I did a little resrearch on class size. Yes, financial considerations do drive administrators' decisions, but research does indicate that the size of the class in lower grades and among minority and ESL students helps achievement and learning.
 
See :
 
Achilles, C.M. (2003) for a report given to the NY State task force on school and equity
Schwartz, W (2003) on Tennessee's STAR Program
Miller-Whitehead, M. (2003) Compilation of class size findings, a paper presented at the Mid-South Educational Research Association
 
Arias, J.J & Walker, D.M. (2004) in the Journal of Economic Education (Additional Evidence on the Realtionship Between Classs Size and Student Performance) relationship claim that previous research showing no effects may not have been as rigorous as they should have been and do not account for faililng students who drop their classes, thus raising the achievement reporting of the remaining, more successful students.  This is a study of college students
 
Olberg, R. (1993) Effects of ESL time and class size on the achievements of LEP students (Research Study). Says there is a classroom efffect for short classes (45 min), but this study did not see much gain on standardized tests. My answer to that is the question: How different is the standardized test from the material the students were using in the classroom?  Perhaps we need a study on transfer effects of classroom English to real life  English and the language of the tests being used.
 
Gilstrap, S. (2002) for a study on class size, new teachers, and 8th grade LEP students (ratios considered were about 20:1) with classroom coaches. (Los Angeles study of a federal program to reduce class size)
 
So, yes there is reseach out there that backs up the anecdotal reporting from the classroom that says that teachers enjoy more time to work with their students and students do better in smaller class sizes, especially at the lower grades and with minority and second language students.
 
Wm. Peter MacMonagle, M.Ed. 
Central Piedmont Community College 
West Campus 2219
Community Development/Workplace Basic Skills 
704-330-4668 
 
Murphy's Law of Possibility: All things are possible 
except skiing through a revolving door. 


________________________________

From: workplace-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of SusanPate at aol.com
Sent: Thu 1/19/2006 8:30 PM
To: workplace at nifl.gov
Subject: Re: [Workplace] Optimal number of students in a classroom


I've been teaching ESL students for over 20 years.  Our district tries to keep beginner/low beginner classes to 15 max.  Believe me, they don't want to have classes this small as it is costly but justify it because "reasearch says...."  Sorry, can't give you the research...this is also the magic number that was thrown around in my college ESL content classes.    
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