In school, size doesn't matter
National Post
Thu 15 Sep 2005
Page: A18
Section:
Editorials
Byline:
Source: National Post

It is a shibboleth of modern education policy that fewer
students per class equals better student achievement. Last spring, 76% of
Canadians told pollsters the top priority for their provincial education
bureaucrats should be reducing class size.

In July, 35% of Ontario teachers said fewer pupils per class was the most
helpful education reform they could think of -- 43% among teachers with less
than 10 years teaching experience. Last month, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty
committed $450-million over three years to reduce the number of pupils in
kindergarten to Grade 3 classes to 20 or fewer; Alberta committed $150-million
to the same end last year.

Yet remarkably, there is almost no research to support the movement to reduce
class size.

Indeed, all the money being poured into smaller classes may be making matters
worse. The one factor that matters most in children's achievement at school is
teacher quality.

Class size does not matter nearly as much as the skill, preparation and
intelligence of the educator at the front of the room. However, in the rush to
meet artificial and arbitrary class-size targets, provinces and school boards
may be hiring hundreds of new teachers with less than stellar credentials. By
allowing themselves to be seduced by a numbers game, politicians, school
administrators and teachers' unions may actually be increasing the chances
students will fall behind rather than improving their odds of success.

Currently, P.E.I., Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Alberta
all have policies limiting class sizes. British Columbia actually has
legislation capping enrolment in classes from kindergarten through Grade 3.

Yet in a C.D.
Howe Institute
study entitled School Class Size: Smaller Isn't Better, released this summer,
researchers contend "there is no solid base of empirical evidence to show that
smaller classes improve student achievement." There may be "modest" gains in
kindergarten and Grade 1, but these are largely social advances, not academic
ones. And they are short-lived: In the second year after class sizes are
reduced, almost no improvements are observed, and what gains were realized in
the first year disappear by Grades Four or Five, by which time students whose
early primary classes were larger have erased all differences between themselves
and their small-class counterparts.

It is the same story in study after study. In his 1994 book, Canada's
Educational Crisis: Problems, Causes and Solutions, former teacher, school
administrator and education professor, Mark Holmes wrote "class size is ...
essentially irrelevant to meaningful educational reform. It probably makes sense
to increase rather than decrease class size in more areas," allowing teachers to
better prepare for fewer, if larger, classes.

This finding was confirmed by the C.D. Howe study, which
determined that the best scores on high school reading, science and math tests
were attained by students in classes with between 30 and 34 students. According
to the study, the millions of dollars spent on lower enrolment per class "could
be better spent on other educational policies, such as continuous teacher
training, which, unlike class size reduction, [has] been shown to improve
student performance."

Last March, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger advanced a number of
school reforms aimed at removing incompetent and ineffective teachers from the
classroom. District funding and teachers' pay raises would be tied to
performance and automatic tenure would be all but eliminated.

The unionists who lobby for money for smaller classes, and the Canadian
politicians who bow to their demands, need to take a lesson from Mr.
Schwarzenegger.

Edition: National
Story Type: Business; Editorial

Length: 573 words