Apart from salary, nothing else has a greater impact on a school district's budget than class size. Many studies show that smaller classes promote student achievement in the early grades, especially when classes are reduced to between 15 and 20 students. Education research shows that both test scores and student discipline improve significantly when students are moved into smaller classes. Benefits continue even after students return to larger classes. The benefit is even greater for children from low-income and urban families, where class size is typically much higher than the national average of 25.
Smaller classes let teachers give more focused attention to each child.
In Ohio, virtually all the state's wealthiest school districts have class sizes well below that number, most below 23. An analysis of state data shows a strong link between smaller class size and higher achievement. 2 Smaller class sizes are a major draw for teachers, creating greater job satisfaction. And in California, which passed a sweeping initiative in 1996 to reduce class size from a 30 to 20, parents overwhelmingly report that their children's reading and writing skills improved since the change. Copyright 2000, Cleveland Municipal School District - Finance Division.