Class Size & Educational Quality

Average school class sizes, says David Kirkpatrick, former President of the Pennsylvania state teachers union and a well respected educator, have gotten smaller and smaller over the past century. In 1900, there were 37 students per teacher. By 1955, it was 27. Today it’s down to 17. But, according to Eric Hanushek, former Chairman of the Education Dept. at the University of Rochester, who examined some 152 class size studies, only 14 studies showed positive relationships between smaller class sizes and improved educational quality. And he found an equal number of studies showing negative results, that is, quality was poorer with smaller class sizes. However, most of the studies, he said, showed no significant difference either way. So class size has little relationship to educational quality, according to most studies. But small class sizes sure do cause school costs to increase substantially.