SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

The Class Size Myth

There are all sorts of myths out there about education, for example:

• The Money Myth - schools perform poorly because they are underfunded;
• The Helplessness Myth - some students are so disadvantaged or immature or emotionally troubled that it’s impossible for schools to give them a solid academic education;
• The Inconclusive Research Myth - the evidence on the effectiveness of school choice is mixed and inconclusive; and
• The Draining Myth - school choice harms public schools.

Another of the useful books available for borrowing from our library is Education Myths: What special-interest groups want you to believe about our schools - and why it isn’t so by Jay P. Greene. This book debunks 18 education myths. The excerpt is taken from the Class Size Myth chapter (pp. 49-57).

“Just about everybody agrees on the Class Size Myth: that smaller classes would produce much better results and that class size reduction is a badly needed reform. In fact, the research that shows benefits from class size reduction finds effects that are smaller than most people realize, and there is some reason to doubt whether class size reduction really produces even these benefits. There are also problems with implementing class size reduction on a broad scale because of the limited teaching labor pool - what works in a small, controlled experiment may not work when applied wholesale to millions of students because there may not be enough good teachers to go around.

“What’s more, any serious reduction in class sizes would require us to invest a very large amount of money, so we could only produce smaller classes by taking resources away from other educational priorities such as teachers’ salaries….

“In the end, even if all the claims made to promote the Class Size Myth were right, improving student performance by reducing class sizes is a little bit like driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco by way of Pittsburgh. Given that there are other reform strategies that are more promising and less costly, the modest benefits of class size reduction simply can’t justify the very large sacrifices that would have to be made.”