When I grew up, we routinely were in classes of about 30. I mean, I guess so; what kid counts the other kid in their class? I never did. But having a teacher for a mom, I'm pretty sure that my classes were typically around 30. So when my own kids went to private school and had classes of sometimes as few as 8 kids, topping out at 23, I thought that certainly was different from my own experience. But smaller classes are better, right? Easier for the teacher in terms of how much attention they can lavish on each child? I always thought so. And now there's proof. Sort of.
Beginning in 1985, 12,000 Tennessee kids were studied as part of Project STAR in Virginia. The kids were randomly assigned classes of different sizes from kindergarten through third grade. Some kids were in classes of 13-17 students and others were in classes of 23-25 kids. Teachers were also randomly assigned, and the kids were tracked in the four years of kindergarten through third grade in an effort to determine the effect of class size on educational attainment.
Then they went a whole next step: since the differences in educational attainment were considerabe, researchers decided to use that information to create a "computer model of a hypothetical group of 5-year-olds exposed for four
years to small classes (of 13 to 17) and then followed until the age of
65. The researchers calculated projected earnings, welfare payments, and
crime costs based on what we know about the relationship between these
outcomes and educational attainment. They also drew on statistics
relating degree of education to quality-of-life scores and age-specific
mortality. And they accounted for the cost of maintaining smaller class
sizes."
What they found, at least through the model, was that the kids exposed to smaller classes lived longer. And there was a net savings to the state of about $200,000 for each kid, meaning that the kids were healthier and made more money and therefore could pay more taxes.
There's not a lot pf hypothesizing here as to exactly what it was about the smaller classes that made kids healthier in the long term. Could those benefits be derived, for instance, another way? I'm curious about this.
And then there's the problem with my own kids' experience in smaller classes. Although they're in public school right now, the idea in the Waldorf schools they attended was that smaller classes were NOT better; in fact, a class size of somewhere in the 20's was preferred and my son's wee class of 6-8 (it fluctuated) was considered too small and difficult to teach.
So who's right? I'll be interested in seeing more about this, if we ever do, as time goes on.
