by M. Halyard

Created on: November 23, 2010   Last Updated: December 02, 2010

Though it can be an issue at any grade level, the problem of overcrowding in public schools is most apparent at the high school level. At this level, disruptive students in a packed class may severely impair learning for everyone. Teachers may not have time to grade papers with specific feedback to student performance. The administrative chores of managing such a class can be overwhelming. In an overcrowded class, it is almost a given that students will slip through the cracks of education.

Yet, required core classes like English and Algebra may easily be filled to bursting with 35 to 40 students. This may not seem to be a problem for the average school administrator or guidance counselor who needs to squeeze in "just one more" to that Algebra 1 class, but it is certainly a problem for the teacher of that class and it should be a problem for the parents of students in that class. The hard truth of the matter is that teachers must be less discriminating when grading the work of large classes and classroom behavior tends to deteriorate exponentially after about 20 or so students.

Is a high failure rate in a ninth grade math or English class a problem? Certainly. The difference between middle school and high school level coursework is significant, and in ninth grade, many students in public high schools discover that their academic skills are not sufficient to allow them to pass high school level course work. According to a recent report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, performance in ninth grade classes such as English or Algebra serves as a predictor for high school graduation. Yet ninth grade classes are the most overcrowded classrooms in America today. Freshman year is the most difficult year for many high school students; by all rights, their class sizes should be smaller during this year. Yet they are not; they are the opposite.

Many, many freshmen "slip through the cracks" of these crowded classes, year after year, and many of them end up dropping out of high school by the time they are 17 years old. Some go on to GED programs, and therefore depending upon an individual state's criteria for calculating graduation rate, may or may not be included in their state's overall dropout rate. The cost to society of high school dropouts is well-documented in many studies.

Frustrated with large class sizes, parents in the state of Florida voted in a "Class Size Amendment" in 2002 which limited the class size of

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