News You May Not Have Heard

California Report Raises Question: Does Class Size Matter?

At the same time a budget was passed in South Carolina that appropriates more money to reduce class size and hire more teachers, a taxpayer-funded report examined California’s $4 billion experiment with reducing class size in the early grades. The study found that class size reduction has resulted in only meager academic gains for third graders—although the initiative has meant the hiring of more than 23,000 additional teachers, or a 38 percent boost in the K-3 workforce. Moreover, researchers acknowledge that the class-size experiment cannot be credited with single-handedly boosting student performance.

The study found that 34 percent of third-graders placed in smaller classes scored above the national average, while 32 percent in larger classes exceeded the national average. In "language arts," 36 percent of children in smaller classes exceeded the national average, while 33 percent of children in larger classes exceeded the national average, and in math, 38 percent of students in smaller classes exceeded the national average, compared with 35 percent in the larger classes.

The California researchers specifically compared their data to the findings of a similar study conducted in Tennessee. They point out that despite Tennessee findings that poor and minority students benefited almost twice as much from smaller classes, that is not evident in California.

Sean Duffy, president of the Commonwealth Foundation, points out, "While cutting class size cannot yet be held out as a guarantee of dramatic academic result, it absolutely produces big and instantaneous gains for the teacher unions. Putting 23,500 new teachers on the payroll produces a solid, new dues stream for the unions—and there is little discussion of eliminating these new teaching positions if the class-size experiment fails to produce the benefits to match the billions being invested by California taxpayers.

From The Insider, published by The South Carolina Policy Education Foundation, July 1999. Available from The South Carolina Policy Council, 1323 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC 29201.
Used with permission.

Reprinted from Balance, a publication of the School of Education, Bob Jones University. Used with permission of Bob Jones University. Please write BJU Press, for permission to reproduce this article.