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Sydney Rodgers
Mrs. Cramer
College Comp 1 Honors
13 December 2019
Downsizing Class Size

Sitting in a school at a desk for seven hours a day is hard for a child, and as the United

States continues to grow in population, the seats begin to fill faster. The classes are getting

bigger and people want to know how this is affecting the education of future generations. Can an

excess of students in one room make it harder for kids to learn? This is a topic that has been

researched extensively over multiple years. It has been highly financed, researched, and

experimented on throughout that span of time. The following sources have been analyzed to

collect research on the funding, effects on students and classroom environment and the data

found when class sizes are reduced.

The first initiative to fund the push towards smaller classes was in 1999, the United States

Federal Government changed its budget to include 1.2 billion dollars to hire 30,000 teachers

(“Class Size”). Employing more teachers would lower the typical student to teacher ratio. This

means there would be less students per teacher, resulting in more attention per student.

Ehrenberg and “Lawsuit” both explain that over seven years under this new budget, twelve

billion dollars would be used to gain teaching staff in hopes of lowering class size as a result.

This shows how many people are involved in the movement to reduce the number of students in

classes. The effort is being financed through the government, but others are taking action that

does not require money to hire extra educators.

In correspondence with the strong drive to narrow the number of students per class,

schools throughout America have lowered their class sizes and have shared the results. These

schools have observed changes in social engagement, behavior and noise (Ehrenberg). Less

students in one room most often leads to a decrease in disruptive behaviors and noise. This

allows students to do work and for teachers to manage the students. A more peaceful

environment makes it easier for the pupils to work efficiently and obtain more information. With

fewer behaviors to correct the teacher can focus on helping the students learn. The students will

therefore perform better in school. It is also seen that students participate more in both class and

social activities when the level of peers is reduced. When there are not as many people in a

classroom, individuals tend to speak up, be more involved and vocal. The goal for smaller sized

groups is eighteen or below. This specific number of students is where studies have shown that

differences begin to be detected.

In contrast, not all schools do it just because they believe it will improve performance,

some schools use it as an experiment. A major class size experiment was conducted in

Tennessee. It was called the S.T.A.R experiment. The acronym stands for Student/Teacher

Achievement Ratio. An abundance of other schools has based their decision to lower class

groups due to the findings of this analysis. Results from this specific examination where used to

suport reseach in Ehrenberg, “Lawsuit”, “Class-Size”, and Finn. In Tennessee they did not make

all their classes smaller (Finn). In this experiment they only used grades kindergarten through

fourth grade. Once the small class students left the fourth grade, they entered normal, larger sized

classes. They also had kids in the same grades who were in larger sized classes throughout their

K-4 education. The results were as predicted, the class with fewer students performed better than

the larger classes. It was observed that moving students to smaller classes after fourth grade had
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little to no effect on their learning and performance (“Lawsuit). Finn and “Class-Size" explain

that in the Tennessee experiment they followed the small group through high school and they

consistently had better performance than the others who did not have the lower level education in

small classes.

In conclusion, funding, effects on students and classroom environment and data found on

the size of classes in public schools show that small classes have a positive impact in a child's

learning, specifically in their early years of schooling. From the amount of funding we can see

that this is a major decision for the educators of the world. They are making the effort to lower

class sizes in order to improve learning in schools and building a better education for future

generations. Students who have gotten the chance to experience the revolution of smaller

classroom groups have shown not just higher grades but higher levels of social interaction and

classroom participation. This is supported by the experiments performed on the issue. The data

shows better grades and performance in school over all throughout the tested individuals’

education. An abundant amount of resources points to smaller classes being superior to the

commonly seen large groups of students taught in most of the schools across America today.
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Works Cited

"Class-Size Reduction Effort Stirs Controversy." Issues & Controversies, Infobase, 3 Sept. 1999,

https://icof.infobaselearning.com/recordurl.aspx?ID=8401. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019.

Ehrenberg, Ronald G., et al. “Class Size and Student Achievement.” Psychological Science in

the Public Interest, vol. 2, no. 1, May 2001, pp. 1–30, doi:10.1111/1529-1006.003.

Finn, Jeremy D., and Charles M. Achilles. “Tennessee’s Class Size Study: Findings,

Implications, Misconceptions.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, vol. 21, no.

2, June 1999, pp. 97–109, doi:10.3102/01623737021002097.

"Lawsuit Over City Class Size Can Move Forward." NYTimes.com Blogs, 15 July 2010. Gale In

Context: High School, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A231626567/SUIC?

u=pl1949&sid=SUIC&xid=e8d2935e. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019.