How MCPS Class Sizes in 2023-2024 Reflect Resource Allocation and Student Support Needs

As part of the approval of the 2025 FY MCPS Operating Budget, there was a new item in the annual operating budget that requires reporting of class sizes which reads:

“MCPS will provide to the Council a report on actual class sizes in the 2024-2025 school year. This report will include the range, median, and mode of actual class sizes at each level: elementary, middle, and high school. Elementary schools must also be divided into Class Size Reduction schools and non-Class Size Reduction schools. Each level must also report on special education class size.”

MCPS submitted this documentation to the County Council on October 15 so let’s dig in (they are required to submit twice a year by October 15, 2024 and by February 15, 2025).

There are a lot of specific details that impact these numbers. They are described in detail in the document itself which we will post at the end.

Elementary Schools

Outliers and Analysis

The average students per class is under the guidelines for all Elementary grade levels for both class size reduction schools and non-class size reduction schools. This is super important because tons of data shows that how you are able to read by 3rd grade has a large impact on everything else going forward.

Elementary students tend to have higher needs in general and are still trying to figure this school thing out so keeping class sizes below (or well below) the guidelines is a key to MCPS succeeding at educating this group of kids.

One thing to note is that the ranges vary greatly for these grade levels. What that means is that at each grade level there are at least some classes over the guideline levels and there are some that are barely more than half the guideline level for most grades.

These variances can occur because you need a certain threshold to be able to get more teachers/classes and if the threshold isn’t met it can create larger classes. If a school just surpasses the threshold they may end up with smaller classes.

Middle Schools

Semester 1

Semester 2

Outliers and Analysis

Science, Health and Physical Education all had over 29% having 31-33 students.

Physical Education, Health and Fine arts all had close to 25% of classes having 34 or more students. These classes with high numbers of students seem like the less academic types which makes sense from a prioritization standpoint.

English classes had almost 95% with 20 or fewer students and electives had about 75%. This prioritization seems to make sense as English is an important class to have a decent amount of support for students to improve and electives are not always full because they are by choice but are good to offer.

These trends are clear in both semester 1 and semester 2 tables.

High Schools

Semester 1

Semester 2

Outliers and Analysis

Similar to Middle School, Physical Education has close to 60% of classes with 31 students or more.

For classes with higher percent of less than 20 students, against English and Electives are tops.

Some classes with smaller class sizes than middle schools for High Schools are: Technology Education, Fine Arts, Mathemetics, and World Language. This makes sense as these classes start to become more specialized, the classes are smaller and the needs are higher.

Special Education

Before we dive into the special education chart, there are again a ton more details about each of these programs in the full PDF which will be linked at the end.

Note that I am not an expert with any of these programs and based most knowledge from the full documentation provided with the class size report.

Outliers and Analysis

Looking at these numbers the average students to teacher ratio is under 7 for all but two programs in Elementary School.

The two over 7 are 9 in “Learning for Independence” and 10 in “Learning Center.” Per the details, both of these programs include some opportunities for inclusion with nondisabled peers in the general education learning environment. So it seems to make sense they would not need as much support and also need to be able to be in the higher student to teacher ratio environment of the general education sections.

For Middle School, the two highest are “Autism Resource Services” and “Learning for Independence.” Again, both of these programs are support structures for students who are also part of the general education classes so it makes sense they would have better ratios than general education but not as low ratio as those who may have higher needs.

At the high school level, there are several services in the 10-11 students per teacher range including “Autism-Connections”, “Autism Resource Services”, and “Learning for Independence.” We already discussed the latter two in Middle School section. For “Autism-Connections”, this program includes the students in the general education classes for secondary school (middle and high school) which I guess is why the ratio increases as the kids get older.

The biggest outlier for High School special education is with “Twice Exceptional” students. It appears that very few students are identified as twice exceptional in Elementary and even Middle School. That number jumps in High School as does the ratio. From the description, these students “demonstrate superior cognitive ability in at least one area and typically have production problems, particularly in the area of written expression.” They may take honors or Advanced Placement classes and have access to acceleration and enrichment courses. Presumably, as they reach the high school level they have better access to these programs and their support is more about accommodations and such vs. needing to have special classes which could explain the jump.

Full Information

You can view the entire Class size report provided by MCPS to the County Council here.

Overall Conclusions

There are a lot of good things that make sense looking at the distribution of class sizes.

The most concerning parts to me are the outliers in Elementary class size distribution where there are some classes over the class size guidelines and some way below them (good for those kids, I guess).

Some of the Elementary School class size issues might be able to be resolved with boundary studies but we already know the upcoming boundary study is not including elementary schools. We need to keep a close eye on the top and bottom end of those class sizes at Elementary Schools especially when considering the difference in class size guidelines to reduction and non-reduction schools. Those upper ends in class sizes for the non-reduction schools are getting very big. We can also help reduce these issues by looking at modifying allocations of teachers at various schools.

For the Middle and High Schools, it seems the prioritization of resources is on track given where the higher needs are.

For special education, it seems like the higher ratios are those programs that interact more with the general education population (where they will have even higher-class sizes) and prioritizes the programs needing higher levels of support. This seems in line with the goals of any school system.

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