It's best to have a great teacher with a small class size. Student behavior, now more than ever needs to be a factor when considering class size.
Anyone else wanna call "false dichotomy?" I hate to sound like a cynic, and I realize that institutionalized education of some sort is, at present, indispensable (possibly also indispensible). I also realize that, all other things being equal, "great teachers" (and the wiggle room here is tremendous) are one of the only, and perhaps the most important, factor that can make a difference. We all owe a great deal to a few of them, I expect. But isn't this discussion, and aren't these strategies just ways of delaying, accomplishing marginal returns (demonstrated by dubious heuristics), to avoid the much more radical overhaul that would be necessary if we really wanted our children to tap their full potential, rather than to just ensure the continuation of the status quo, i.e., a (moderately) safe place to administer basic levels of socialization, normalization, enculturation, etc.? Outside of the black box thinkers such as Sir Ken Robinson have been telling us for quite awhile now just how much creativity, curiosity, and sheer human potential we're dumping down the sluices of our top-down, factory farm-styled academic institution. Why do we continue to participate? I can't help but wonder if we're not all a little too comfortable with the 40+ hours of relatively inexpensive babysitting, accompanied by a full complement of blaming rights should anything go wrong. And you know what? I bet we could pay even a little less for it.
Note that it doesn't mention exactly what criteria they are using to determine what an "excellent teacher" is, or how individual teachers might have individual limits or preferences on class size, or even how it might vary from subject to subject or by particular group.
Also, speaking as a middle school educator, what I can do with class numbers depends so much on what the students come prepared to do. I currently teach 38 students in my "advanced" math course. These are the students that are taking high school Algebra I for in the 8th grade for high school credit. Managing 38 in that class is just fine. I have more to grade than my typical classes of 30 or less students, and giving individual feedback takes more time and effort on my part. Having more than 15 at times can be ridiculous. Generally, my Math Lab students despise math and do not come to me with very limited math goals and skills. In order to motivate, inspire and educate my Math Lab students attempts at adding beyond fifteen rarely works. As the year progresses, and student "buy-in" improves, I can add more, but I've never been able to justify having close to the 38 students that I have in my "advanced" math class.
I also teach a math support class, we call it the "Math Lab". The program at our school has been recognized by Michigan Association of School Boards as exemplary. This is mainly because we cap the class limit at 15 students and also have two dedicated classroom para-pro's (classroom adult aides) to assist me. In this class, management of the smaller number of 15 can be very difficult. I have to focus much of my attention on the student behaviors and motivating them before helping them with math. The kids taking the high school algebra in the 8th grade come to me as high-achievers that are ready and willing to put in an effort to learn. Although it's at a faster pace than the typical 8th grade course, and has much higher expectations, it's uncommon for students to carry a grade less than a "B" and management issues are minimal for me that hour.
I was never a teacher in an American public school, but as an EFL teacher, this really rings true. Also, props for teaching a math support class. I was one of those students myself and I honestly appreciated the teachers that did their best to help me out. On reflection though, I think that I wasn't really ready to learn math, or at least I couldn't understand why it was an important subject to learn. Of course, now I do, much to my chagrin. Especially as I am reviewing for the GRE. Anyway, group dynamics is something I'm really interested in and actually one of the graduate degrees I am considering is organizational psychology and more specifically conflict resolution. I have spoken to some people who think that conflict resolution is a hyper-specialization, but I've talked to others that see it as a fast-growing field with plenty of real-world application and demand. Either way, the field is growing. One thing that has always puzzled me about the public school system in the US is that class creation does seem to have some kind of logic behind it (at least in my experience) not nearly enough attention is directed at optimizing those groupings. Granted, there are limited configurations possible in most settings, but even so, group dynamics can make or break a class. In many ways, I feel like politicians should have experience with certain areas directly, since the decisions they make tend to affect those areas so greatly. The areas that come most immediately to mind are teaching, banking, economics and sociology. Of course, it is absurd to expect politicians to be masters of these things, but I think that greater compassion will lead to politics that better represent the will of the people and the only way I can think of to foster that is through direct experience. I think that this would lead to an understanding amongst politicians and the wider public that teaching a class of 38 collaborators interested in discovering something is a wildly different experience than paying intensive and individual attention to a class of 15 students poised to become adversaries at any given opportunity.Also, speaking as a middle school educator, what I can do with class numbers depends so much on what the students come prepared to do.
If I were to choose one over the other, in a flat choice, I would always choose the highly effective teacher, they would strive to do whatever it took to create gains in the children, and be humble enough to take on criticism. On the other hand, if I were designing a school system, the best answer in my opinion, is that the question of how many students should be in a class should depend on the kids, and the circumstance. For young children, with many social-emotional concerns, having a smaller class so that you could manage the higher level of relationship and personal needs would trump the academic support. However, you could move that same group of smaller students to a larger group of students within that same year, if you effectively were dealing with their needs, as well as reduce to smaller groups, should you need to intervene more effectively. This should be a data driven decision based upon students' needs.
I think it depends on the kid, but the research I've seen seems to indicate that class size has little impact on testing results. So for me the obvious answer is a Great Teacher! What's interesting is that there are some good arguments for larger class sizes that are unrelated to teaching. For example, for classes emphasizing class discussions having small classes limit the various points of view from being expressed. Without enough confident kids to express their opinions groupthink can creep in and students often miss out on other perspectives and are less likely to employ their innate critical thinking skills.
As great as this might be, how do you determine who's a great teacher, and how do you hire people based on it? Answer, you do not. So unless you know cold that someone is a great teacher you should stick with smaller class sizes.
Maybe. But if you don't learn anything and score poorly on tests compared to other classes, I don't think the teacher that gives freedom will be very liked. If the teacher can't control the class and student are having "fun" and it's chaos all the time, I still doubt he will get a good evaluation. If texting doesn't really impede on the learning, then why not text. I don't see a big difference between texting and doodling. I might be too optimistic regarding high-schoolers but I think if it's explained well, they will answer truthfully and the good teachers will still get the best grades.