Class Size and Early Education

[BMG580]

I am trying to find as much good research as I can about how smaller class sizes benefit children in early education. I know the state of Tennessee has laws restricting the size of the class for grades K-3 and within a couple years saw great evidence that the reduction of students per class helped promote learning and produced higher test scores.

My oldest just started public K and the class size is 30 students with one teacher and one assistant. If the county does not release funds for at least one more K classroom in the next few weeks once the registrations for the year are pretty complete (all 6 K classes are at between 28-30 students per class) I will probably pull her and homeschool. What makes me crazy is that there is plenty of funding for things that make the school and county look good on paper (Smart Boards in every class, Chinese instruction, etc.) yet they are not meeting the basic needs of their youngest students by providing a reasonable class size.

I will be writing a letter and sending it to the superintendent of the county, the principal of the school and copying my child's teacher. I will also be writing to my congressman.

Thanks so much for any info. or links that you can provide, I've found some great stuff on my own already but the more I've got gives me a firmer foundation to make my point.

[CarrieMF]

1:15 isn't bad. I don't see anything wrong with it.

Last year my kids school went with 1 grade 4 class. There were 29/30 kids in the class, 1 teacher. She is an excellent teacher & this year has 23 students. When I asked her how she felt about going down to that many kids her only comment was having 7 less report cards to do up.

Here 30 is the cut off mark, but all the schools are over capacity. My kids school got rid of their computer lab this year as they needed it for another classroom. They now have laptops for the school. Many schools have portables added onto the schools to make more room. If our school has another jump in enrollment they'll be needing portables. There are 5 K-6 & 1 K-3 elementary schools plus the catholic(public) has 2 regular elementary & 1 french immersion elementary. There is not enough room. My kids school went from 220 students at the beginning of the 2008-2009 year to 300 students this year.

Things like smart boards, language istruction are often grant funded which is completely seperate from funding for teachers, aides, etc.