I can tell you first hand that smaller class sizes do have an impact on teaching! I have only juniors and seniors and have taught in the innercity gang banging high schools as well as the private catholic high schools and I noticed that it makes a difference when I have 31 vs 15 on any given day - seniors out for this or juniors out for that. I noticed a very large difference in subject comprehension, student focus and an increase in their willingness to ask questions in a smaller class size.
I would conceed that there may not be any official study, but I would like to see if one could follow two groups of students from 9 thru 12 grade, I’d be willing to bet that the smaller class size group would have higher test scores. Further I would like to see the public schools attempt a co-ed campus with single sex classrooms. That would not require any more teachers, just an excellent effort in assigning classes to students. Study after study has shown that boys do learn differently than girls. There would be no distractions of the co-ed classroom, thus having student more focused on the lesson being taught.
Thank you for your service, Cyclone.
I have no doubt that for single class when individuals are missing from that class it changes the dynamics of that class. I also suspect that when you get a 50% drop in the number of people attending your class, that the demographics of those missing are not the same as the demographics of those that remain. further, in the short-term a drop in the number of students in the classroom in and of itself will make it more intimate… whether that drop is from 31 to 15, or from 500 to 150 (I’ve actually had instructors in a theater sized class play up on that to great effect).
Part of the problem with assessing the overall effect, is that it doesn’t address what’s going on with the children that were moved out of your class. How is their learning going?… And will the effect you see on a day-to-day basis for a short term drop in class-size carry through in the long term? Studies to date tend to show that they do not.
” but I would like to see if one could follow two groups of students from 9 thru 12 grade, I’d be willing to bet that the smaller class size group would have higher test scores”
Those studies have been done. What they show is that generally the larger the class, the higher the success. Not what you would generally expect, but there are a number of different hypotheses as to why this might be the case. Some include teaching methods such as “teaching to the middle”. Another hypothesis is the dilution of the teacher candidate pool.
… I should probably turn off auto correct…