The article examines student teacher ratios in K-12 schools across the country and attempts to examine trends, costs, and benefits of having smaller classroom sizes. The article first claims that although there are increasingly large amounts of people claiming classroom sizes are rapidly increasing and advocating for smaller classrooms, average classroom size has stayed mostly the same over the last 2 decades. Additionally, when asked to predict the average student-teacher ratio 92 percent of respondents over-estimated current conditions. The article argues that, although it is true that smaller classroom sizes are beneficial, there are more efficient ways to use school funding then to reduce classroom sizes. The article provides the example that if schools increased their classroom sizes by 2 students they could afford to pay teachers approximately $5,000 extra per yet thus allowing for higher quality teachers to be considered.
This article can be useful in helping to understand the effect that individual backgrounds of legislators have on policy. The findings suggest that an analysis of a legislator’s background may help to predict what policy they may be supportive of, and that a legislators preferences are not entirely derived from their constituency. Additionally, it helps to provide some explanation for the high degree of variance in spending among states on higher education.