Letters

To the Editor:

With regard to your lead article of Jan. 30, 2002 ( "Law Mandates Scientific Base for Research" ), I would like to point out a contradiction in the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001. Although the legislation appears to encourage research-based policymaking, it also has eliminated the one policy that probably has the strongest scientific support of any education policy ever implemented: reduced class size in the elementary grades.

Tennessee's Project STAR was exactly what is being called for: a large-scale, randomized experiment. Further, the STAR data have been reanalyzed by several research teams, in this country and abroad, and the STAR results have been replicated (in nonexperimental work) in other sites. As a result of this research, small classes have brought benefits to many children, and their teachers,...