How Class-Size Reduction Harms Kids in Poor Neighborhoods
In 1996, the state of California began spending with great fanfare over $1 billion a year to reduce the size of classes in the early primary grades. Emboldened by intuition and confirmatory findings from Tennessee's rigorously designed class-size-reduction experiment, California policymakers embraced the vision that a rising tide of class-size reduction would lift the performance of all students. The expectation, moreover, was that poor children's academic boats would rise even higher, thereby reducing the nagging performance gap between rich and poor students that even the most mammoth and muscle-bound of public-policy heroics (for example, Title I) have barely put a squeeze on.
Unfortunately, these sky-high expectations fail to take into account how class-size reduction tinkers with the quality of teaching in well-to-do and poor neighborhoods. Many schools in high-income communities have fared well as a result of the class-size-reduction program. They had no inexperienced teachers before the introduction of the program, and they had none after it. Yet, contrary to the findings from the Tennessee experiment, a wholesale reduction in class size predictably nibbles away at the chances that students in poor, inner-city neighborhoods will get a better education-- even if fully qualified teachers were available to fill the new classrooms.
Here's why. A substantive reduction in the size of classes in the lower grades for virtually every one of California's public elementary schools triggers a frenetic stirring among the existing teacher force. Schools post job openings for the newly created classrooms. Teachers apply to multiple sites, some more attractive than others. The more-attractive schools--for example, those situated in middle- to high-income communities--receive stacks of applications iced with well-honed cover letters. The least-attractive schools--for example, poorly performing schools in high-poverty areas--scrape far fewer applications from their mailboxes. Of the applicants who fail to make the cut for the plum teaching slots, some opt out of the teaching profession, while many others, by default, repair to classrooms...
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