Publication: C.D. Howe Institute Commentary
Publication Date: 15-AUG-05
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Guillemette, Yvan

Article Excerpt
Few policy issues in elementary and secondary education generate more heat than class size. Teachers and their unions are nearly unanimous in their support for smaller class sizes as a means of improving class behaviour and student performance. The public largely agrees: In each of five National Issues in Education polls commissioned by the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF) between 1997 and 2004, Canadians cited class size reduction as the most pressing educational spending priority. In the October 2004 poll, some 76 percent of those surveyed said that public school classes are too large.

On the other side of the debate, some economists, researchers and education specialists cite a lack of empirical support and considerable costs as their reasons for doubting that class size reduction benefits students.

The array of class size policies pursued by provinces in recent years reflect conflicting views: While some provinces like Ontario and Alberta are actively introducing policies to reduce class sizes in elementary grades, supported by extra funding, others, such as Manitoba and British Columbia, have decided against, or even removed, provisions that restrict class sizes. In the process, each province has pleased some interest groups and angered others, and the debate as to the effectiveness of restricting class size rages unabated.

Research on the issue shows that restricting class sizes to below 20 students in kindergarten and grade one improves student achievement, albeit modestly, with the strongest effects concentrated at the very beginning of a pupil's schooling. As a result, provincial initiatives that target class size reductions in the first few grades benefit from empirical support and partly for that reason generate less controversy. It is far from clear, however, that reducing class size is the most cost-effective strategy available to raise young pupils' achievement, particularly in the case of the later primary and secondary grades, where smaller classes have not been shown to produce tangible achievement gains. Those likely to gain most from smaller classes generally are teachers whose workloads are eased somewhat with fewer students.

After surveying the different strategies that provinces are following and reviewing some well-established research findings, I present Canadian-specific evidence on the link--or, more exactly, the lack of one--between class size and achievement in core subject areas at the high school level using recent test results from the School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Using only simple descriptive statistics, I show that, in line with the bulk of empirical research on this question from many countries, smaller class sizes do not seem to produce better achievement results in Canadian schools for pupils aged 13 years and older. My conclusion is that even if Canadian efforts to limit class sizes in the early grades can be justified, other education reform strategies would likely achieve a much bigger bang for the buck. In short, class size reduction policies should not be extended beyond grade one.

Different Strokes for Different Provinces: Same Debate

In recent years, the governments of P.E.I., Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Alberta have announced strategies to reduce class sizes in some or all kindergarten-to-grade 12 classes. Some provinces have done it through legislation, others through collective agreements with their teachers' unions; others still have simply announced commitments for class size reductions, usually at budget time. For example, the British Columbia Liberals passed legislation in 2002 that stripped the firm class-size limits from their collective agreement with teachers, while also passing legislation that caps individual class sizes from kindergarten to grade three, as well as district-average class sizes in other grades up to 12. Similarly, in Ontario, the Liberal government has committed to reducing class sizes to 20 students from junior kindergarten to grade three by the end of its mandate. Spending increases typically accompany such commitments. In the case of Ontario, $90 million was earmarked in the 2004/2005 school year to implement the cap on class size, followed by $126 million for 2005/2006. The total amount is expected to grow to over $450 million by 2007/2008. In Ontario, the new money primarily goes to hiring additional teachers, 1,100 in 2004/2005 and 1,275 in 2005/2006.

One province has taken the opposite view. Manitoba, in the final report of the Commission on Class Size and Composition, tabled in April 2002, concluded that a blanket approach, with provincially legislated caps on class size, would fail to address local needs and that class composition is more important than class size.

Clearly, there is no uniformity among provincial policies. Within each province, however, there is a flourishing debate about the effects of class size on students' results.

Ideally, the substantial investments of some provinces in smaller classes would rest upon a solid base of empirical support. Such support should consist not only of a well-established relationship between smaller classes and improved student achievement, but one of sufficient magnitude to establish that the policy of reducing class size is more cost-effective than other feasible methods of improving student achievement (Addonizio and Phelps 2000). I first consider the empirical link between class size and achievement. (1)

Class Size and Achievement in the Early Grades

Probably more studies on the class size issue have surfaced than on any other question in education. (2) Although there is no consensus, the empirical evidence generally points to limited positive effects from smaller classes on student achievement in kindergarten and grade one, with no significant effect on classes above that level.

Tennessee's STAR Project provides the most widely cited results on early-grade class size effects, but there are others with similar results. (3) Project STAR found that students in small classes (13 to 17 pupils) performed better on standardized tests than students in regular classes (22 to 25 pupils). As Hanushek (1999) and others have remarked, however, the small-class advantages observed in Project STAR were very modest (about one quarter of a standard deviation on achievement tests) and almost exclusively obtained in the first year of exposure to a small class. A recent analysis of Project STAR results by Ding and Lehrer (2004), which corrects for multiple problems in the experiment's implementation, (4) confirms and refines this now widely accepted conclusion. The authors found that Project STAR pupils benefited in all subject areas from attending a smaller class in either kindergarten or grade one, but without additional benefits from being in a small class in both years. By...



NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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