Last week, I posted on a campaign proposal by Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Martin O'Malley to pay signing bonuses of $200,000 to recruit principals for the state's worst performing schools. The initial press coverage was impressive, which of course was the point, but some of the comments started me thinking. One comment in particular, heard from a number of different sources, said that it would be better to take that money and spend it on hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes. While I agree that the money may indeed be better spent in other areas, I am not sure how much bang for the buck can be gotten by spending to reduce class sizes.
In this post, I want to explore some potential problems with the concept of reducing class sizes. I am not a firm believer that smaller class inevitably lead to better student achievement, although I can certainly understand the intuitive appeal. Nor am I convinced that spending money to reduce class sizes, no matter how you achieve that goal, is a wise use of resources. There are a couple of assumptions that I want to explain before beginning. First, this discussion will feature Maryland school data, which is apropos given that O'Malley's proposal and the arguments for and against revolve around Maryland schools. Second, although research differs greatly on what is the optimum student teacher ratio, I am going to base this discussion on a 12:1 ration for elementary, 15:1 for middle schools and 20:1 for high schools as optimum. As you will see from the data provided by the Maryland Department of Education, it is impossible to make that segregation.
Obstacle #1: No Widespread Need
While the Maryland school data does not break down adequately the student teacher ration for all levels of school, it does provide aggregate data. For example, the data does show the number of instructors (without defining what that is) per 1000 students and the number of instruction aides (again without a definition). From there you can calculate a student teacher ratio. For Maryland's 24 county level jurisdictions, the student teacher ratio ranges from a high of 16.78:1 to a low of 12.17:1, with an average of 15:1. The range of student/teacher ratios, while perhaps not optimum in every classroom, certainly exist in a tolerable range across the jurisdictions.
If one considers a instructor/student ratio, with instructional aides included, you get a range of rations ranging from 9.14:1 to 14.2:1 with an average 12.3:1. For half of Maryland's counties, the number of instructors and aides is at or below even the elementary optimum level of 12:1. How much further should we go?
Obstacle #2: Teacher Quality
In the NCLB era, no discussion of teacher hiring can ignore the question of quality teachers. Of course, there are many arguments regarding what constitutes a quality teacher and such a subject is beyond the scope of this post. However, no matter how you define quality, simply going out and hiring more teachers without assessing their quality is an obvious blunder
I had previously discussed my thoughts on smaller class sizes and the impact on teacher quality. Simply put, no matter how you define teacher quality, there is a finite number of people possessing that quality and those people are usually in great demand. Without drastically increasing you pool of eligible people or changing the definition or quality, usually by lowering your standards a little, you cannot get more people possessing the necessary features of a quality teacher.
If you must overly dilute the qualities of a good teacher by hiring more teachers, will reducing class size improve the learning of most students? A teacher of lesser quality may be able to do okay in a smaller classroom, but at what price? Is the investment worth it in terms of return?
Obstacle #3: Where Will You Put New Teachers
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Maryland does decide to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes. The next obstacle is probably the hardest to overcome and the solutions alternative solutions are quite wasteful of resources. Let us assume that to reduce class sizes even further, each school in Maryland hires 10 percent more teachers.
Where do you put them?
The most finite resource in any school system is not teachers, or money, and certainly not students. No classroom space is the single most precious commodity. Simply hiring teachers without expanding classroom space will strain the space resources of any school.
For example, let us assume a school in growing Frederick county has 850 students (which is pretty close to the average size in Frederick) and a student teacher ratio of 16:1 (which is the Frederick average), this means that there are 56 or 57 teachers in the school. Assuming that each teacher has his/her own classroom in which to work, there must be 56 or 57 classrooms. Let us assume again, for the sake of argument that the school has 60 spaces available for classrooms. When the new 10 percent of teachers is hired, you will be getting 6 new teachers, but there are only at best 3 available classrooms. Where will you put the other three teachers?
One possible ideas that have been floated are add portable classrooms at each school as needed. Portables have the appeal of being low cost, easy to build and easy to move in and out of situations as need be. But in reality, there is only so much real estate available to place portable classrooms. While this is a viable solution in some states (in Florida where I grew up, they were common and useful), but in Maryland, suggesting the use of portable classrooms borders on political suicide.
Another solution (floated by a teacher friend of mine) is to have the new teachers float in and out of classrooms when other teachers have their planning period. Well, that is fine, for a short term solution. But if you are looking to retain teachers--putting them in bad working conditions is not going to help your cause.
Of course, it is possible to double teachers up in a classroom. But what does this accomplish, other than being a waste of hiring resources. Team teaching can do a great deal for students, but if you are hiring two math teachers for a high school, what does it accomplish to put them together in the same room. Sure, you reduce the class size by half (sort of), but you are sacrificing the intellect and teaching skills of one teacher upon the altar of smaller class sizes, with no real impact.
Of course, building new schools is going on all the time, and it is possible to design schools to hold the modern ideal of a 15:1 student teacher ratio by building enough classrooms. But building new schools is an expensive proposition and does not solve the immediate problem since, even on the most optimistic schedule, you will need between 1 year and 2 years to build depending on the size and nature of the school to be built. New schools, built in rapidly developing areas, tend to get up to capacity pretty quick, sometimes exceeding capacity by the time they open.
While new schools can be built, at a not insubstantial cost, older schools cannot be simply be redesigned to accommodate a new desired student teacher ratio.
Conclusion
While spending more money to make class sizes smaller, the investment goes well beyond simply hiring more teachers. On top of the teacher salaries and benefits, themselves pretty hefty, a school district must decide how and where to house these new teachers. Many schools are simply not designed to handle a 20:1, 15:1 or particularly a 12:1 ratio, there are simply not enough classrooms. To build enough classrooms would require an infrastructure investment that economically cannot be made.
Finally, at least in Maryland, there is not a widespread need to hire a lot of new teachers. While O'Malley's proposal for signing bonuses is not a wise spending decision, neither is spending the money to reduce class sizes in a state where the average class size is already 15:1 statewide.
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