Federal

Smaller Not Necessarily Better, School-Size Study Concludes

By Debra Viadero — May 23, 2006 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

When it comes to high school size, smaller might not be better, concludes a national study presented yesterday at a conference sponsored by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

The study raises questions about high-profile efforts taking root across the country to reshape the nation’s high schools. Spurred by generous financial support from groups such at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, school districts in New York City, Chicago, Houston, and other major cities have undertaken extensive efforts in recent years to pare down high schools and establish smaller, more personal learning environments for students. But Barbara Schneider, the lead researcher for the study, said her data suggest those efforts may be headed in the wrong direction.

“In an effort like this you are dismantling large high schools and putting money into creating small high schools,” Ms. Schneider, an education professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, said in a recent interview. “And we can’t afford to continue down this path without serious and rigorous assessment of this thing.”

Ms. Schneider and her co-authors, Adam E. Wysse and Vanessa Keesler, based their conclusions on data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, a federal survey that tracks students beginning in 10th grade. The more than 11,000 students in the researchers’ study sample were surveyed twice—once in 10th grade and again in 2004 when they were seniors. Of the 660 schools in the study sample, the smallest tended to be in rural and suburban areas and to have mostly white student enrollments. The largest schools, most often located in urban areas and in some suburbs, enrolled higher-than-average numbers of poor and minority students.

Using a technique pioneered in the 1970s by Harvard University statistician Donald Rubin, the researchers attempted to put all of the schools on more equal footing by carefully matching students on 98 different characteristics. Those characteristics included the kinds of courses the students had taken and the extracurricular activities in which they participated, as well as traditional socioeconomic traits such as race and family-income levels. To measure students’ academic progress, the researchers examined their 12th grade achievement levels in mathematics, whether they planned to attend college or had applied, and whether they chose a two- or four-year college or some other higher education institution.

The researcher found that the only students who performed better in small schools were those who were most likely to attend them, mostly white rural and suburban students. For the urban and minority students in the largest schools, the smaller settings would have offered no significant advantages for the kinds of educational outcomes the researchers tracked.

“My thought really is that size doesn’t matter,” Ms. Schneider said. “It’s also about what goes on in schools.”

Findings Questioned

But other experts attending Brookings’ May 22-23 conference raised questions about the study. They noted, for instance, that the survey began in 10th grade, a year after students had entered high school and well after many students had already dropped out.

“It’s very hard to talk about school effects when kids have already experienced half of high school at the beginning of the study,” said Valerie E. Lee, an expert on school size and an education professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The study would have been better, Ms. Schneider conceded, if it had followed the students beginning in 8th grade. She got the same results, however, from analyzing the data in different ways as well.

A longtime proponent of smaller high schools, Ms. Schneider said she was prompted to rethink her position a few years ago after attending a meeting in Chicago with high school sports coaches who complained that the small-schools movement was threatening the existence of school-sponsored athletic teams. The coaches told her that the teams were key to keeping marginal students in school and in generating college scholarships for students who might not otherwise see college as an option.

“I’m afraid we have done a terrible disservice to kids,” she added.

Other Studies Presented

Her study was among 11 reports presented at the meeting, which focused on sorting out the research on the educational benefits and disadvantages of changes in the sizes of schools or classes. In her own study conducted with Douglas Ready, an assistant professor of education at the University of Oregon, Ms. Lee also found that school size did not seem to have a direct impact on learning for kindergarteners and 1st graders in elementary school.

However, that was not the case for changes in class size, Ms. Lee and Mr. Ready said. Using federal data from a nationally representative sample of 7,740 children, the two researchers found that kindergartners and 1st graders learned at about the same pace in both medium-sized classes—those with 17 to 25 students—as they did in classes with fewer than 17 students. Only large classes, those with 25 or more students, seemed to have a negative impact on children’s mathematics and literacy learning, according to their study.

The researchers said their findings raise questions about expensive investments by some states and districts to shrink classes to fewer than 17 students in the early grades because most children already experience medium-sized classes during those years.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
The Future of the Science of Reading
Join us for a discussion on the future of the Science of Reading and how to support every student’s path to literacy.
Content provided by HMH
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
College & Workforce Readiness Webinar
From Classrooms to Careers: How Schools and Districts Can Prepare Students for a Changing Workforce
Real careers start in school. Learn how Alton High built student-centered, job-aligned pathways.
Content provided by TNTP
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal No 'Gender Ideology': Ed. Dept.'s New Focus for Mental Health Grants It Yanked
The Trump administration abruptly canceled $1 billion in mental health grants in April that it said reflected Biden-era priorities.
5 min read
Amelia, 16, sits for a portrait in a park near her home in Illinois on Friday, March 24, 2023. “We are so strong and we go through so, so much," says the teenage girl who loves to sing and wants to be a surgeon. Amelia has also faced bullying, toxic friendships, and menacing threats from a boy at school who said she “deserved to be raped."
The U.S. Department of Education has revealed new priorities for two mental health grants after it abruptly canceled awards the Biden administration made.
Erin Hooley/AP
Federal Trump Admin. Starts Moving CTE to Labor Dept. After Supreme Court Order
The Education Department put arrangements to move some of its programs on hold while court battles over downsizing played out.
4 min read
Students make measurements to wood to add to a tiny home project during their shop class at Carrick High School in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 13, 2022.
Students make measurements to wood to add to a tiny home project during their shop class at Carrick High School in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Dec. 13, 2022. The Trump administration is shifting management of career and technical education programs to the U.S. Department of Labor now that the Supreme Court have given the go-ahead to proceed with downsizing of the U.S. Department of Education.
Nate Smallwood for Education Week
Federal Hope Shattered for Laid-Off Ed. Dept. Staff After Supreme Court Order
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to proceed with 1,400 Education Department layoffs.
6 min read
Supporters hold signs and cheer Education Department employees as they leave after retrieving their personal belongings from the Education Department building in Washington on March 24, 2025.
Supporters hold signs and cheer Education Department employees as they leave after retrieving their personal belongings from the Education Department building in Washington on March 24, 2025. The Supreme Court on July 14, 2025, allowed the Trump administration to proceed with department layoffs that a lower-court judge had put on hold.
Jose Luis Magana/AP
Federal Trump Admin. Says Undocumented Students Can't Attend Head Start, Early College
The administration issued notices saying undocumented immigrants don't qualify for Head Start and some Education Department programs.
7 min read
Children play during aftercare for the Head Start program at Easterseals South Florida, an organization that gets about a third of its funding from the federal government, on Jan. 29, 2025, in Miami.
Children play during aftercare for the Head Start program at Easterseals South Florida, an organization that gets about a third of its funding from the federal government, on Jan. 29, 2025, in Miami. The Trump administration said Thursday that undocumented children are ineligible for Head Start and a number of other federally funded programs that the administration is classifying as similar to welfare benefits.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP