Example of How Large Classrooms Affect Learning

One example I found of a young eight-year-old girl named Shania, gives a better idea of what students go through when they are moved into bigger classrooms. Her struggle was compared to other students for The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which focuses on children with disadvantages within school. In 2007, Shania was in a classroom with twenty students. She had always struggled with math, but her teacher gave her individualized attention and helped to boost Shania’s math grade up. At the end of the school year, Shania was awarded “student of the month.” Shania was excited for her next year of school until she walked into her new third grade classroom that had a total of thirty-two students. The school decreased its budget by $600,000 and let go of eight teachers (Resmovits).

The first month into school, Shania’s grades in all subjects had plummeted, and she lost motivation to go to school. Shania’s mother asked her one night after dinner why she was not doing well in school and why she didn’t like to go anymore; she was upset to hear her daughters answer. “There are too many kids in my class, and when I try to get help from my teacher, she doesn’t pay attention to me because she is trying to help other kids” (Resmovits).

Shania is not the only student who experienced moving from a small classroom to a larger one. Thirty-four states have cut their K-12 budges since 2008 according to Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Resmovits). Their excuse is that to give schools enough teachers for smaller classrooms, the cost would be over $10 billion dollars (Resmovits). This is where the conflict of budget and students education begins to collide.

Statistics 

A persuasive article called “Class Size Matters,” notes that class size reduction would help students advance forward rather than having to repeat a grade (Class Size Matters). In one school in New York, statistics came back showing that only 16.7% of students in a classroom with less than 18 students would have to repeat the grade (Class Size Matters). In previous years, students were in classrooms with over twenty-five students and 43.5% of students had to repeat a grade (Class Size Matters).

Jeremy Finn from the University of Buffalo wrote an article expressing the importance of academic achievement in the early years. Finn's research focused on when students in grades K-4 do better academically, it gives them motivation and appreciation for education. Finn later went on to explain that if students do better grades K-4, they are more likely to continue to do better and graduate high school. Finn says, “Our study has shown that the origin of students dropping out is due to academic performance in the early grades of education.” Students who received poor grades K-3 rarely moved on to make better grades in future grade levels (Finn).

Also, when students do better in school, they are more likely to graduate high school and further their education. A study done in 2011 by Jason Koebler concentrated on the economic benefits of students graduating high school. According to a report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, high school dropouts cost the nation billions of dollars each year. Koebler’s study estimated that if half of the 1.3 million students who drop out each year had graduated, those students could be earning $7.6 billion more yearly compared to those students who did not graduate high school (Koebler).

Photo Credit: bskolb

This blog was created to give information and statistics to support the idea that smaller classrooms are more beneficial for students than large classrooms. With smaller classrooms, students can better interact with everyone in their class and get more one-on-one time with their teacher. I feel that every student deserves the chance to do well in school and from what information I have researched, students do better when learning in a small classroom. 

Photo Credit:CLU_ISS