Sarah+E.'s+Modern+Oratory

Welcome to my Modern Oratory Page! **__ Cons of Smaller Class Sizes __** The state budget provided nearly $900 millionless in funding for public schools. The result was a significant number of teacher and support staff furloughs, program reductions and eliminations, and increases in class sizes across the state. Some districts started to charge fees to students who participate in extracurricular activities.

As is too often the case in education, that research is almost completely at odds with current practice. Instead of lowering class size a lot for the students who most need it, school districts generally lower it a little for everyone. In a 2007 study for Education Sector, a think tank I co-founded, school finance expert Marguerite Roza estimated that this practice consumes about 2.26 percent of per-pupil spending annually. That doesn't sound like much, but across the country it adds up to billions every year.

__**Pros of Smaller Class Sizes**__ The theory behind NCLB was that schools would improve dramatically if every child in grades 3 to 8 were tested every year and the results made public. Texas did exactly this, and advocates claimed it had seen remarkable results: test scores went up, the achievement gap between students of different races was closing, and graduation rates rose. At the time, a few scholars questioned the claims of a “Texas miracle,” but Congress didn’t listen.

Achievement Ratio study conducted in the late 1980s by the state of Tennessee, showed that when class sizes were reduced from 22 students to 15 students, student achievement increased by about three months of additional schooling. Subsequent studies have shown that slight increases or decreases in class size enrollment have negligible effects on student achievement. Go to my home page or back to my project page!