Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about classroom size. Pop quiz — you have a choice for your 2nd grader: a class with 30 kids, or only 20? Seems like a no-brainer, but a story in the Chicago Sun Times indicates it’s perhaps not quite as intuitive as it seems:

The 25 highest-scoring schools in CPS [Chicago Public Schools] average roughly seven more kids in their primary classrooms than the 25 highest-scoring suburban schools, or about 27 kids vs. 20, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of state public school data indicates…Chicago’s 25 lowest-scoring schools averaged around 7½ fewer kids per primary classroom than the city’s 25 highest-scoring schools, the most recent state data indicate.

Last year, a school in Chicago’s Edgebrook neighborhood topped out at 40 kids for its only 1st grade class — and posted the highest test scores for the city’s neighborhood schools. I know around here it seems the big bitch of the majority of parents focuses primarily on class size. Perhaps if we shift our mindset a bit and instead look to improve the things that principals cite as being most influential on education quality — poverty, teacher quality, and parental involvement — instead of blindly throwing money at school construction budgets, we might be able to slowly form an effective grassroots organization to fix the mess of our education system.

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