Cicero: The myth of low class size

Try suggesting that public school class sizes on Long Island be raised -- even by just a few students -- and see what happens: Parents and teachers both will likely rush to school board meetings, loudly protesting the unthinkable.

Long Islanders have come to enjoy and expect low class sizes in their schools, particularly at the elementary level. The average class here is considerably below the national average of 25 students. Data from the New York State Education Department listed the average class size in Nassau and Suffolk counties combined for kindergarten through fifth grade as 20.9 in 2008-09. The range included a low average of 20.1 in kindergarten to a high of 22.3 in grade five.

The perception is that student achievement will improve when class size is low, and that adding more kids to each classroom comes at the expense of learning. But our knee-jerk opposition to larger class sizes is more of an emotional response than a fact-based one.

It's time to challenge the myth.

Prompted by a slow economy and the new 2 percent tax cap, school boards will be hard-pressed to find ongoing and significant savings as they craft their 2012-2013 budgets. Holding the line on contract salaries, increasing employee health contributions, and continuing with cooperative bidding and sharing services have all been tried and, while still effective, have generally run their course.

So local school boards, guided by a report by the New York State School Boards Association released last month, will be seeking additional ways to reduce costs. The association recommends class-size increases as one option. It will almost certainly be strongly opposed by parent and teacher groups.

Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, recognizes how tough it is to tackle the class size issue. Once smaller classes have been established, they're hard to take away, he says. The low student-to-teacher ratio "has such a popular appeal."

Defenders of low class size often cite data from Tennessee's Project Star study, which studied student achievement in grades K-3 over four years in the 1980s, in class sizes of 13 to 17, 22 to 26, and 22 to 26 with an aide. While the efficacy of those results has been challenged, the study concluded that significant academic gains were made when classes consisted of 13 to 17 students. Even the high end of that range is well below the average class size at any grade level on Long Island.

The data don't support any conclusions about class sizes above 17 -- say, whether Long Island's 21 is better than the national 25. Achieving the kind of "low class sizes" here that have shown benefits would mean school boards would have to reduce classes to those numbers, at a prohibitive cost. Reducing class size by one-third, from 24 students to 16 students, requires hiring 50 percent more teachers.

But even if classrooms had fewer students, kids can't be expected to reach their full potential if they're taught by unqualified or ineffective teachers. Wadi Haddad, in summarizing his review of class size studies for the World Bank, wrote, "An increase in class size does not necessarily lead to a decrease in level of academic achievement. Likewise a decrease in class size does not guarantee an improvement. . . . More important is what the teacher does."

School boards need to introduce the larger-class-size idea -- and then direct the discussion away from the quantity of students and toward the quality of the teachers. It's not about how many kids are in the room, but rather about the person leading instruction. The most important variable in education is the effectiveness of the teacher.

A good teacher in a class of 21 students is still good in a class of 25. Support for this perspective was revealed in the most recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup annual poll. When given a choice, three out of four Americans surveyed indicated that they would prefer larger classes with more effective teachers than smaller classes with less effective teachers.

Some districts have already taken bold and unpopular actions to save costs. When school boards from Lindenhurst, Mineola and North Bellmore made the difficult decision to close neighborhood schools, they were met by a large turnout of upset parents. The West Islip district also disappointed parents last week, when board members voted to shutter two elementary schools. Other districts, including Franklin Square and Bayport-Blue Point, have discussed the idea of reorganizing their elementary schools into grade clusters (known as the Princeton Plan) -- to the protests of parents and teachers. School boards will need to be similarly resolute if they seek to increase class size, but the savings would be significant.

Teacher and staff reductions will be inevitable, but because of the seniority laws in New York State, the last hired will be the first out. So it's imperative that proposals to increase class size go hand in hand with the creation, finally, of a teacher evaluation system that truly recognizes effectiveness. And the time is right for school boards to lobby the governor and the legislature to eliminate or change the seniority law.

In the meantime, school boards should review their policies and teacher contracts to assure that language limiting class size is not included in any of them.

It's not an envious time to be a school board member. But boards of education must be willing to make the difficult decisions, debunk the myths and set a visionary agenda that will result in meaningful, responsible and long-term cost reductions, while maintaining -- and even improving -- education on Long Island.