124th Morrison Congress

3rd Session

H.R. 124-0
Title of the Bill:

Decreasing Overcrowded Classrooms Act

Main Author(s):

Rep. Jessica Thar (R-MI)

Co-Sponsor(s):

Sen. Melody McCrary (R-FL)

BE IT ENACTED BY THE MORRISON CONGRESS

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SECTION 1: Findings
Congress makes the following findings:
1) The more students that are in a classroom the lower they tend to score on
standardized testing. (1)
2) During the economic decline in 2008, 19 states made their policies on class
size more lenient to save this money. Including the states that already had
no rules on this, many of the schools became overcrowded. (2)
3) In 2011 the National Center for Education Statistics study showed that about
14% of schools exceed capacity, and 8% overcrowd their building size by
more than 25%. (3)
4) Having classes that are filled past capacity results in many students not
receiving the resources that they need because the class materials have to
be spread more thinly to accommodate all the students. (1)
SECTION 2: Purpose
This bill provides that there will only be 20-25 students in a classroom to one teacher
to prevent overcrowding and create a better learning environment.
SECTION 3: General Provisions
As a result of overcrowded classrooms, students often get little one-on-one learning
time with the teacher. The best learning is when a teacher can help a student
individually, but when classrooms are filled beyond capacity, teachers have little
time to do this. This can cause some students to fall behind and not learn as
much.
If a class has an increased amount of people that also can lead to less resources
because there isnt enough to go around. Students, education, and resources
now suffer as a result of overcrowding. This means students receive less access
to technology, thus giving an unfair advantage to some. Also overcrowded
classrooms can create discipline issues, making it hard for a teacher to maintain
a classroom,thus creating an environment that is very difficult to learn in. For
students that have special needs it can be very hard to learn anything in a room
filled with all these distractions.
Having classrooms that limit the amount of students will create classroom
environments where students learn and focus in class. Having less students in a
class means that there will need to be more classes created, which will provide
more job opportunities for teachers. So limiting the amount of students helps
both the economy by creating jobs and the students learning situation.

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SECTION 4: Definitions

Works Cited:
http://teaching.about.com/od/Information-For-Teachers/fl/Teaching-in-an-Overcrowded-Clas
sroom.htm (1)
http://www.teachhub.com/classroom-overcrowding (2)
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/06/does-class-size-matter/ (3)