When Does Small Class Size Help Student Achievement?
Studies over the last twenty years have provided researchers and educators with the opportunity to observe reduced-size classrooms and gather data on student achievement. Class-size reduction has been deemed successful when students show marked improvement in learning through formal evaluations. Success is most likely for students in smaller classes under the following conditions: When the student-teacher ratio is reduced significantly. No one is completely sure how small classes should be to maximally benefit students. Project STAR, a leading study from Tennessee, defined small classes as those with 13-17 students. Regular-sized classes were defined as those with 22 or more students. When tested, students in small classes consistently outperformed students in regular-sized classrooms (Pate-Bain, Achilles, and others 1992). The most notable student gains came from low-achieving students with impoverished socioeconomic backgrounds (McRobbie 1998; Illig 1996). In light of these results,
