SAGE Advice

I've been criticized for my skepticism regarding the effectiveness of smaller class sizes. I am a skeptic. I believe the biggest push for SAGE comes from the teachers' union. Smaller classes equal more teachers, which equates to more union dues.

I am not alone in my skepticism that SAGE is not the silver bullet that guarantees better educational outcomes.

Below is the introduction to the executive summary of a 2000 Wisconsin Policy Research Institute's Report on the SAGE program.

Wisconsin has joined prominently in the growing movement toward the implementation of smaller class sizes in public elementary schools. Based largely on the support of conventional wisdom, heavy lobbying by the teachers' unions and various political leaders, and a less-than-thorough presentation of the local and national evidence on class size, smaller classes are now becoming all the rage.

Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program began in the 1996-97 school year as a pilot program in 30 schools serving predominantly low-income students. The program's primary feature is the reduction of class sizes to fifteen students per teacher in grades kindergarten through third. SAGE now boasts well over 500 elementary schools as participants, and continues to expand. In the 2000-01 school year, the State will spend approximately $58 million on SAGE, while also receiving $22 million in aid from the federal government's class size reduction program. In addition, all public schools are now able to participate in SAGE, regardless of their poverty rate.

So what will these changes mean for education in Wisconsin?

One critical lesson that can be drawn from both the national research on class size policies and the results of Wisconsin's own SAGE program is that smaller classes do not always provide identifiable achievement benefits. Moreover, when smaller classes do help raise student achievement, the greatest gains tend to occur only in certain grades and for particular populations of students. In addition, achieving these results necessitates an immense and continual cost to taxpayers.

The full report can be found here.

This being said, I support the School Choice deal.