Completion of this year’s legislative session is on hold for the moment, and the just-completed 2015-17 state budget faces a $2 billion hole, because of a late-breaking dispute over funding for Initiative 1351, the class-size reduction initiative.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the House voted to suspend the initiative, bringing the budget into balance. In the Senate, however, Republicans say some Democratic senators failed to honor a promise to similarly suspend Initiative 1351 as part of passing the overall budget. A two-thirds vote is needed to suspend the initiative and balance the budget.
While the political drama plays out, I thought it would be useful to review the research on the underlying policy question – Does spending on class-size reduction improve student learning, narrow the achievement gap and lower drop-out rates for public school children?
The findings are clear. Extensive research shows that reducing class sizes is not the most important factor in improving student learning. Researchers from think tanks on the left, right and center, the Center for American Progress, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Brookings Institute have found no improvement in student learning from class-size reductions. Here are some examples.
In the 1990s, California and Florida embarked on large-scale programs to reduce class sizes. The efforts did not succeed in improving student learning. In California, the class-size policy forced district administrators to hire unqualified teachers, causing the quality of classroom instruction to fall. The lack of effectiveness of reducing class sizes has been recognized in states that adopted a class-size mandate. School districts in California and Florida have sought and obtained waivers from class-size rules. In Florida, lawmakers passed legislation in 2011 exempting school districts from class-size caps.
Overall, the billions of dollars spent in the two states on class-size reduction efforts failed to yield positive results for student learning. Details and sources are provided in our study “Citizens Guide to Initiative 1351: To Reduce Class Sizes.”
To give an international example, South Korea has average class sizes of 36, yet these students routinely outperform U.S. students on assessment tests. The best U.S. high school students routinely perform near the bottom of the rankings of the 21 nations participating in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), although class sizes in other countries are often larger.
It turns out that teacher quality, not class size, is the most important factor in student learning. Any benefit that might be gained from reducing class sizes is minimal compared to the demonstrated educational benefit of giving every student access to a high-quality teacher.
Research shows that a good teacher provides about a year and a half of learning to students, while ineffective teachers provide only half a year of learning over the same time period. The difference between a good and a bad teacher is one whole year of learning for students. Further, students assigned to the class of a bad teacher three years in a row may never catch up.
Importantly, reducing the number of students in a class does not transform a bad teacher into a good one. Students in a larger class with a good teacher are better off than students in a smaller class with a bad teacher.
Political negotiations in Olympia will take their own course, and lawmakers will no doubt resolve their differences before too long. In the meantime, we should not expect that spending more on reducing class sizes will bring meaningful benefit to children assigned to low-performing public schools.