School Overcrowding
Schools are becoming more and more dependent on teachers being able to handle more students each year. The teacher to student ratio that is best known as “ideal” is at most 16 students to one teacher. Yet, there are teachers that have classes double that size. The students in America need to be well educated and treated like scholars not like nationally ranked test scores or statistics. This paper will show that there are better ways to handle overcrowding in schools, and in classrooms.
What seems to be wrong in the school systems is that there is a lack of strong student to teacher relationships. When there is overcrowding the teacher can’t manage to make a connection with every student that sits in their classroom. Although students should make an effort to create a communication path with their teacher, some students are warded off because they see how many students they have in class. In addition to that; teachers are being overworked. Teachers are being asked to do the impossible; for example: If a high school teacher has 25 students and the state requires for each student to write a 500 word essay to pass the class, the teacher has to plan a curriculum assign the work, provide help for each student, revise each draft, give notes, assign a final draft, and then carefully read and grade the 25 essays that are turned in. And that is just for one class! If the high school teacher had only that class it wouldn’t be too hard, yet most high school teachers have multiple classes and way over 25 students in each class. (Anonymous). On top of the lack of communication and the overworked teacher, there are students with a learning disability going completely unnoticed. How? Students who have a learning disability most times don’t even know they have one, they assume they’re stupid or that the work is too hard. Teachers are blind to learning disabilities when all they have time to do is assign and grade homework and projects. What ends up happening is the students perform poorly and in return they get retained. A statistic states that many students are retained before they actually find out they have a learning disability. (Katherine P. Barnett 285-293).
These problems exist because of educational inequality. The main reason would be that Boards of Education are putting a big emphasis on students being capable of passing standardized testing. Teachers cannot aid to each student specific needs when there are state tests that take up most of the classrooms curriculum. When they create the standardized tests there is a bar that is set at a certain point. All students are expected to reach that bar, and continue to hold their academic place. All tests are made equally but students are not meant to be tested equally. Every student has different strengths and weaknesses. One test being applied to the masses does not present educational equality.
Having “all for one” tests and overcrowding classrooms does have an effect on the students. Students are being forced to focus on the basic skills needed to pass standardized testing, which allows little room for creativity building. When teachers emphasize more on the core learning strategies, they tend to keep students away from exposure to arts and sports. While all the teachers are trying to cram every standard into students; the students become unmotivated, they lose interest in school because they have nothing fun to look forward to. They also become stressed with the work load and lack of understanding of the curriculum (Popham).
The truth is in the statistics. Statistics show that teachers with a smaller class size tend to score higher on tests, even when there are students with learning disabilities in the class. Bigger class sizes have less of an opportunity to be successful if there aren’t tutorial services provided by either the teacher or the school. When teachers are available to students it allows somewhat of a