own children, I know that there’s more to this conversation than simply my own desires for a small class size. I need to seek a mindfulness between good education policy, school funding, leading research, and strong advocacy for the effective intersections of all the above.