Teachers, parents and policy-makers agree with the reasonable intuition that shrinking the number of students per class improves student performance. Last year, President Clinton proposed to reduce class size in the early grades by hiring 100,000 more teachers using Federal funds. Vice-President Gore has similar plans. According to Education Daily , Gore would lower the average number of students per teacher in the early grades to 18, and in higher grades to 20. Teachers are understandably happy when they have fewer students, fewer conferences with parents, a drop in extracurricular demands and therefore less work that needs to be done.
Current research sees no improvements in smaller classes.
A new study by RAND and the American Institutes for Research has found that reducing class size has not made a substantial impact on student achievement. A 1989 John Hopkins report that reviewed 14 different studies from around the country found that when classes were cut to 15 students, the result was insignificant. On a 100-point test, the students in the smaller classes only gained about 4 points. The result of extensive research on the effect of reducing class size on academic improvement shows that the issue is inconclusive. While teachers,parents and policy-makers continuously praise such a project, they do not realize cutting class size can hatch numerous other problems.