Reply to What do you think of Janney?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I though the 2nd and 4th grades at Janney were still high 20's, no? Weren't they 30 at least last year?

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No, the 2nd and 4th grades this year are each at about 23/24.  Last year's 3rd grade class was an experiment where they had 30 kids in a class with two full time licensed teachers (not one teacher and an aid).  Janney is large but, with the exception of that one experiment, classes are just about always under 25 kids/class, usually closer to 23, and no more than 20 for pre-K.  [/quote]

Janney did the experiment once before, when the cohort that is now in 7th grade moved up to third.  They had one 40 student classroom and had rolled up two classrooms together (so two full time teachers, each of whom had had half the class in second grade).  I have a child a year behind this.  My understanding is that the result was challenging and they learned a lot about small group learning from which the whole school ultimately benefited and that cohort was also (according to the principal at the time) the most successful cohort in Janney's recent history from a test performance standpoint over the course of their years at Janney.  I think this was the year of the 6 classroom addition and they were able to break the classes up so they were actually quite small when the moved from three to four classes.

My only point being that everyone is so reflexively aghast at classrooms with over 25 students, but there is really a lot more thinking that needs to go into what are the right decisions in particular circumstances.

Last years 5th grade class was around a hundred students in 4 classrooms, over the years for that cohort the number of students in classes ranged from a high of 27 (Kindergarten, only 3 classrooms during the major renovation) to usually somewhere between 24/26.  There are no absolutes, when schools get popular for whatever reason, the population expands and the school needs to adjust.

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