Teacher caseload effects test scores
Posted by Beth DuBose on Sep 29, 2008
Middle and high schools might need to start looking at teacher to student ratios to increase test scores
The Washington Post had an interesting article on how a teacher’s load can affect students’ performance. The author discussed how when principal’s are given the power over their staffing funds, that they tend to concentrate on decreasing the teacher to student ratio, or what he refers to as total student loads per teacher (TSL). Principals are doing this because they find that when teacher’s caseloads decrease, test scores increase. When I read this first part of the article, I was thinking: What is the big surprise? This makes sense to me; less paperwork, less papers to grade, less behaviors to monitor. I know when I was working as a reading interventionist, our principal always concentrated on keeping class sizes low. But that was elementary level, and this article discussed middle and high levels. Apparently teacher to student ratio is looked at in the elementary level quite frequently because you can directly see how many students a teacher has all day. But within one school day a teacher at the middle or high levels could have 7 to 8 periods of students a day. That could be around 200 students! I never worked at these levels, so having that many papers or tests to grade is unimaginable to me, but I know most teachers do this every day. The author mentions that most schools do not track these TSL levels at middle and high schools, but it is starting to become a factor in most large school districts. The article talks about a book that will be coming out that looks at large, urban school districts and how TSL is effecting them. The book by management expert William G. Ouchi should be out within the next year, and it will be interesting to read his findings.