Editorial: Here’s to smaller classes

Thursday, March 23, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

The impact of growth on Nevada's schools became a leading issue in the late 1980s, prompting then-Gov. Bob Miller to champion an expensive class-size reduction program for first and second grades.

His program, passed by the 1989 Legislature and begun in 1990, mandated a 16-1 student-teacher ratio in first and second grades. With help from money provided by President Clinton's class-size reduction program, the program was expanded in 1998 to add a 19-1 student teacher ratio in third grade.

While highly laudable in theory, the class-size reduction program broke down in practice. Growth was so overwhelming in Clark County and throughout the state that school superintendents found they did not have enough classrooms to accommodate the program as originally envisioned.

What happened then was a mathematical equivalent, rather than true classroom reduction. A large percentage of the lower-grade classrooms still had more than 30 students, but two teachers were assigned to them in order to maintain the mandated ratio.

Studies in the mid-1990s showed that while true classroom reduction - one teacher and 16 or 17 students per classroom - led to academic improvement, adding a second teacher to an overcrowded classroom showed no difference in achievement.

In some settings, team teaching is beneficial, but its use as a way to meet the state ratio was ordered by the 2005 Legislature to be phased out by the 2011-12 academic year. The Las Vegas Sun reported this week that its use in Clark County is already being dramatically curtailed. To end impractical team teaching, though, there must be money available to build more elementary schools, to buy more portable classrooms and to enlarge older campuses - as rapid growth is still with us.

This kind of building program, which has great potential for improving test scores, can take place in Clark County - but only if voters approve the next bond issue. It is tentatively scheduled for 2008 in the amount of $3.5 billion. We hope support for it is growing.