ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609090109
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
CALIFORNIA is embarking this year on a massive $800 million initiative to reduce public-school class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. A better test of the power of smaller classes to improve student performance - a reform whose effectiveness remains hotly debated - may come right here in Virginia.
Thanks in part to the efforts of House Majority Leader Dick Cranwell of Vinton, the Old Dominion has already started lowering class sizes in the early grades. And Virginia is doing it in a more gradual and targeted way, and so may have averted a potential pitfall that could unfairly undo the California experience.
No question, California schools have profound problems.
A consequence of the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, which put limits on the local property taxes that historically provided much education funding, has been California's plunge from No. 1 in the nation to below 40th in school spending per pupil. That student test scores have plunged similarly does not seem a total coincidence, though the performance drop is also attributable to other factors, such as a rise in California's immigrant population, many of whom do not speak English as a first language.
While California aims to reduce average early-grade class size from 32 to 20, Virginia is aiming to make them even smaller - but only in schools targeted because of their high numbers of at-risk students. In Roanoke, for example, five schools now have no more than 15 students per class in the early grades, while class sizes are somewhat higher elsewhere in the city (though certainly less than the California average of 32).
Some studies - a four-year look at 7,000 Tennessee children, for example - support the idea that lower class size improves student performance; other studies show no improvement.
The answer to the seeming paradox may be the common-sense point that, by itself, lower class size can only help make other things happen. The advantage of smaller classes seems obvious. But there must be teachers able and empowered to use the advantage to teach in different, better ways.
California's all-at-once strategy, reports The Christian Science Monitor, will require 20,000 new teachers by February - in a state whose universities produce only about 5,000 new teachers a year.
If the effectiveness of lower class size in improving student achievement fails a fair test, that would be disappointing. Worse would be to reject the hypothesis if it fails an unfair test.
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