Class size

Although student-teacher ratio would describe this class' size as seventeen, these teachers continue to face thirty-four students during instruction.

In general, average class size will be larger than student-teacher ratio anytime a school assigns more than one teacher to some classrooms.

[2] In poor and urban districts, where schools enroll higher numbers of students needing specialized instruction, student-teacher ratios will therefore be especially imprecise measures of class size.

Isocrates opened an academy of rhetoric in Athens around 392 B.C.E to train Athenian generals and statesmen, and he insisted on enrolling no more than six or eight students in his school at a time.

Quintilian, a rhetorician writing in the Roman Empire around 100 CE, cited the practices in Isocrates' school as evidence that a caring education required small class sizes.

Quintilian argued in Institutes of Oratory, as Edward Power summarizes the book's thesis, that "care had nothing whatever to do with discipline: it meant simply that only a few students at a time could be taught effectively.

''[6] Erasmus, the Dutch Humanist, wrote in his 1529 study of education De Pueris Instituendis about the advantages of private tutoring over ecclesiastic and public schools, where he believed classes had grown too large.

He explained that "his standard of efficiency demanded a small school conducted by brilliant scholars…" Erasmus recognized that most parents would nevertheless have to settle for large class sizes because of the financial costs of such tutoring.

[7] At the turn of the 20th century, the philosopher and educational theorist John Dewey explained that in his ideal school, class sizes should be very small.

Likewise, in a 2006 interview with NPR before his death in 2007, Vonnegut was asked: "If you were to build or envision a country that you could consider yourself to be a proud citizen of, what would be three of its basic attributes"?

"[10] Frank McCourt, a teacher in New York City public schools for thirty years and a Pulitzer Prize winner, also stressed the importance of smaller class size.

The study did not comprehensively survey school enrollment, which is why the United States' class size average appears differently here than in the previous chart.