May 28, 2004
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It’s Class Size, Stupid! Er, Wait, No
Laura at Apt. 11D critiques a New York Times article that proposes this thesis: “The secret to quality public education has never been a big mystery. You need good teachers and you need small enough classes so those teachers can do their work. Period.”
First, she says this:
I’m not going to get into small class size today. There are contradicting studies out there, and I’m not sure who to believe. But I do think that a good teacher can handle a class of 22, as easily as a class of 17. If you have a finite amount of dollars, then concentrate on the teachers, rather than on class size.
And then Harry Brighouse from Crooked Timber says this:
As Laura points out, the research on class size is completely inconclusive.
And I’m thinking, WTF? I was totally down with that NYT thesis!
A quick Eduwonk check reveals more the-world-ain’t-like-you-thought-it-was material (under “Size Matters”):
Through the looking glass? The evidence on California’s experiment with mandated class size reduction indicates that it has adversely impacted teacher quality for poor and minority students and created unintended consequences for school districts. Yet you wouldn’t know that reading Michael Winerip’s New York Times column last week. Winerip extols the virtues of California’s class size reduction initiative and pimps a similar measure for New York City while ignoring documented problems the California initiative’s utter inflexibility created by exacerbating the state’s already severe school overcrowding and teacher shortages. In fact, Winerip argues that inflexibility is the key to the benefits he sees in reducing class size. But he’s got it backwards. All else equal, smaller classes are better, but when reducing class size requires hiring additional teachers, particularly where there is scarcity, the net impact can be negative, particularly for disadvantaged students. That’s not a reason not to pursue these policies, but policymakers should be wary of inflexibility and proceed with their eyes wide open to the costs and benefits, not with blinders on.
And finally, a RAND study (and don’t even tell me you’re gonna mess with RAND) says of California’s class-size reduction program:
A second problem seen in California was a decrease in the qualification level of the kindergarten through third teacher workforce. The largest decrease were in schools with higher concentrations of low-income or minority students.
Okay, okay, I’m convinced — one of my articles of faith has been cruelly edited. And so the question becomes: How do you get better teachers? Laura has suggestions.
Plus: Look at the Crooked Timber comments on this topic! There’s… there’s public discourse on the Web!
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Comments
An idea underlying virtually every effort to improve teacher quality, but which often gets lost in the debate, is that superior teaching depends upon the attraction and retention of a superior type of teacher. So the real question is: How can we create conditions in which good teachers thrive, and bad teachers fail, either directly or by being crowded out?
We used to have a great method for this: we denied educational and professional opportunities to women. When women became doctors and lawyers and professors and entrepreneurs, they stopped becoming teachers. The teaching profession has suffered from the brain drain of its best and brightest ever since. (You can probably also blame the GI-era and baby-boom explosion of college education as well, for expanding college enrollment and with it, positions within the academy.)
So in the absence of reactionary countermeasures, we're going to have to do something genuinely progressive. (Whew! *wipes brow*.) This includes taking measures to reduce class size. It's true that reduced class size isn't a panacea to solve every student's problems. To some degree it's not about solving students' problems at all, but teachers' -- and this isn't such a bad thing.
This is especially true if you look at the short-term results of experiments like California's. Of course California couldn't find top-flight teachers to fill its new positions. It takes time to make a new type of worker out of whole cloth. The question is whether, over the long term, reduced class size can likewise reduce teacher burnout and eventually attract gifted young people to the profession -- which is what we want, after all.
The problem isn't the 17/22 student divide separating good public schools from *really* good public schools. It's the horror stories of 35 or more students, without enough books, desks, or materials to support them, when 10 or more are special-education students, and another 10 are behavior problems, and between five and a dozen get shuffled in and out over the course of the year.
As long as stories like those filter to the young, talented, and versatile, the YTVs are going to seek employment elsewhere. But if things begin to change, then you might see them coming back.
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