Are Small Class Sizes Better?

We recently read an article for Dr. Mullins' class that I thought was especially applicable to our situation. The author mentioned the standards movement and how it revealed inequality in schools. She went on to profoundly reveal that students in schools with large populations of disadvantaged students perform the worst on standardized tests... duh. I find it very unfortunate that my honors students are constantly brought down by their peers... and it's no fault of their own. This is an issue that has been thoroughly discussed among my classmates. Reducing class size seems to be an obvious solution.

Before reading the article, I had been told by several people that research suggested that class size had no effect on student performance. Like most things related to education, I really had no opinion on the matter until this year. Because of this year, I have a very hard time believing that class size doesn’t affect student performance. My average class size is about 28 students, and on the random days when students are pulled out for testing I am left with a mere 12-15 students. I wish there was a way to adequately articulate how much more engaged the students are on those days. Their hands shoot up to answer questions... maybe it’s because they know they have a better chance of being called on... but once I get them started on the day’s activity, I have no problem getting to every one of them for some individual attention. Of course they retain more information. I'm not sure why research says that class size doesn't matter. But I simply have a hard time believing it.

Phonics vs Whole-language

I thought that The Reading Wars was a decent look at both sides of the debate over how children should learn to read. I have thought about this topic extensively, especially now as a teacher, but until a couple of years ago, I thought phonics was the only way to learn. My first real-world exposure to whole-language learning was this year. I tried not to let my students' inability to read affect the way I approached this article. After reading it though, I must say that I still came to the same conclusion: phonics is better.

What I took from the whole-language side of the argument:

1. It’s trendy. At one point in the article, Nicholas Lemann described the whole-language approach as “a natural, unconscious process best fostered by unstructured immersion... a rich atmosphere.” Later on he described it as “a joyful, humanistic, intellectually challenging alternative to deadening phoneme drills.” If these adjectives don’t scream 21st century, California-trendy, then I don’t know what does. Sure it all sounds pretty... but I need more substance than that.
2. Whole-language can work if it’s done right. If you have teachers that understand the big picture concept behind the method, then sure, it can work. But how often does that happen? What happens if it doesn’t? We’ll get to that later.

What I took from the phonics side of the argument:

1. It’s tried and true. Phonics worked for decades and the English language hasn’t evolved enough to give us much motivation to change our way of teaching it. The best thing about phonics is that it’s formulaic. There are very few variables so it’s easy for teachers across the country to teach the same thing and keep it effective.
2. Phonics sets children up for success as adults. With the whole-language method, a child is really never taught how to “sound out” a word, so later on in life, when they come across a word they don’t recognize, they have far less of a chance of figuring out how to pronounce it. Throughout this first year of teaching I have seen this first hand. My students were not exposed to adequate whole-language teaching, so the small amount of word recognition they retained hasn’t served them very well. A student once looked at the word, “carnation” and instead said, “celebrate.” When I told him to go back and sound it out, he couldn’t get past the “c” sound at the beginning. That is why he just pulled a random c-word out of his head. 

It seems that one of the main arguments from the whole-language side is that phonics is boring and deadening, thus children lose interest. To me, that's just the price of success... and I think (as Lemann mentioned) that the main motivation to teach whole-language is that it’s more fun for the teachers. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s practical to jump straight from illiteracy to reading whole words. That would be like handing a beginner a set of golf clubs and sending them to the first tee for 18 holes. They would fail. First they need to go to the driving range and learn how to swing. Next they need to spend time hitting golf balls... the boring, deadening, monotonous task of hitting golf balls. Before students can read a book (or play the metaphorical golf course), they need to learn how to break down the smaller parts - the words on the pages.