

Student to teacher ratios show progress - rafaelc
http://www.learnboost.com/student-to-teacher-ratios/

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yummyfajitas
Ok, student to teacher ratios went down, but student performance hasn't
improved.

So we made life easier for teachers (at the expense of taxpayers) without
helping students. Woohoo.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I don't have citations handy at the moment, but...

In locally debating a school construction referendum a couple of years ago, I
was involved in a big controversy over this. It really does seem that people
consider small class sizes to be an end in itself, rather than a means to a
better education.

When I researched the effect of class size on education, the only empirical
data I could find were either inconclusive, or in one cases found a measurable
effect only for what you might think of as "at-risk" students, who have
backgrounds indicating they probably don't get much educational help from
home. That is, the only conclusive study I found stated that smaller classes
do not benefit most kids.

Tangentially, when I was in elementary school, there were in each of 2nd and
3rd grade, a "double classroom", which had twice as many students, but also
had two teachers. I wonder whatever happened to that concept.

~~~
ktsmith
Team teaching is still around. My wife, for example, team taught for two
years. The school she has been at for the last five years has had at least two
teams each year typically at the second and third grade level. She was at an
older school that had very large class rooms which made it possible. Most of
the newer schools in my area have no team teaching because the classrooms are
simply too small to accomodate two full classrooms of children.

As far as empirical evidence on the smaller class room sizes, can't really say
much about it. I'll provide a couple of anecdotes from my wife's experience.
Larger classroom sizes make it significantly harder to provide personalized
help to students during the day, this can be a serious problem if those
students don't have anyone at home that can or will help them. At the school
my wife has spent the last five years at a good portion of the parents were
illiterate and couldn't provide any help to their children though many of them
wanted to. Additionally larger classroom sizes can mean significantly more of
the teachers personal time (off contract) must be spent on prep, grading,
conferences, etc. That was something we had to deal with and significantly
impacted our personal lives.

One problem with trying to measure the effect of classroom size changes are
that they are not the only change being made. Schools change curriculum,
lunches, teaching styles and everything else. Some measurements also need to
be done over many years. For example, locally about six years ago all day
kindergarten was implemented in poorer areas and where second language
learners were prevalent. The students that started in that program and were
immersed in school activities and english language activities all day just
finished fifth grade. Across the board there have been significant
improvements in test scores with that group (math scores have been decent,
specifically the reading/writing scores went up a large amount). Due to budget
issues all day kindergarten is being cut. The reason being that there's no
"empirical evidence that all day kindergartens were the cause of the increased
performance on test scores." I'm paraphrasing, but it's a common issue in how
education is measured and tracked.

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VengefulCynic
In general, I think the problem here is that the post looks at one out of
dozens of inputs into the educational process and concluding that an
improvement in that one input is noteworthy and significant to the output.

What's more disturbing is that this claim is made in light of evidence that
the outputs in America are trending unfavorably to other countries and is
still trotted out as a favorable sign.

~~~
rafaelc
It’s simply a step in the right direction. I'd be the first to agree that
there’s plenty to improve in education, but with so few “wins” it’s important
to single out some of the positive stuff.

~~~
CWuestefeld
On what grounds to you claim that this is a "win"?

That is, what are your criteria, and what makes you believe that this factor
is on the path toward that criteria?

~~~
rafaelc
It's based on data. The ratio of students to teachers has gone down
significantly over the past 30 years and that is a small win to celebrate.
Lower student to teacher ratios imply an improved environment for instruction
in the classroom, more individualized attention, and more. Of course there’s
much more to be done to improve education in the United States, but the
ongoing lowering of student to teacher ratios is one of many small steps in
the right direction.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_It's based on data. ... Lower student to teacher ratios imply an improved
environment for instruction_

That's a logical inference, but certainly not data. And sometimes what
intuitively seems true winds up wrong.

I challenge you to show empirical evidence that smaller class size improves
educational outcomes. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I've only ever
found one such conclusive study, and that was only applicable to kids from
lower-income families; in particular, no advantage was observed for average
and above-average kids.

And even for the slice of the population that might be helped (according to
that study), we've got no evidence that these decreases in class size are
occurring in schools having those students, as opposed to, say, more affluent
schools that are presumably (there I go making an assumption) better able to
afford more teachers.

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k0mplex
But has the student to GOOD teacher ratio gone down?

~~~
trafficlight
My wife is an elementary teacher with a Master's degree who can't get a job
here in Montana. She applied for more than 40 positions for the upcoming
school year and has only gotten 4 interviews. The rest of them don't want to
spend the extra two thousand dollars a year in salary that accompanies a
Master's degree. Several school districts have flat out told her that they
throw her applications away because the district is required to hire only
teachers without experience. It's a sad state of affairs.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Having a Masters degree does not improve student performance but does cost
taxpayers more money.

It sounds like a happy state of affairs that the taxpayers are not being
forced to pay $2000/year for nothing.

[http://education-
portal.com/articles/Teacher_Training_Experi...](http://education-
portal.com/articles/Teacher_Training_Experience_May_Be_More_Valuable_Than_An_Advanced_Degree.html)

~~~
hugh3
It would be an even happier state of affairs if the Master's-qualified teacher
were free to take whatever salary could be negotiated between her and the
school, without union interference.

