Small Schools Found To Cut Price of Poverty

By Bess Keller

Further bolstering the case for small schools, new research suggests that schools with fewer students significantly outstrip larger schools when it comes to the achievement of low-income children. In fact, say the authors of a study to be released this week, the poorer the student body, the smaller the school should be to maximize student performance.

"Smaller schools help reduce the academic risks of poverty by breaking the usual negative bond between poverty and achievement," said Craig B. Howley, who along with Robert Bickel conducted the study for the Rural School and Community Trust, a nonprofit education and advocacy group based in Washington. "On average, the strength of the relationship is about half what it is in larger schools," Mr. Howley said.

The research looked at about 13,600 public schools in four states—Georgia, Montana, Ohio, and Texas. While the relationships among school enrollment, test scores, and student poverty varied somewhat, the smaller schools consistently posted higher scores than would be predicted from...