For years, public school students in North Carolina have been subjected to newer math benchmarks that favor estimation over exactitude, promoting the notion that close enough is good enough.

In deriving solutions to resolve the state’s educational woes, it appears that legislators and educators applied the same indistinct reasoning. From smaller class sizes and greater per-student expenditures to reduced teacher workloads, the data do not support a positive correlation between the vaunted remedies and gains in student performance.

Class sizes

Educators and politicians have long praised the benefits of smaller class sizes, leading the public to believe that class sizes have grown at the same time as enrollments and implying that reducing student–teacher ratios improves educational outcomes. Having fewer students per teacher improves the quality of teaching by allowing the teacher to have more time to spend with each student. At least that is the rationale.

But such assertions are not supported. Research shows that student–teacher ratios have been declining for years, along with student test scores.

The National Center for Educational Statistics reports that the average number of pupils per instructional staff member in public elementary and secondary schools has fallen from 26.1 in 1949 to 12 in 2003. Instructional staff includes principals, assistant principals, teachers, instructional aides, librarians, and guidance counselors. In North Carolina, the ratio of pupils per instructional staff member has fallen to 7.9, which is lower than the national average. The student–teacher ratio in North Carolina has similarly declined, from 22.3 in 1970 to 15.1 in 2003.

Educators have called for more teachers and a reduction in teacher workload. Yet, the average number of hours in the required school day (7.3 to 7.4), number of hours spent on all teaching duties (47 to 50), and number of days of classroom teaching in the school year (180 to 181) have all remained nearly constant since the early 1960s. Between 1980 and 2003, teachers received a lot more help in the form of instructional aides, with their numbers increasing by 110 percent. As a result, by 2003, the pupil–instructional staff member ratio rivaled that of private schools, with a difference of slightly less than 1 percent.

While student–teacher ratios have declined, so too has student achievement. Test scores have fallen along with pupil–teacher ratios. The National Center for Policy Analysis reported that Scholastic Aptitude Test scores have been steadily declining since the 1960s, and these trends are confirmed by data from the National Center for Education Statistics. These declines would appear more striking, but critics argue that the SAT has been adjusted over the years to make the test easier.

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction recently admitted it purposefully lowered the standards in 1992 when it eliminated nationally norm-referenced standardized tests in favor of its state-developed tests, confirming that supposed gains in academic achievement are highly suspect and that North Carolina’s public school students are not performing as well as the state claims.

Higher teacher quality and rigorous academic standards bring about improved educational outcomes. A 1999 report from The National Center for Policy Analysis concluded that “teacher quality overwhelms class size by a factor as large as 20.” Highly qualified teachers can improve student test scores by as much as 50 percentile points. Yet, despite evidence to the contrary, politicians and educators continue to advocate that reduced class sizes are the panacea to cure the state’s educational ills.

Increased Spending

Along with smaller class sizes, the public has been told more spending is needed to improve academic achievement, contending that the higher the per-pupil expenditures are, the higher the student achievement will be. Research, however, does not support this argument.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the percentage of gross domestic product spent for public primary and secondary education in the United States increased from 2.3 percent in 1949 to 4.7 percent in 2003. Total spending for public primary and secondary education grew in constant 2004-05 dollars from $4.7 billion in 1949-50 to $489.8 billion in 2003-04.

In 2003, the average per-student expenditure in the United States was $8,044, while in North Carolina it was about $7,650. A 1998 report from the Fordham Foundation showed that U.S. schools “ranked third highest among 22 countries in per-student expenditures on primary schools and third highest among 23 countries on secondary schools.”

The United States was ranked last in four of five comparisons of academic progress in reading, science, and mathematics through eighth grade. Worse, U.S. students fell even further behind in grades eight through 12 as compared to the other 23 advanced nations. U.S. secondary schools ranked last in mathematics and second to last in science achievement. American students made the smallest gains in academic achievement from year to year when compared to the other nations.

Research consistently shows that while spending for education has increased, students continue to fall behind academically. The Cato Institute reported results from a court-ordered school improvement plan in Kansas City, Mo., that was launched in 1985. The idea was to create a cost-is-no-object model school to boost student performance, more specifically to improve the black-white achievement gap.

The student-to-teacher ratio was reduced to 12, teacher pay was increased, teacher workload was reduced, and per-pupil expenditures rose to $11,700. Along with these improvements, 15 new schools were built with amenities, such as television and animation studios, an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, and a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary. In 1997, when the experiment finally concluded and the judge removed himself from the case, costs had ballooned to $2 billion.

Despite increased funding and having the best school facilities in the country, student performance did not improve. The black-white achievement gap, the experiment’s main goal, remained unchanged.

Karen McMahan is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.