BURLINGAME - Three new studies - two about California's public schools - released this week show that class size reduction programs can make a major difference in student achievement and remain hugely popular with parents and teachers.
The studies should make the California school districts now looking at dismantling class size reduction programs think twice, said Wayne Johnson, president of the 330,000-member California Teachers Association.
"Teachers and parents know that smaller classes help improve student achievement," Johnson said. "These studies should make school districts fight for retaining their class size reduction programs - not hurry to kill them in the name of saving money."
Johnson also noted that Gov. Davis' proposed state budget would bring $200 million in new federal funding for the state's program to reduce class sizes. CTA led a strong campaign that resulted in legislation in 1996 to limit class sizes to a maximum of 20 students in kindergarten through third grade - the largest such program in the nation.
Johnson said CTA is pleased that a state-mandated study released today by a group of think tanks is recommending that the program continue in the state. But he rejected a recommendation by the Class Size Reduction Research Consortium that school districts be given the option of exceeding the 20-student cap because "once you do that, the whole program could unravel."
Highlights of the three new studies released this week:
- The CSR Research Consortium Study: California's program should continue and will likely remain a priority because the state's elementary school class sizes are among the largest in the country. The four-year study also calls for California to create pilot programs using even smaller class sizes for low income and minority students.
- The Public Policy Institute of California Study: Since the state's class size reduction program began, five of the state's largest school districts - Fresno, Long Beach, Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco - reported significant test score gains. The PPIC study found third-grade test scores in these districts increased 14 percent in math and 9 percent in reading in schools with mostly low-income students.
- The Economic Policy Institute Study: In an updated edition of the Institute's book, "The Class Size Debate," economist Alan Krueger argues that smaller classes improve academic performance and future job earnings for millions of students. Krueger also presents research that shows smaller class sizes often produce fewer disruptions and invite closer teacher monitoring.
In recent years, other studies have documented the effectiveness of class size reduction:
- Class size reduction in the Los Angeles Unified School District increased reading scores by 9.5 %, math scores by 13.9% and language scores by 14.5%. The effects of class size reduction for "high need" children are nearly double those of children in educationally advantaged neighborhoods. For "high need" students, CSR increased reading scores by 19.5%, math scores by 29.2% and language scores by 22.5%. -- Vital Research, April 2001
- "For 1998-99, we also found that between 1 and 4 percent more third-grade students scored above the national median in [California] schools that had implemented CSR than in schools that had not." -- Class Size Reduction Research Consortium, June 2000
- Smaller classes benefit all students, but had a stronger impact on African-American students. Scores for African-American students increased by 7-10 percentile points. Scores for white students increased 3-4 percentile points. In addition, the achievement gap for African-American students in smaller classes decreased by nearly 40 percent. -- Princeton CSR Study, March 2001
- The official evaluation of Wisconsin's SAGE Program found that smaller classes help reduce the achievement gap between African-American students and white students. In addition, African-American students in smaller classes outscored their counterparts in larger classes in Language (630 to 610), Reading (628 to 610) and Math (599 to 578). -- University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee SAGE Study, January 2001
- The STAR Project, published in 1990, was a four-year examination of Tennessee's class size reduction program. According to the STAR Project, smaller classes are more effective academically than larger classes for students in primary grades. In some cases, test scores jumped more than 10 percentage points. -- STAR Project Report, 1990
More class size reduction research is available at the California Alliance for Public Schools Web site at http://www.ourpublicschools.org/.