Posted on May 21, 2008 at 4:45 pm by Mike Petrilli
Newsflash: Teachers want smaller class sizes
That’s one finding from this new Public Agenda survey. This request brings to mind the famous Rolling Stones song, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Over the past fifty years, the number of students in the American public school system went up about 50 percent while the number of teachers tripled. How low can we go? Will teachers ever think their classes are small enough? Doubtful.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Good Question
May 21st, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Oh, I dunno, I’m fine with my class of 4...
Seriously, it depends on the class. I have a class of 7 which feels too big some days because so many of those kids have issues. And I’ve had classes of 15 which were pure joy and could easily have been larger, if filled with the same kinds of kids. (Why yes, all of my classes are small, and I am grateful for that.) I don’t think it’s enough to comment on how class sizes have changed without also addressing the (widely accepted, but possibly apocryphal) idea that students have gotten harder to teach. Nor can you compare without also talking about whether, and to what extent, teachers’ responsibilities have changed; if teachers are expected to do a lot more in terms of managing the kids’ psychological lives and maintaining relationships with their families than formerly (as again seems anecdotally true), they can’t do that without fewer students.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Yeah, well, you should visit a high school sometime...
Calculus and Algebra 2 classes often have 30-32 students, while these other classes have sometimes 7 as noted above.
Teachers cannot be expected to teach college prep courses in overcrowded classrooms!
Now, if I had a grad student grading papers and tutoring students as most of my univ profs had, then it would be doable!