Budget Cuts In Schools

Around the United States classroom sizes have been steadily growing because of budget cuts in their school districts. This results in there being less money to pay teachers in turn it decreases the number of teachers they are able to have. Due to the fact there are less teachers, the average class size will then grow. This puts an even further burden on the teachers as they now have five more kids to teach, five more test to grade, five more papers to grade. Even though it is a small increase it can become overwhelming very easily. What some people see as a needed budget cut because their city is overspending, hurts the education of thousands. Class sizes around the United States are growing and it is hurting our education. These larger class

Because of these cuts they are forced to lay off teachers and can not hire anymore, even if their student body is growing. This directly affects the class sizes the students will be in. In New York city alone from 2008-2011 the average elementary class size grew from 21.8 students to 23.7 students. The increasing class sizes means that the teacher has two more kids to try and help and teach. The smaller a class is the more time and effort the teacher can put into helping a student. If the numbers keep growing teachers will have less and less one on one time to help individual students who are struggling. This will not only hurt the student but it will hurt the school district. If there are a number of students who do not perform well on a standardized test then they will receive even more budget cuts. According to Helen Bain, she served as the president of the largest teachers union in the United States in the 1970’s, her students in seventh grade learned a lot quicker in a class of 15-20 students. As the class size got bigger her students became less efficient. Helen is a strong believer that our governments should be doing something about our class sizes.

In the early 1980’s Texas was the first state to to pass a law that limited the class size. The law limited elementary class sizes to 22 students. When a school district went over the 22 student limit they would be fined which encouraged districts to hire more teachers so they would not be fined. These kinds of laws have spread to more than 30 states in the United States. One major problem is that some schools just can’t afford to hire another teacher so they are assed large penalties and the laws end up doing nothing for the students. If it weren’t for all of the budget cuts we would not have to be dealing with large class sizes. In a study done by Diane Schanzenbach, an associate professor at Northwestern University, she found that larger class sizes not only hurt the students test scores in the short run but also their ability to apply their knowledge to work in the future. Cutting money now on education to save a few dollars will end up costing the students a lot more in the future. Smaller classrooms work because the students are more likely to get involved in the conversation the class having and it is easier for the teacher to tailor the lesson to a group of 15 kids than it is for a group of 30 kids. Even the best teachers are limited on what they can do when they have a large class.