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It all depends on the kids and the parents. Well disciplined and self motivated kids and parents can do well in a larger classroom.
Why do self motivated kids need a classroom?
A 32 gigabyte USB stick can hold 32,000 500 page books. How much educational material books, video, programs, audio, be put in that much space. This society just can't decide how much good info to give EVERYBODY.
A 32 gigabyte USB stick can hold 32,000 500 page books. How much educational material books, video, programs, audio, be put in that much space. This society just can't decide how much good info to give EVERYBODY.
Why?
Because Mrs. Whayland, Mrs. Popham, Mrs. Gallagher, and Mr. Kasuda, had decades of experience and were highly skilled in imparting information to children. I don't think that I could have possibly had better 3rd-6th grade teachers. That's what doesn't come in a 32 gigabyte stick.
Maybe I should phrase it as how many is too much...
For elementary school, my kids' classrooms now have 27 kids. 4 classes for their grade. 4 elementary schools in the district. This is in a very good school district (the reason we chose here). Last year it started with 22 and then new kids joined. This year they are already starting with 27. I remember 3 years ago the incoming class (us) with 21 per room were told that if a few more kids came into the school, they could open up another classroom - that would've been great but it never happened. Now they don't have the room to do so anymore.
Should this be a concern as far as our kids' education goes? I've seen the zoo-state of the classroom with 25+ kids and 1 teacher when no parents are visiting. How are teachers expected to give any kind of focus on specific weaknesses if they have so many kids? I coach a sport with half that amount of kids so I know what kind of effort it takes to do so. Don't take this the wrong way, but it's more like kid-sitting than teaching the majority of the day if that's the case.
I know city schools have much larger classrooms - but they are also not expected to do as well nor do they pay nearly $10k/year in school taxes alone.
Please note that the OP is not asking about home schooling or doing away with schools. Off topic comments will be subject to infractions for hi-jacking the thread. Sometimes choosing not to post is the right decision.
Well the school advised that they do cap at 28 but it's not a hard cap. This is their last year in this school so hopefully it's not an issue going forward into MS with more space. I'll have to inquire about their actual ratios.
My oldest son class is a class of 18 First graders, this is a PreK-3rd elementary school with a student body of 660 total. First grade have 7 classes, all with varying students between 16-19 students. I think this is really ideal number cuz he came from a private school and his previous kindy year only had 11 students.
The fewer, the better. It also varies on age. In elementary, I don't think there should ever be more than 24. 20 or less is actually ideal.
I had 16 one year (2nd grade) and the progress they made was phenomenal. No class had ever made the gains my class made in a single school year (in the whole district of 35 schools in the however many years they had collected data.) At the time, North Carolina had a cap on of 24 students for K-2 classrooms. We had 74 second graders at the beginning of the year, requiring us to have four classrooms. Half of my class was made up of struggling students, and the other half read as a who's-who- teacher's kids, PTA officers' kids, etc... A couple of kids moved away (including the PTA president's son- his dad was transferred), and before Christmas I was down to 16 kids. It was fantastic. I had the time to give each kid individualized attention a couple of times per week, and I could get my struggling students daily. My classroom was a dream that year. And the results showed.
In Michigan, it is rare to have under 30 in a room. 32 is standard for most elementary classrooms. I had 36 my last year teaching. School of choice has schools competing for students, so they pack as many into each class as they can. (One of the many, many reasons I hate school of choice.)
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We currently live in Michigan and it is interesting that you say it is rare to have under 30 in a classroom. Thanks for the information as it makes me feel that I made a good choice in choosing a school district that doesn't have open enrollment - you have to pay approximately 12,000 a year if you live outside the district boundaries unless you are an employee.
The largest class size we have had was 22 (in elementary), currently one class is 18 and the other is 20. My oldest is in middle school and even those classes are reasonable in size.
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