The Price for a Change

The Price for a Change

People reading this has an experience of doing something else such as reading a comic book or listening music from earphones, etc. hiding from a teacher during our high school class. If the number of students in a class was 10-15, avoiding a teacher’s notice couldn’t be possible. However, in reality, it is always possible because our class usually has more than 30 students. It means that it’s difficult for a teacher to control all of students in a class when the class has more than 30 students and this issue about class sizes of public schools has been controversial. The class size of public school is not a simple subject because it is not independent from other educational issues and especially it is closely related to school budget.

Since this issue is closely related to other educational issues and particularly to financial issues of public schools that we can consider the most sensitive part of the administration of schools, there are diverse points of view about this subject. Even though several opinions suggested from other points of view seem more rational and realistic, the number of a class should be reduced.

These three sentences below from an article of Washington Post shows the reality of this issue very well. Research has shown positive academic outcomes for small classes, particularly in lower grades and for students who live in poverty. But reducing class size is an expensive endeavor, particularly in large school districts. School officials estimate it would cost $15 million to reduce class size by one student across the district. (“Prince William School Board seeks flexibility on class size mandates”, Nov 21, 2013) The educational effectiveness and significance of reducing class size is already well proven and well known, so the government has limited the class size by law.

The problem is that, however, in reality the states cannot follow this law because of their tight budget on education. An article of NY Times...