Student to teacher ratios show progress | Hacker News Reader

Student to teacher ratios show progress

learnboost.com

12 pointsrafaelc17 comments

Ok, student to teacher ratios went down, but student performance hasn't improved.

So we made life easier for teachers (at the expense of taxpayers) without helping students. Woohoo.

I don't have citations handy at the moment, but...

In locally debating a school construction referendum a couple of years ago, I was involved in a big controversy over this. It really does seem that people consider small class sizes to be an end in itself, rather than a means to a better education.

When I researched the effect of class size on education, the only empirical data I could find were either inconclusive, or in one cases found a measurable effect only for what you might think of as "at-risk" students, who have backgrounds indicating they probably don't get much educational help from home. That is, the only conclusive study I found stated that smaller classes do not benefit most kids.

Tangentially, when I was in elementary school, there were in each of 2nd and 3rd grade, a "double classroom", which had twice as many students, but also had two teachers. I wonder whatever happened to that concept.

Team teaching is still around. My wife, for example, team taught for two years. The school she has been at for the last five years has had at least two teams each year typically at the second and third grade level. She was at an older school that had very large class rooms which made it possible. Most of the newer schools in my area have no team teaching because the classrooms are simply too small to accomodate two full classrooms of children.

As far as empirical evidence on the smaller class room sizes, can't really say much about it. I'll provide a couple of anecdotes from my wife's experience. Larger classroom sizes make it significantly harder to provide personalized help to students during the day, this can be a serious problem if those students don't have anyone at home that can or will help them. At the school my wife has spent the last five years at a good portion of the parents were illiterate and couldn't provide any help to their children though many of them wanted to. Additionally larger classroom sizes can mean significantly more of the teachers personal time (off contract) must be spent on prep, grading, conferences, etc. That was something we had to deal with and significantly impacted our personal lives.

One problem with trying to measure the effect of classroom size changes are that they are not the only change being made. Schools change curriculum, lunches, teaching styles and everything else. Some measurements also need to be done over many years. For example, locally about six years ago all day kindergarten was implemented in poorer areas and where second language learners were prevalent. The students that started in that program and were immersed in school activities and english language activities all day just finished fifth grade. Across the board there have been significant improvements in test scores with that group (math scores have been decent, specifically the reading/writing scores went up a large amount). Due to budget issues all day kindergarten is being cut. The reason being that there's no "empirical evidence that all day kindergartens were the cause of the increased performance on test scores." I'm paraphrasing, but it's a common issue in how education is measured and tracked.

In general, I think the problem here is that the post looks at one out of dozens of inputs into the educational process and concluding that an improvement in that one input is noteworthy and significant to the output.

What's more disturbing is that this claim is made in light of evidence that the outputs in America are trending unfavorably to other countries and is still trotted out as a favorable sign.

It’s simply a step in the right direction. I'd be the first to agree that there’s plenty to improve in education, but with so few “wins” it’s important to single out some of the positive stuff.

On what grounds to you claim that this is a "win"?

That is, what are your criteria, and what makes you believe that this factor is on the path toward that criteria?

It's based on data. The ratio of students to teachers has gone down significantly over the past 30 years and that is a small win to celebrate. Lower student to teacher ratios imply an improved environment for instruction in the classroom, more individualized attention, and more. Of course there’s much more to be done to improve education in the United States, but the ongoing lowering of student to teacher ratios is one of many small steps in the right direction.

It's based on data. ... Lower student to teacher ratios imply an improved environment for instruction

That's a logical inference, but certainly not data. And sometimes what intuitively seems true winds up wrong.

I challenge you to show empirical evidence that smaller class size improves educational outcomes. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I've only ever found one such conclusive study, and that was only applicable to kids from lower-income families; in particular, no advantage was observed for average and above-average kids.

And even for the slice of the population that might be helped (according to that study), we've got no evidence that these decreases in class size are occurring in schools having those students, as opposed to, say, more affluent schools that are presumably (there I go making an assumption) better able to afford more teachers.

But has the student to GOOD teacher ratio gone down?

My wife is an elementary teacher with a Master's degree who can't get a job here in Montana. She applied for more than 40 positions for the upcoming school year and has only gotten 4 interviews. The rest of them don't want to spend the extra two thousand dollars a year in salary that accompanies a Master's degree. Several school districts have flat out told her that they throw her applications away because the district is required to hire only teachers without experience. It's a sad state of affairs.

Having a Masters degree does not improve student performance but does cost taxpayers more money.

It sounds like a happy state of affairs that the taxpayers are not being forced to pay $2000/year for nothing.

http://education-portal.com/articles/Teacher_Training_Experi...

It would be an even happier state of affairs if the Master's-qualified teacher were free to take whatever salary could be negotiated between her and the school, without union interference.

No of course a Masters doesn't automatically equate to a higher quality, but she can't get a job at all because of it. Because of the Teacher's Union, she can't even waive that extra $2000. She would be grateful to take the base wage if it meant employment.

Having a masters degree "may" not improve student performance. Unless of course you are teaching math or science at the secondary level and have a degree in those subjects in which case it "does" improve student performance. Without having a close look at the data they used (which is now twenty years old) it's hard to say if they took into account teachers with masters degrees and classroom experience. As teachers are required to continue their education just to remain licensed it makes a lot of sense for teachers to get a masters degree even if it didn't improve their ability to teach. There is very little value in spending money on specialized instructional courses or seminars that count towards relicensing credits when those methodologies won't be used in the classroom in another three to five years or will be rebranded and resold by some other company that is the flavor of the day. A masters degree can also be a path to administration, counselor etc.

The problem is that the unions pushed through requirements that people with advanced degrees should be payed more, where she would most likely forgo the extra 2k a year to teach she is now priced out of the market. In industry this type of stuff doesn't happen, sure you may like to earn more for having your degree but if it isn't valued by the employer then it has no bearing on your compensation.

Try looking for a job as an “overqualified” applicant in private industry. If they are not paid more or treated better then it’s assumed they will quickly move on.

I can't speak for every company, but we've never passed over an applicant having a higher degree. [EDIT: we've never passed over such an applicant for that reason]

And having this be a judgment call by the employer still provides a heck of a lot more chance for the applicant than the union-dictated state of affairs, in which the combination of budget and laws forbid the hiring of this teacher.

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