The Cost Of Crowded Classrooms In Maryland Schools

Rising classroom sizes across Maryland are causing parents and teachers to become concerned about the quality of education that students are receiving. The issue has extensive implications for students' academic performance and for teachers' workloads and mental health.

“If you're going to put your money anywhere, it would be on qualified teachers and smaller class sizes,” said Kate Stefancik, a behavior specialist with 27 years of experience in education. Stefancik currently works at Marley Elementary School in Glen Burnie.

Research supports Stefancik’s perspective. The Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) experiment, a 25-year study conducted in Tennessee, demonstrated that smaller class sizes in kindergarten through third grade have significant benefits. At this age, children learn the fundamentals of reading, writing, math and socialization, which are critical for development.

In 2021, the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future legislation sought to improve public education by reshaping funding allocation. The Blueprint created an “expert review team” tasked with analyzing schools to determine their funding needs and assess whether the Blueprint's goals are being met.

However, the implementation of the Blueprint has had unintended consequences. Rich Wiles, a 20-year teacher at Severna Park Elementary School, explained, “In Blueprint, if your school is a high-performing school and you have high test scores, your class size now increases, and they give more resources to lower-performing schools.”

This funding disparity has led to larger class sizes in Severna Park schools. “Our class sizes jumped up,” Wiles said. “We have some first grades that are like 25-26 kids this year.”

This number is an increase from how many kids per class?

Parents are noticing the effects of larger classes. Bernadette Muehlhauser, a parent of a third-grader at Benfield Elementary School, said, “Currently, my son is at 29 kids in his classroom … This is the first year that he's kind of mentioned something about distractions, like just having distractions, and it's hard to focus.”

Title I schools, usually in lower-income areas, haven’t seen as drastic a change because they receive increased funding from the Blueprint. “Title I schools tend to have a little bit lower class sizes than schools that are not Title I because we have a little more funding, so additional teachers are often purchased with that money,” Stefancik explained.

Stefancik noted some improvements at Marley Elementary School after the Blueprint passed, citing “additional personnel” and an “evidence-based curriculum” as progress. However, she pointed out that the Blueprint has failed to bring in more highly qualified teachers.

The teacher shortage lies at the heart of the problem. “Maryland is not producing enough candidates to fill the jobs that are vacant,” Wiles said.

The National Department for Education Statistics found that 86% of U.S. K-12 public schools reported challenges with hiring teachers for the 2023-24 school year. In Maryland, 10.7% of all teachers did not return to work in the 2023-24 school year, according to the Maryland Department of Education.

Class size growth can also be circumstantial. When a teacher moves grades or professions, remaining classes must merge, leaving them larger and with a worse staff-to-student ratio.

Erica Adams, a parent of a third-grader at Oak Hill Elementary School, hasn’t seen much change at her child's school. “As they progress from kindergarten to fifth (grade), their classes are getting a little bigger, but I think that's a natural progression,” she said. The grade above her son has changed. “They were a bigger grade, and then they lost a teacher, so those class sizes got exponentially bigger,” she said.

To address the shortage, schools are implementing creative solutions. “Which is creating what is called a contingent teacher,” Wiles explained. “So it’s a non-certified teacher that is being hired, and they're getting their degree while learning the job.”

While these contingent teachers help fill vacancies, the high attrition rates make it difficult for schools to retain teachers long-term.

Another factor impacting students' education is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stefancik has noticed “much more aggressive behaviors in the classroom, especially at young ages, way more absolute defiance and disrespect, along with students often coming in not knowing as much as they used to, you know, not necessarily coming fully prepared for school.”

Wiles has also noticed changes, mentioning that since the pandemic, “Some (students) need more resources, and we're having those students that need more resources within big classes, which makes it even more challenging.”

The effects of the pandemic, particularly on youth, will be studied for decades to come.

While many parents focus on how class size impacts their children’s education, an often-overlooked factor is the increased workload for teachers. Muehlhauser and Adams acknowledged the challenges this creates for educators.

“it’s not a good environment for them to teach in,” Muehlhauser said, reflecting on the difficulties teachers face managing larger classrooms.

Adams agreed, adding, “I think that they have a harder time because it's just more to manage, and they can't give the proper attention to each student.”