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Benefits of Smaller Class Size

In the mid-1980s, reports began to surface about the failures of American public education. Since that time, educational experts and the general public have sought answers to the problem. There were two general motives for seeking answers to the problem. One focus was on searching for ways to improve the quality of educational output. A second focus was on finding convenient scapegoats to take the blame for educational failure. One of the factors that surfaced in these searches was class size. The term "class" refers to an individual school classroom. The term "size" refers to the number of students in a classroom.

The class size factor served each group of searchers equally well. For those people seeking to improve educational performance, it appeared obvious that a lower student-teacher ratio would equate to higher performance. For people seeking a scapegoat, high student-teacher ratios were a godsend. The high ratios absolved both teachers and students from responsibility for poor performance.

Problems arose, however, in implementing policies mandating smaller student-teacher ratios. The first major problem was cost. Reducing student-teacher ratios required more classrooms and more teachers. To justify the expense of such a policy, it was necessary to have evidence of the validity of the concept in practice. The findings of research studies investigating the impact of class size on educational performance tended to be mixed. While most studies found some benefits from smaller class sizes, there were important exceptions (Heise, 2002).

Further, even among the studies that found beneficial effects of smaller class sizes, other issues arose. First, the study results varied in relation to how low the student-teacher ratio must be to produce significant improvements in educational performance. Second, the study results varied in relation to what areas of study (e.g., mathematics, language, and so forth) were...

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Benefits of Smaller Class Size. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:11, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705666.html