What were your elementary school class sizes like?

[Anonymous]

Born in '76 - upper middle class neighborhood in Long Island, NY. My 2nd grade class had like 33 or 34 kids.

I always laugh when people say teachers can't be expected to control a class of 20 kids without help. I could control a class of 45 without a problem other than a mildly sore throat.

[Anonymous]

FCPS, born in 1980 and we always had low 30s in our classes in elementary. This was in McLean.

My mother talks about how her 3rd grade teacher walked out of the school the day they brought the 35th kid to class. That was the baby boom for you! That would have been in the mid-50s.

[Anonymous]

Somewhere in the '30s throughout my school years at well regarded public in PA. Switched to more like 15 at small private in high school. I honestly can't say the teaching was better after the switch. If you sit up front and raise your hand a lot, it doesn't matter how many people are in the room.

[Anonymous]

80's. Public in NJ. 16-18 kids per class in elementary. 20's for middle and high.

[Anonymous]

I have no clue what the actual numbers were. Elementary school the classes were huge and full, same in Middle and most of High school - then one year in a private where I remember there were 12 kids to a class, 10 boys and 2 girls (I was one of them). That was the worst school of all.

[Anonymous]

31 - 33 Walt Whitman MoCo feeder

only difficulty that I remember was the teacher complaining.

[Anonymous]

7-10 kids from 1-9th grade. Every small village had an elementary school in SU.
25-30 in high school in 1993-96. I would've been happier in a bigger class from the get go. So much to learn from others.

[Anonymous]

34-36. Small Catholic school. 1972.

My sister born a cpuple years later had 16.

[Anonymous]

My mom taughtkindergarteninthe 1950'sinIowa. After she died, we found pictures of her classes. There were 35-40 kids in each one. She was the only teacher, not aides, no specials- she did the music lessons, the PE and the art lessons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just curious about how this has changed over time. I see a lot of concern over class size, but even the bigger classes have much smaller student/teacher ratios that was the case when I was a kid. Not sure if my school was an outlier or i that was the norm.

How many kids in an average elementary class, and what year were you born?

Me: 33 kids; 1975

I was born in 1971. I moved quite a bit and attended both public and private ES. I know that none of my classes was ever over 30. Looking at photos, the smallest was 15 kids and the largest was 25. There may have been a few kids absent on picture day, but I doubt 5-8 were missing.

I do feel like there are more classes per grade than there used to be. I don't recall any of my schools having more than 3 classes per grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom taughtkindergarteninthe 1950'sinIowa. After she died, we found pictures of her classes. There were 35-40 kids in each one. She was the only teacher, not aides, no specials- she did the music lessons, the PE and the art lessons.

Yes, classes typically had 35-40 kids in the 1960s, when I was in elementary school. I went to five different elementaries in different school systems, but they were all overcrowded.

[Anonymous]

I have no idea. There is no way I ever counted or paid attention to class size in elementary, lol

[Anonymous]

28 to 32 in elementary, lower middle class/poor elementary school in the 80s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS in the early 70s. 29 in K. 28 in 1st. I still have my class pictures.

I wonder if the difference between the large class then and the large classes today is the expectation of differentiation and inclusion. I remember being tracked in elementary school and the kids that needed extra attention or help were taken out of the classroom.

And of course there wasn't the emphasis on test taking like there is today. We had the 3rd and 5th grade assessments but we didn't do any practice tests or pre tests. It was a day or two and then we moved on.

OP here -- part of why I'm asking is that I'm wondering what counts as "large."

There is much consternation among parents at my school over "large" classes. My kid has 24 in his first grade class, but has a teacher + an aide. This doesn't feel particularly large to me.

[Anonymous]

In the 30s: 70s and 80s. From K -12.

College my classes were much smaller and it was ... odd and kinda boring for discussions.