Class Size

Class sizes continue to grow in many Colorado school districts. How much? We do not really know actual Colorado class sizes because the Colorado Department of Education does not maintain such research.

Conventional wisdom is that smaller class sizes are conducive to improved student learning. Yet there is research on both sides of the class size issue – some saying that children learn better in classes of fewer than 20 students and others claiming that it doesn't matter much as long as there is a quality teacher in the classroom.

• The 1998 Legislature rejected two class size reduction bills, primarily because of the high cost of hiring enough teachers to significantly reduce class size. The 1999 Legislature turned down a bill by Rep. Suzanne Williams (D-Aurora) to collect class size data from school districts so the Legislature would have valid information to consider.
• Congress recently passed legislation to partially fund the hiring of 100,000 classroom teachers using federal tax dollars. Colorado will be eligible for about 300 of these teachers, but school districts will have to pick up part of the first year and ongoing costs of employing such teachers.
• One of our Association's dilemmas in deciding whether to support such bills is how much money is available to fund class size reduction without taking all or a large portion of the regular inflation-plus-growth increase in the School Finance Act.