End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 30, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
National study shows 'class-size reduction' does no good

Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn insists he's spent the past year turning over every rock in the state garden, looking for ways to save money. Show of hands, now -- how many believe that when he announces his results this fall, we're going to hear, "So successful have we been in identifying and closing pernicious, liberty-draining, unconstitutional state departments that Carson City is now swimming in cash, and I see no option but to unilaterally slash the sales tax and get rid of the auto registration fee entirely"?

All of you with your hands up: Could I also interest you in a waterfront condo with yacht slip amidst the cool, jasmine-scented sea breezes of Death Valley Junction?

No, Gov. Guinn is almost certainly going to tell us the state's out of money and needs more loot, despite a record economic boom, and despite the fact that the biggest boondoggle he inherited from his Democratic predecessor -- elementary school "class size reduction" -- remains an unexamined and untouchable sacred cow.

Fortunately, folks in other quarters have been tracking the results of this union-instigated Teacher Full-Employment Act.

Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., a policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at Washington's Heritage Foundation, calls the standardized National Assessment of Educational Progress exams "the most comprehensive database on educational outcomes available to researchers." Using standard regression analysis techniques to measure the impact on nationwide 1998 NAEP scores of such variables as race and ethnicity; poverty; parent's education; and gender -- as well as class size -- Dr. Johnson released his results in a report dated June 9, titled "Do Small Classes Influence Academic Achievement?"

Which of these factors turn out to have the greatest impact on the test scores of fourth graders, nationwide?

The factors which best correlate with substandard performance are students' black or Hispanic race (9.9 percent and 9.8 percent below baseline scores, respectively); participation in the free or reduced-price lunch program (7.3 percent below the baseline), or simply being a boy (minus 3.2 percent.)

Rather than venture too far into Political Incorrectness, the researcher are quick to point out that skin color cannot reasonably be held to cause low test scores, any more than scores magically drop after a child wolfs down a government-subsidized slice of cheese. Rather, pupils must come from poor homes to qualify for the federal lunch program, and "Poor families may have some unobservable characteristics or challenges that make it more difficult to succeed in school," Dr. Johnson reports.

"Similarly, the categories of black and Hispanic students cover children whose characteristics other than their race may make it more difficult for them to score well."

What factors tend to correlate with better test performance by fourth graders? Books, magazines, encyclopedias and/or newspapers present in the home (a 3.9 percent improvement); and parents who attended at least some college (2.2 percent.)

But reducing reading class size below 20 students improved scores by only 1.1 percent -- the lowest impact of any factor studied, and a result which the Heritage researchers call "not statistically significant."

Nevada currently spends $85 million per year attempting to reduce class sizes to 16 in the first and second grades, and 19 in the third grade. In California, the state has spent $4 billion since 1996 reducing class sizes to 20 students in the first three grades -- the costliest "education reform" program in the Golden State's history, since it required hiring 23,500 teachers, many of them green recruits.

Even Frederick Mosteller's much cited 1995 study of class size impacts in the "STAR" experiment in Tennessee elementary schools -- since challenged by such researchers as economist Eric Hanushek of the University of Rochester -- found significant improvements only after classes were reduced to 15 students or fewer, considerably below what states like Nevada and California have managed to achieve, despite these Herculean expenditures. And such studies, of course, refer to a classroom literally containing no more than 15 kids -- not the architecturally-mandated sleight-of-hand by which many Nevada schools place 36 kids in a room with one teacher at the front and a second teacher grading papers at the back, and call that a "class size of 18."

"Class size has little or no effect on academic achievement, according to this analysis of 1998 NAEP data," Dr. Johnson concludes. "It is quite likely, in fact, that class size as a variable pales in comparison with the effects of many factors not included in the NAEP data, such as teacher quality and teaching methods. Observes Irwin Kurz, principal of the highly successful P.S. 161, a public school in Brooklyn, N.Y., that serves poor children and has an average class size of 35, it is 'better to have one good teacher than two crummy teachers, any day.' "

So, Gov. Guinn, you said you were searching for ineffective state programs that could be eliminated, saving us millions of dollars?"

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available at 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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