Sacramento, CA -- Just as California voters are recovering from the June primary election, state officials are already crafting propositions for the November general election ballot. The most ambitious such initiative would permanently reduce class size in grades K through 3.

Class size reduction is popular. Parents, teachers, and politicians love it. In 1997-98, approximately $1.5
billion will be spent on class size reduction. However, is reducing class size really an effective way to improve
student performance?

According to Rochester University Prof. Eric Hanushek, perhaps the nation’s top education economist, the answer
is “no.” In a recent study, Prof. Hanushek notes that existing evidence shows little, if any, correlation
between reducing class size and increased student achievement.

For example, between 1950 and 1995, pupil-teacher ratios fell nationally by 35 percent. Yet student performance indicators such as scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have not gone up. Also, after surveying 277 studies that attempted to correlate pupil-teacher ratio and student achievement, Prof.
Hanushek concluded: “There is little reason to believe that smaller class sizes systematically yield higher
student achievement. While some studies point in that direction, an almost equal number point in the opposite
direction.”

In addition, Prof. Hanushek looked overseas and examined the relationship between student performance and
pupil-teacher ratios using six international tests in math and science administered between 1960 and 1990. He
found a slight indication that larger class sizes were related to increased student performance.

Even the Tennessee class-size-reduction experiment, which California officials cite to support their efforts, does
not hold up under analysis. In Tennessee, reducing class size did help students in kindergarten, but didn’t
improve student performance from the first grade on up.

Further, the Tennessee experiment compared student performance in classes of 15 versus regular-sized classes
of 23. Prof. Hanushek points out: “The California program was designed to move classes down to around that of the regular-sized classes in the Tennessee experiment. No evidence from [the Tennessee experiment] relates to the likely effects of such a policy change (as opposed to moving classes down to the level of 15-to-1).” Prof.
Hanushek therefore concludes that, “across-the-board policies of class-size reductions, such as those enacted
in 1996 for elementary education through grade three across the State of California, are unlikely to have a
beneficial effect on overall student performance.”

Teacher quality, rather than class size, is what makes the biggest difference, says Prof. Hanushek. While
California’s proposed class-size-reduction initiative includes a competency test for newly hired teachers,
state officials didn’t include a test for current teachers because they worried that too many veteran
teachers would fail. Yet, an incompetent teacher is just as incompetent whether he or she is in front of a class
of 20 or a class of 30.

Decreasing class size is easy. On the other hand, it is difficult to increase teacher competence, require
students to meet rigorous standards, and allow more parental choice. But it’s the hard alternatives that will
produce the result everybody wants: greater student achievement.

-- Lance T. Izumi