Ideal High School Size Found To Be 600 to 900

The ideal high school enrolls 600 to 900 students--no more and no less, says a study released here at the recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

"Students learn less in small schools," said Valerie E. Lee, an associate professor of education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "And in large high schools, especially those enrolling over 2,100 students, they learn considerably less."

Ms. Lee and her co-author, Julia B. Smith of the University of Rochester in New York, based their conclusions on a study of nearly 10,000 students in 789 public, Roman Catholic, and elite private high schools. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, a federally supported testing program that is following 24,000 students, the researchers examined the test scores of the same group of students as they moved from 8th to...