Beth Amato reads to her kindergarten students at Madison’s Leopold Elementary School. Because of the SAGE class size reduction program, she said, “We get to know each student as a learner better.”

By Amanda N. Wegner

In Beth Amato’s kindergarten classroom at Madison’s Leopold Elementary School, pint-sized pupils busy themselves at “centers” – tables dedicated to math, science, literacy and art. At each center, students complete hands-on academic projects – building a book and filling in sentences or using their feet to measure distances. If a student has a question or a behavioral issue arises, Amato is quick to respond.

Real learning happens in Amato’s classroom, something that would be difficult to achieve if this 23-year teaching veteran had more than 15 wide-eyed students in her charge.

Amato’s classroom is part of Wisconsin’s Student Achievement in Education (SAGE) program, which provides schools with resources to improve student achievement through reduced class sizes. What began as a small program at 30 low-income schools in the 1996-’97 school year, now – 10 years later – serves almost 93,000 K-3 students in 480 schools.

“We get to know each student as a learner better,” Amato said of SAGE. “We can think about and address individual and group learning needs, give additional opportunities for learning and spend more time with each student. Prior to that, class management issues frequently took priority. It was a one-size-fits-all approach that didn’t work.”

An unusual beginning
SAGE grew from the 1994-’95 Urban Initiative Task Force on Improving the Achievement of Wisconsin’s Students. The task force was chaired by Alex Molnar, a former University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee education professor. Initially, the task force, a bipartisan group, was charged with researching how to bolster quality education in urban schools. The group met regularly and attended full-day and weekend retreats. The theme of one retreat was youth violence; it was during this intensive weekend that the seed for SAGE was planted.

“At the time, in ’94-’95, youth violence was a hot topic,” said Molnar, now at Arizona State University. “At the end of the retreat, we felt we couldn’t do everything. But with the issue of youth violence, we felt long-term, positive contact with adults – teachers – was the key. This was the bridge to smaller class size.”

In the mid-1990s, classes of 20 to 30 students were normal. To give the task force’s idea merit, Molnar needed evidence. Luckily, Tennessee had piloted a four-year study in the late 1980s proving the value of reduced class sizes for kindergarten through 3rd grade. The Tennessee STAR Study, Molnar said, was “the keystone of the SAGE program.”

SAGE’s basic tenets are:

• Classes with a student-teacher ratio of no more than 15:1 in K-3.
• Increased collaboration between schools and communities, or “lighted schoolhouses.”
• A rigorous curriculum focusing on academic achievement.
• Improved professional development and staff evaluation practices.

SAGE matures

Molnar and his group continually faced tough questions. One of the toughest, however, was the definition of their original target: the urban school.

“We wrestled with what it meant to be an urban school,” Molnar said. “It was impossible to define. Childhood poverty, on the other hand, was widely dispersed and of greater magnitude.”

When SAGE began in 1996-‘97, 50% of a district’s student population had to be low-income to qualify; that year, there were 30 such schools in 21 districts, including seven in Milwaukee. In 1998-’99, SAGE grew again to include 80 schools. Soon teachers and government leaders agreed that SAGE wasn’t just for low-income students.

“As districts learned about the program, they began to demand it,” Molnar said.

In 2000-’01, SAGE expanded again to 576 schools. Today SAGE schools are found in districts rich and poor, urban and rural. Schools have renewable five-year contracts with the state and receive $2,000 per low-income child served by the program. Another small expansion could come in 2008-’09; State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster has submitted a proposal for the 2007-’09 biennial budget to allow five new schools into the program and increase aid from $2,000 to $2,250 per student.

Life with SAGE

“The thing I noticed most the first year of teaching SAGE was that I got through more curriculum and the students got more practice because of smaller size,” said Susan Schroeder, a 2nd-grade teacher at La Crosse’s Franklin Elementary School, which was one of the first 30 SAGE schools.

When she taught 1st grade, she said, “I was teaching curriculum that I hadn’t taught before because we were accomplishing so much more.”

