Class Size Reduction, Teacher Quality, and Academic Achievement in California Public Elementary Schools
Class Size Reduction, Teacher Quality, and Academic Achievement in California Public Elementary Schools
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加州公立小学班级人数减少、教师质量和学业成绩
DOI:
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发表时间:
2002
期刊:
影响因子:
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通讯作者:
Steven G. Rivkin
中科院分区:
文献类型:
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作者:
Christopher Jepsen;Steven G. Rivkin
Research publications reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Directors of the Public Policy Institute of California. Short sections of text, not to exceed three paragraphs, may be quoted without written permission provided that full attribution is given to the source and the above copyright notice is included. iii Foreword Intuitively, class size reduction is a good idea. Parents support it because it means that their children will receive more individual attention from teachers. Teachers like it for the same reason and also because it creates a more manageable workload. It is generally assumed that the fewer students in a class, the better they will learn and the higher they will score on nationwide tests—currently one of the most common measures of student achievement. Nevertheless, several things could go wrong with mandated class size reduction (CSR). This report presents evidence that the potential success or failure of such a reform may depend largely on how it is implemented and how teachers and administrators respond. If it is implemented quickly on a large scale, such a program may run into serious problems. In the following pages, Christopher Jepsen and Steven Rivkin analyze some of the things that went right and some that did not after California passed its CSR law in 1996. One problem was the sweeping nature of the legislation, which called for a one-third reduction in class size for kindergarten through third grade in every public elementary school in the state. This resulted in an immediate need for thousands of new teachers. But where were they to come from? And what qualifications would they have? In 1997, the first year after the schools had scrambled to hire new teachers, nearly one-quarter of the teaching workforce in California had one year of experience or less. The authors also point to a more serious problem. Many teachers in economically disadvantaged communities left their schools to fill vacancies created in other schools. Thus, many schools had to fill not only the positions created by their own efforts to reduce class size but also positions vacated by departing teachers. The analysis reveals that the effects of class size reduction extended beyond the third grade, leading to lower achievement in the fifth grade iv among schools with a high percentage of black students. Evidently, many fourth-and fifth-grade teachers chose to move …