Introduction to Probability and Statististics
Introduction to Probability and Statististics
According to smartmoney.com, 44% of the schools around the United States will be increasing the size of the classes, which means that the Student Teacher Ratio (STR) is going to rise. Initially records, as pulled directly from the department of education were significant but they did not showcase similar information which ultimately led to wrong findings.
According to Centre for Public Education, ratio of 15 to 18 students per teacher is ideal for K-3rd grade classes. They conducted a thorough study through various programs and arrived at certain conclusions.
- Students who study in smaller classes get more personal attention, which in turn helps them to become achievers in their academics.
- Students who participated for longer durations in the programs with reduced class sizes showed significant improvements.
There is a pulse in the distinction because part time employees skew student to teacher ratios. The calculations totally confuse how much time teachers devote for the district as compared to the time spent with students. The above graph depicts the old and the new findings. Both the lines clearly depict similar trends and the new line fluctuates to a much small degree. The new ratio revoles around 19 students per teacher since 2000 but the old ratio decreased from 18 to 16. The new numbers reveal that the ratios were somewhat similar or a little higher than most other years in the decade.
According to the study by Gates foundation on dropouts, most of them said that they would have stayed back in their schools if the class strengths were smaller. On the other hand, teacher managing as class size of more than 30 students will definitely not be able to give all of them the kind of attention according to their individual capabilities.
Also when the classroom sizes are bigger, parents will find it difficult to interact with the teachers. Time allotted for each parent during the parent-teacher meetings will have to be reduced in order to accommodate all the parents.
The Data Resource Centre for Child and Adolescent Health is a project of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) supported by Cooperative Agreement 1-U59-MC06980-01 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB). With funding and direction from MCHB, these surveys were conducted by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Centre for Health Statistics. CAHMI is responsible for the analyses, interpretations, presentations and conclusions included on this site.
Do smaller sized classes always benefit students?
Although the above mentioned points might suggest that smaller sized classes are more likely to raise achievers, there are studies which imply that it is not the only criteria. Effective learning activities and well planned teaching programs are other criteria that should be considered as well. Also, the performance of students will also depend upon the efficiency of a teacher as well. Not all teachers will be able to develop achievers, even if they were given classes with lesser students.
When the schools in California are mandated to hire more teachers to reduce the class sizes, they hired inexperienced teachers who did not even have the full qualifications. Many schools had to invest a lot of money in adding more classrooms in order to reduce the STR. This led to compromise on other important educational areas. Making smaller classrooms simply mean that the schools will have to incur higher costs.
Since every single student takes more number of classes than every teacher, the top difference of one in the entire Student teacher ratio or STR is modified in average size of a class. It is a 6.25% boost when the numbers increase from 16 to 17. Usually, the class size is 35 so that each time there is an increase of 2 students per class. As one reaches to more number of classes, say teaching four classes, there will be eight more quizzes and book reports added every single week to each grade.
Does average size of the class help in deriving at accurate STR?
If you closely study how STR is calculated, you will find a lot of discrepancies in the results. While some statistics have been calculated by considering the number of teachers, they did not differentiate fulltime and the part time teachers. Also there will be other teachers who specialize in extracurricular activities like physical training and music classes. Again, there were calculation errors because of the inaccurate data that was made available to them. Even if the STR of a state showed 20:1, there could still be more than 30 students in that class. The STR but calculations will give you average figures at the most.
Comparison of STR in California when compared to other states:
According to the survey conducted by National Centre for Educational Statistics on secondary and elementary schools, the STR of California is currently standing at 21.1:1, which is on the higher side when compared to most other states. The ratio is only behind two other states, Utah and Arizona. Utah tops the figures with 22.4:1 and the STR of Arizona is 21.3:1.
If you compare the ratio of California with other states in the US, only 4 states including Oregon have the STR of more than 20:1. The STR of Vermont is the least with 11.3:1. The overall average of STR across all the states in the US is 15.5:1. This means that San Diego County and other Californian counties will have to push towards decreasing the ratio, which according to me is a tall order, especially considering the fact that US economy is in shambles at the moment.
References:
Koestner, R., Zuckerman, M., & Koestner, J. (1989). Attributional focus of praise and children’s intrinsic motivation: The moderating role of gender. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 61–72.
Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 33–52.
Winner, E. (1988). The point of words: Children’s understanding of metaphor and irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Nicholls, J. G. (1978). The development of the concepts of effort and ability, perception of academic attainment, and the understanding that difficult tasks require more ability. Child Development, 49, 800–814.
