Small Class Size Research

Classrooms Both Big and Small

Class size is a factor in education that is often greatly overlooked. A larger class size effects the students, teachers, and professors in that class, affecting the focus of the students, the personal connection to the teacher, and the confidence of the students. A smaller class size creates a more personal atmosphere, while the cause, a larger class size, has many effects on the education of a student. That student won’t feel as much of a connection to the teacher, and will have more distractions, and feel like they are not important. Multiple opinions are raised about this issue, one of the opinions being that a larger or smaller class size has no effect on the student. The National Education Policy Center …show more content…
More students enjoy smaller and more modest classrooms, because there is a more personal connection to the teacher. If a student felt absolutely no personal connection to the teacher, then some students wouldn’t feel like they can ask them any questions. Some students, the shyer ones, are also less likely to ask questions, because it is, to them, a stranger. The teacher is a stranger who could be judging whatever question the student has, so the student doesn’t know if it is safe for them to ask that questions. Other students, also not knowing the boundaries of what offends the teacher or professor, could feel like they can’t ask anything they want, because the teacher could get offended. In classrooms with a larger number of students, it’s very possible that the student may never even have one encounter with a teacher. Studies have also shown that with increasing a class size by twenty students, the student’s future wage on average drops by six percent (Haimson). This could easily be linked to the fact that some students in classes of three-hundred, or even four-hundred, may never even talk to their teacher. Students are more dubious when asking a question to someone that they hardly know. Learning material is only more of a struggle without feeling that it is okay to ask for …show more content…
Students who have the capacity to learn a lot more than they do don’t due to all the distractions, the feeling of unimportance, and the lack of a relationship with the teacher. The National Education Policy Center also states that larger class sizes result in lower test scores (Schanzenbach). The effect of all these problems probably is all the lower test scores that students receive in class. This could be the effect of many things. It could be from all the distractions that the students, teachers, and professors encounter, or it could be from the internal feeling of not being noticed that the students in larger classrooms have, or from the lack of a personal connection. Overall, a larger class size impacts students in many ways. Lower test scores, loss of focus, no interaction with the teacher, and a feeling of no importance all collaborate together to result in a less educated