It’s the start of a new school year and you walk into your first period class and then notice that there are significantly more students in the class compared to last year. Yet at the same time, there wasn’t a huge influx of new students or transfers. Well this is a new normal around the nation.
Classroom sizes have been rising across the US over the last few years and this has impacted the quality of education and learning for students and teachers. There are many reasons why classroom sizes have been getting larger and the impact it has.
First off, there has been a teacher shortage across the United States. According to the U.S Department of Education, the pandemic caused 730,000 local public educators to lose their jobs and while numbers have recovered; it has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. A Devlin Peck article that tracks the teacher shortage, said “there are at least 55,000 vacant positions and 270,000 underqualified positions right now in 2024.”
Furthermore, according to the Washington Post “More than 1 in 4 of the nation’s public schools coped with teacher and staff shortages by creating larger classes, according to data released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), an arm of the Education Department.” In addition there have been high turnover rates and depending on the state, a teacher receives a pay that is just average for what they do, and may have to rely on additional help like food stamps.
Currently, the Seattle Public Schools District is under a budget shortfall, and the current plan in the budget is to change around classes so that they are larger. This is not the only example in Washington, Northshore, Marysville, Mount Baker, and Moses Lake school districts are also facing budget cuts. This means schools will have to increase student capacity which often means increasing class sizes.
Finally, schools can’t fill in. Some schools were initially meant to be small and only handle a small capacity but over time were forced to handle larger student populations which often leads to larger class sizes and to students being overwhelmed. With all of this, teachers and students have to deal with many negatives.