A MARYLAND private school advertises a teacher-student ratio of 9-to-1.

California spends $4 billion in 2 1/2 years in the nation's boldest effort to reduce class size in the early school years, opening 18,400 new rooms and moving about 2 million children into smaller classes.

Howard and Baltimore county educators and politicians desperately seek funds from Gov. Parris N. Glendening's budget to hire teachers for smaller classes they believe will lead to improved reading and math scores.

Meanwhile, Susan Nierenberg, teaching the sixth grade at Baltimore's private Waldorf School, has 26 students and doesn't mind it in the least.

There's another side to the class-size question, and you can hear it at the school overlooking the city from a hill in Coldspring Newtown.

Can larger -- not spilling into the parking lot, mind you, but larger -- be better? That's the argument of Nierenberg and her colleagues.

If classes are composed of children from diverse backgrounds, Nierenberg argues, the larger the classes, the more likely the children will get a chance to relate to children unlike themselves.

"In any group," she says, "cliques form. In a small class, children seem to get stuck in cliques. And in a small class, you don't have the instructional flow that you have in the large class."

Such a statement might be heresy in nearby public sixth grades, where teachers would give up a precious appendage for relief from huge classes. But Waldorf, founded to educate the children of workers in an Austrian cigarette factory, always looks at things a little differently -- even differently from other independent schools.

Waldorf does things differently, too. Nierenberg has been teaching her class since the first grade and will carry it through Waldorf's top grade, the eighth. (Five class photos on the wall of her room show the kids growing up.) It's pretty easy to get to know even a class of 40 when you're teaching the same kids from the gap-toothed first grade through the hormone-laden eighth.

Moreover, during a school week, Nierenberg's student will see as many as seven other teachers for such activities as art, music, a foreign language, "handwork" (knitting and sewing, for example) and "eurythmy" (a form of dance that Waldorf calls "creative movement").

Most of this is luxury beyond comprehension in almost any public school, but there are large-class advantages at Waldorf that could be transferred to the public setting. (Indeed, there's a public Waldorf School in Milwaukee.)

"It's easier to form a community in a large class," says Cecilia Liss, the admissions director, who is a veteran teacher. "The larger class is more harmonious as a group. Children are more supportive of their classmates because they grow to realize that everyone shines at something. They rub off each other's rough spots."

And, says Liss, it's easier to put on a play: a larger cast of characters.

Fifth-grade teacher Ed Meade, a newcomer to Waldorf in Baltimore, says the school's emphasis on social development works well in a large-group setting. But he warns that it is more difficult for what he calls "challenged" children to succeed in large classes. (Waldorf provides tutoring for those who fall behind.)

"If your emphasis is just getting them to read, if that's all you care about, then the smaller, the better," says Meade.

At least half the states and a number of public school districts have enacted or are considering some form of class-size reduction. It's an enormously popular move everywhere it happens, and most people consider it a no-brainer: If you reduce class size, you'll increase achievement.

Maybe so, but there is a contrary argument.

Consider this: Only 125 of the 650 Waldorf schools worldwide are in North America. The European Waldorf schools have class sizes ranging into the 40s.

"We wouldn't get away with that here," says Liss.

Book sale to benefit Blind Industries program

A most appropriate book sale is one to benefit the blind.

Proceeds from a sale March 27 at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Frederick Road in Catonsville will go to the rehabilitation program of Blind Industries and Services of Maryland. Records, videos and puzzles also will be on sale.

Information: 410-233-4567.

Pub Date: 3/07/99