High school class sizes on the rise

New research shows smaller class sizes can double a child's chances of graduating from high school. As public schools continue to grow, teachers have adapted to more students in their classrooms.

The University of Kansas's School of Education is teaching future teachers how to specialize in classrooms with 20 or more students.

I'll give a lesson or do a discussion question and give them personal time to reflect through journal entries or worksheets or anything like that," Becca Goldberg, Secondary English Education major, said. "A teacher circles the classroom and that way I get that few minutes and make sure the student is doing O.K."

Many high schools with large class sizes have developed after school programming to help students learn math and reading.

In public schools like Lawrence High School, 1901 Louisiana St., classrooms have 20 to 25 students. Some students don't get the one-on-one attention they need to understand subjects like math and reading, which are mandatory skills for graduation. Even with the slow increase in class size, graduation rates at Lawrence High School have remained steady. Last year, only 88.8 percent of seniors graduated from Lawrence High, which is about average for the state of Kansas.

"Obviously you'd like 100 percent of your students to graduate, but I don't know if that's very realistic in a building this size of 1,300 students," said Matt Brungardt, Lawrence High School Associate Principal.

Schools are developing ways to keep classroom sizes smaller. Public schools cannot afford to hire more teachers each year.

"The trend is going a lot of urban-metropolitan areas are breaking either schools or buildings into pods and things like that," Brungardt said.

Podding is when classrooms are broken into areas of specialties by levels so students more thoroughly learn the topic .

Brungardt and Goldberg said teachers in larger classrooms needed to pay attention to students in need of help, and while teachers don't control classroom size, parents could help their children with homework or find tutors.