These results come from individualization. SAGE teachers say they better know their students. They can spend extra time with students who are challenged and create opportunities to challenge those students breezing through the curriculum. SAGE teachers are not “teaching to the masses.”

“Smaller classes give me the chance to really think about how students are developing and watch that progress,” Amato said. “I can catch issues that would otherwise go unnoticed or prevent progress. SAGE isn’t something to take for granted.”

SAGE also allows teachers to better know a student’s family and life situation.

“I get to know students and their families better and learn what’s going on apart from school – issues that could preclude their success or ability (in the classroom),” Schroeder said. “Some students come with a lot of baggage, and these are things I probably wouldn’t have known before (SAGE).”

Additionally, teachers spend less time disciplining students because there are far fewer behavioral problems.

SAGE has given teachers the opportunity to provide enrichment activities they previously could not facilitate. For instance, Schroeder’s 2nd graders put on an annual musical.

“Four, five years later, the kids don’t realize they were in a SAGE classroom, but they come back and say ‘I remember when we did that musical’ or some other enrichment activity,” she said. “If I had the traditional 24-25 kids, I don’t know if I’d be able to pull off those kinds of things. That makes a difference in their future.”

Parents don’t realize their children are in SAGE classrooms either. For those districts with SAGE, smaller class sizes have become the accepted – and expected – norm.

“Parents don’t know about SAGE,” said Mary Summers, a reading specialist at Montello’s Forest Lane Elementary. “But they do squawk. Their child gets to the 4th grade, and they notice there are more students per teacher and they complain.”

Achieving results

Both research and anecdotal evidence shows that the 15:1 ratio works.

Through the 2000-’01 school year, standardized tests were used to compare the academic achievement of 1st- 2nd- and 3rd-grade students in both SAGE and traditional classrooms. These tests showed SAGE students made significantly higher academic gains compared to their peers; African-American SAGE students showed the most improvement.

While students are no longer tested solely to research SAGE’s benefit, individual schools still find evidence each year. In Montello, Summers said, 2nd-grade reading test scores are consistently up. They’ve also seen a decrease in the number of students identified as having learning disabilities.

“We can attribute this to lower class sizes,” Summers said. “Montello does SAGE right. Our students are in small classes the entire day. … They get more help, more attention, more often.”

The Department of Public Instruction’s SAGE Web site (www.dpi.wi.gov/sage) is filled with similar anecdotal evidence dating back several years from schools throughout the state.

While SAGE is evaluated annually by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (research is based on just nine schools throughout the state), no longitudinal studies have been established to measure long-term results. Based on the STAR’s findings, however, SAGE should continue to impact students long after they’ve learned their ABCs and multiplication tables.

“What we know from Tennessee is that students in smaller classes are more active learners, have a lower dropout rate, and have higher rates of college entry,” Molnar said.

A recent evaluation essentially notes that SAGE works when it’s done right, but doesn’t define “right.” Regardless of what that definition may be, 10 years later students continue to benefit.

“Just reducing class size will increase student achievement. Period,” Molnar said. “It may be a hard pill to swallow, but that’s the truth.”

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2003 study identified SAGE's successes

Wisconsin’s SAGE class-size reduction program increases the achievement of low-income students in grades K-3, according to a 2003 study.

The study by the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University compared the academic achievement of students in schools that participate in the SAGE program to that of students in non-SAGE comparison schools located in SAGE districts.

It concluded that SAGE:

• Increases student achievement.
• Upholds gains through 3rd grade.
• Is most beneficial to African-American students.
• Narrows the achievement gap between African-American and white students.
• Compensates for poor attendance.

The study was conducted by Phil Smith, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Alex Molnar, Arizona State University; and John Zahorik, UW-Milwaukee. From 1971 to 2001, Molnar was on the faculty of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he directed the Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation (CERAI) and the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education (CACE). Molnar was one of creators of the SAGE program.

Posted November 28, 2006