Mannheim prinicipal believes smaller class size key to students’ success
By David Josar, Stars
and Stripes
 MANNHEIM, Germany — The line of 8-, 9-
and 10-year-olds snakes across the crowded Mannheim Elementary School cafeteria.
One boy argues with his neighbor, accusing her of butting in line. A
lunchroom aide referees.
In another part of the room, two fifth-grade girls at a packed table
take turns reading “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” from a shared
paperback.
The din of shouting and crying and talking is nearly deafening. Not
even the flags from every U.S. state that hang from the ceiling can help muffle the noise
“This is my favorite time of the day,” says Principal
Bonnie Bowen-Hanna as she walks up and down the rows of tables, gauging how her staff and
students are doing. “Everything feels alive.”
And it should. Mannheim Elementary is one of the largest elementary
schools in the Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Europe, the school system that
serves the children of U.S. servicemembers and civilians who work there. This year
Mannheim Elementary is expected to have 1,200 students, a jump of roughly 200 from two
years ago.
The students here also consistently score lower than nearly all other
DODDS-Europe elementary schools.
In the 1998-1999 academic year, fourth-graders scored a 47 on the
math portion of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills; the DODDS average is 60.
Fifth-graders scored a 55 on the science portion; the DODDS average is 66.
Mannheim had 22 students for every teacher, according to 98-99 DODDS
data, which puts it in the bottom quarter for student-teacher ratio, a statistic educators
universally say is linked to performance. Smaller classes means better learning, they
explain.
The lagging test scores and larger classes, though, don’t seem
to intimidate parents.
Lynn Dougherty, whose son, Tim, attends Mannheim elementary, says she
likes the school, even though it’s significantly larger than his last school.
“You definitely lose the small family feeling,” Dougherty
says. She recalls a Halloween Ball at Worms Elementary that helped teachers, students and
family connect, something that Mannheim has too many students to do. “I think
everyone is real responsive.”
Still, without that feeling of closeness, Dougherty says she is
satisfied with Tim’s progress.
“It may be easier to get lost, but I’m happy with the
attention he gets.”
Sgt. Shelly Roberts, whose 7-year-old son, Tyler, attends Mannheim,
isn’t that sure. “I know my son may be getting lost,” Roberts says. “I
wish their test scores were higher. I don’t know how else to measure how well the
teaching is.”
Determining why test scores at the school remain low is elusive. On
one hand, Mannheim has plenty of computers and specialty offerings, such as a German
immersion program, but the school also deals with more children that need special
education.
Last year, 75 students were classified as needing special education.
Bowen, though, isn’t overly worried, she says, because test
scores may not be the best indicator of how well kids are learning.
Mannheim’s teachers and administrators have looked at the
lagging test scores for students and compared them with their report card grades and the
classwork. Bowen says what her comparison found is that, although the children may not be
excelling on the annual battery of tests, they are clearly mastering the material they
receive in the classroom.
Bowen is passionate in her belief that standardized test scores are
not necessarily the best indicators of academic success or potential.
“I don’t think a test score tells you how well you’re
doing,” she says, pegging it on her personal experience as a student.
She scored poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests to attend college
at Shippensburg College and graduate school at Bloomsburg University, both in
Pennsylvania. At both schools, she was admitted as a provisional student because the
scores were so unpromising. She excelled and graduated from both institutions.
“You can see why I don’t put all that much faith in these
tests,” she says.
Still, taped on a door in the school last year was an announcement
that the scores of fifth-graders on the DODEA writing assessment are higher again than the
DODDS average.
The difference for Bowen-Hanna at Mannheim than when she was at the
now-defunct Worms Elementary School in Germany is she doesn’t have the face time with
her teachers and students. “I used to know each of my students by name,” she
says.
DODDS first-year teacher Diana Helwig sounds frustrated. On a sunny
May afternoon, 10 boys and girls — about half of her third-grade class —
forfeited recess because they misbehaved for their music teacher the day before.
You have to learn consequences, Helwig tells the third-graders who
sat at their desks and completed extra schoolwork.
Before working for DODDS, Helwig, whose husband is in the military,
taught at an all-grades school in Burkesville, Texas, where there were about 20 students
in each grade. Small classes make it easier to connect with students, but at Mannheim,
Helwig says, a larger school also means more teachers to mentor her and a greater pool of
education ideas.
The downside is there are more students with behavior problems.
Helwig, as her students demonstrated on this recent afternoon,
struggles with trying to maintain discipline and helping kids who sometimes need more
attention than a teacher with 25 other students can give. “The kids come with very
big needs,” she says.
Her class has one child with Down syndrome and two who read at the
first-grade level.
Still, Helwig has succeeded in connecting with her students.
“They love to do science experiments and see cause and effect,” she says.
And if there is tension between students at Mannheim Elementary, it
isn’t surprising, Bowen-Hanna says. “They’re with each other constantly.
They can’t get space.”
The students live in the military housing that surrounds the school.
They walk to school together. They spend time at each other’s homes. A problem at
home can quickly spill over to the school, she says.
To improve performance, Bowen-Hanna has a simple solution: Decrease
class size.
Kindergarten teachers at the school ran their own experiment that
supports that theory.
Three years ago, they agreed to give up classroom aides so they could
hire more teachers to reduce the average kindergarten class to 12 students. They found
fewer discipline problems, more one-on-one teaching for the children who needed it and an
increase in test scores.
Two years ago, they tried it again, this time boosting class size to
15 students. Again, the teachers had similar results of success.
Last year though, when they hit an average class size of around 18
students, the results weren’t that much different from a larger class. “That was
too many,” Bowen-Hanna says. “There has to be a happy medium.”
Bowen-Hanna thinks the school is succeeding.
“This is a very warm, family school — people who come here
feel they can do very well here,” she says. “Success can depend on the size of
the school sometimes, but the size of a teacher’s heart matters a lot, too.”
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