Do large class sizes in FCPS make you consider paying $25K for private?

[Anonymous]

Class sizes aren't averaged across the county, however, those averages include teachers who do not have home rooms. For example, teacher A has 30 kids and teacher B has 30 kids.... Teacher C teaches special Ed and has sees different kids throughout the day.... That's 60 kids divided by three teacher, which is a 20:1 student teacher ratio. The numbers are deceiving because they include all certified teachers in the school, even specialists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Class sizes aren't averaged across the county, however, those averages include teachers who do not have home rooms. For example, teacher A has 30 kids and teacher B has 30 kids.... Teacher C teaches special Ed and has sees different kids throughout the day.... That's 60 kids divided by three teacher, which is a 20:1 student teacher ratio. The numbers are deceiving because they include all certified teachers in the school, even specialists.

Wrong

[Anonymous]

Why would a special ed teacher be included in the counts if the level 2 children they work with aren't included?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Class size has no correlation to student achievment, FYI.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, buddy.

[Anonymous]

I think the research says that class size doesn't always correlate with better teaching. There was a study where the number had to be below 20 to make a difference and that after 20 it didn't really matter as much as the qualifications and ability of the teacher. On the other side of the spectrum, at some point the class becomes too much for a teacher to handle and so you get teacher burnout, the teacher can't easily meet with all of the students. Basically the reason class size can't be too large is because the teacher doesn't have enough time to handle all the students during the school day and there isn't enough space for all of them often.

[Anonymous]

My language arts class is going to 30 students tomorrow. I believe a class of 25 or less would receive better reading instruction than I can provide for 30.

[Anonymous]

We have a 6th grade class with 38 students for science. That's the largest number I've heard of.

[Anonymous]

It has convinced me to stay in Loudoun.

[Anonymous]

The large class size (25-30h was the primary motivation behind enrolling DD in a private school (class size of 17) for K. The most recent/carefully done research that controls for socio-economic status and other relevant factors finds a significant and long-lasting effect of class size on academic achievement.

[Anonymous]

What research are you referring to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What research are you referring to?

Attached is one example:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w17533

(By the way, I am a PhD economist by training. One of the authors of this study was a classmate of mine at MiT, now an expert on education policy. When I asked her about the class size issue, she was shocked to hear about class sizes of 28+. In most of the existing research, a large class size is defined as 22-25!)

[Anonymous]

That's my frustration as well with these studies. A large class size in these studies is like 25, and the research shows that the teacher matters more unless it's much less like 18. They rarely study LARGE class sizes like 28-35. There are very few studies which take these larger class sizes into consideration and compare the student learning, teacher involvement with each child, and teacher responsibilities with such a large class compared to a smaller class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's my frustration as well with these studies. A large class size in these studies is like 25, and the research shows that the teacher matters more unless it's much less like 18. They rarely study LARGE class sizes like 28-35. There are very few studies which take these larger class sizes into consideration and compare the student learning, teacher involvement with each child, and teacher responsibilities with such a large class compared to a smaller class.

At private, DD had a small class (18) and not great teacher=bad year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the research says that class size doesn't always correlate with better teaching. There was a study where the number had to be below 20 to make a difference and that after 20 it didn't really matter as much as the qualifications and ability of the teacher. On the other side of the spectrum, at some point the class becomes too much for a teacher to handle and so you get teacher burnout, the teacher can't easily meet with all of the students. Basically the reason class size can't be too large is because the teacher doesn't have enough time to handle all the students during the school day and there isn't enough space for all of them often.

The research I have seen only looks at incremental increases, it doesn't look at a class size of 23-25 compared to a class size of 33-35. Plus, I don't know how they account for SES since if you looked at FCPS, it would appear that larger class sizes lead to higher achievement- but that is entirely due to SES.

[Anonymous]

As a teacher, I had a principal who kept repeating that the research said that class size did not make a difference. I didn't believe it and I don't think he really did either.