When a 30:1 student teacher ratio seems normal, have we reached an extreme?
Published: Thursday, April 26, 2012, 7:22 AM
As I read my colleague Wendy Owen's article about yet another school district planning to staff many of its schools with one teacher for every 30 students next fall, I had to wonder: How strange is this?
Basic math suggests we are, indeed, far, far outside the mainstream. (Dividing the number of students in a state by the number of teachers yields a pupil-teacher ratio, similar to the staffing ratios that local districts are spelling out in their budget plans.)
The most current state-by-state statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics are from 2009-10. That was before Oregon school districts contemplated their latest round of deep teacher cuts.
Even back then, they show, our pupil-teacher ratios were sky-high compared to most states. Only Utah and Arizona piled on more students per teacher.
If Oregon had staffed its schools during 2009-10 at the national average of one teacher for every 15.4 students, schools would have had to hire an