The wealth of information on class size can bewilder school board members when the time comes to sit down and design a policy for class-size reduction. No single policy fits the circumstances of all school districts. For example, a district that already has an average class size of 21 students in the elementary grades will have less work to do than a district whose classes average 27.
These guidelines, expressed in the form of questions board members and district officials can ask themselves, borrow from the recommendations of Joan McRobbie, Jeremy Finn, and Patrick Harman and other authorities whose works are cited.
Although the guidelines are offered with local school boards foremost in mind, the issues they address can also stimulate discussion among legislators who are designing state-level policy on class-size reduction.
Funding
Your district has applied for and received the funds to design a CSR policy, but how do you decide where it all goes?
McRobbie and colleagues suggest targeting minority and low-income children in primary grades. Because research across the board demonstrates these children stand the most to gain from smaller class size, allocating funds to them may prove to be the most effective use of resources.
What factors other than class size should govern the allocation of funds?
Don’t lose sight of why class size is being downsized–to raise student achievement. Small class size is not an end in itself. Consider setting aside money for community meetings, teacher training, and curriculum planning. Flexibility is also important at the local as well as district level. Every school will be different in the way it needs to use funds.
If state and federal funding are inadequate to meet district goals, can any other sources of funding be tapped?
In schools with a high proportion of low-income families, Title I funds have become a common means of reducing class size. In Burke County, North Carolina, the district decided to use state funds originally allocated for full-time teacher assistants to fund regular teaching positions instead.
Other districts have implemented creative scheduling so that class size is reduced for a portion of the day. For example, the Oak Park Plan requires all teachers in the school to teach 15 students in core academic areas for three hours a day. For the remaining 2.5 hours, students are taught in regular class sizes of approximately 25 students.
Achilles and Price (1999) recommend examining programs in the district to determine if all currently funded programs are still a high need, or if some could be reduced or eliminated altogether to free up funds. They also suggest increasing the size of some classes at the secondary level as a tradeoff for lowering class sizes in the early elementary grades.
Will the funding be flat or wealth-adjusted? In other words, does each student receive the same allocation of funds, or is the allocation adjusted by a formula?
California’s program allows $800 of incentive money for every student in a 20 to 1 primary class. Some districts already had smaller classes and did not have trouble meeting the 20:1 cap within the dollars allocated. Many urban districts, on the other hand, were forced to dig deeply into their own funds to hire enough teachers and create classrooms, because the allocation of $800 per student did not meet their needs. This across-the-board rate created some problems for districts that had a difficult time hiring qualified teachers, or for those that had no way of creating space for new classrooms.
Formula-based funding can help offset the kinds of inequities California’s school districts encountered. For example, Utah’s formula initially allotted 80 percent of the state’s K-6 CSR funding on a per-pupil basis, with 20 percent reserved for districts with rapid growth.
Facilities
Will existing facilities accommodate the number of new classrooms that will be needed?
School officials across the nation have said inadequate facilities are a big problem as they have tried to implement CSR policies. The shortage of facilities in California was the single most important deterrent to implementing CSR fully and quickly (Bohrnstedt and Stecher).
One solution to cramped space is to purchase portable classrooms, as many California schools have done. In a search for 18,000 new classrooms, California school districts also converted libraries, music rooms, computer and science labs, childcare centers, faculty lounges, and auditorium stages into primary classrooms, temporarily or permanently. California school officials used many other strategies to cope with a sudden shortage of facilities. They reconfigured some schools by moving sixth-graders to middle schools, switched to year-round scheduling, changed school boundaries, remodeled schools, cancelled inter- and intra-district transfers, and reopened schools previously closed.
Teaching
A hallmark of a successful CSR policy, according to McRobbie and colleagues, is to make better teaching and learning the cornerstone. Here are the key questions to consider:
Will there be enough qualified teachers for the number of new classrooms created?
Some districts have been able to fund a few extra full-time teaching positions by redistributing resources that had been designated for hiring other personnel. In cases such as California, these very stipulations were made within the legislation that authorized CSR (McRobbie and others 1998).
Are existing policies on emergency or alternative credentialing consistent with the district’s goals?
Will there be a shortage of specially trained teachers, such as in the field of special education?
What new programs in professional development must be offered to equip teachers with the skills they will need to gain the greatest advantage from their smaller classes?
If the district will need to hire many new teachers, some of them inexperienced or unprepared, the policy ought to include provisions for training, mentors, and other resources. Even veteran teachers may need more knowledge and skills if the CSR initiative is accompanied by higher standards, new assessments, and/or accountability measures.
Other Issues
Will CSR be optional or mandatory?
A seemingly optional program can, in reality, be mandatory if districts are reluctant to reject money after experiencing cut after cut, or if CSR’s great popularity creates a pressure to adopt class-size reductions.
Will there be a rigid cap on class size, or is the number of students per class flexible within a range?
Districts have options such as capping the number of students per teacher, specifying an average across a school or district, or creating differing levels of reductions for different types of schools, such as a requirement that class sizes be lower in high-poverty schools.
Will small classes be self-contained or team-taught?
In Nevada, state CSR policy allows the 16:1 ratio in first and second grades to be achieved by having two teachers in a classroom of 32 students. However, many worry that team-taught classes are not as effective as self-contained classes.
What will determine the scale of CSR, that is, the span of grades that will be affected?
Studies indicate that smaller classes produce the maximum benefits in kindergarten and grade 1. Research on California’s CSR initiative suggests that if class size is reduced in phases, such as first in grade 1, then 2, then 3, the transition will be less confusing than a large-scale approach or one that moves too quickly (Achilles, January 1999).
How will the school district evaluate the results of class-size reduction?
In seeking to determine whether the CSR policy is accomplishing what was intended, or whether the program needs to be revised, policymakers need to consider more than pupil-teacher ratios. Obtain data on achievement, attendance, and other outcomes. Are there more interactions between teachers and students? Do teachers have more time to plan and execute worthwhile learning activities?
Is the policy compatible with other district objectives?
Policymakers will naturally want to make sure that CSR is part of a coherent set of policies that seek academic achievement for all students. Researchers who are taking part in California’s CSR Research Consortium (Bohrnstedt and Stecher 1999) urge policymak-ers to consider how CSR will interact with current education policies and reforms, as well as new ones. Will the policy benefit all students and schools equally? Some districts are wary of putting so many resources into CSR that they would find it difficult to implement other needed educational reforms.
The above set of questions, while far from comprehensive, should provide policymakers with a good starting point in creating dialogue with other administrators, teachers, parents, and the community about what their CSR policy should look like. EH
