Education Policy Analysis Archives

In order to examine the relationship between school size and achievement, a study was conducted using longitudinal achievement data from North Carolina for three separate cohorts of public school students (one elementary, one middle and one high school). Results revealed several interactions between size and student characteristics, all of which indicated that the achievement gaps typically existing between certain subgroups (i.e., more versus less-advantaged, lower versus higher-achieving) were larger in larger schools. Results varied across the grade level cohorts and across subjects, but in general effects were more common in mathematics than in reading, and were more pronounced at the high school level. Study results are discussed in the context of educational equity and cost-effectiveness. Introduction Concerns about school size in the educational research literature tend to center on high schools. The most common sentiment expressed is that high schools are too large, and that they are getting larger. The U.S. Department of Education (2000a) reports that the number of public schools serving the secondary grades in the U. S. has largely held steady between 23,000 and 26,000 since 1930. During that same time, however, the number of public high school students in the U. S. nearly tripled, from approximately 4.4 million to over 13 million. As consolidation trends have created larger schools, the issue of school size has become of great interest to educators and policymakers alike. As the demand for safer schools, the need to help all students reach high achievement standards, and the proliferation of school-level monitoring School size, achievement, and achievement gaps 2 and accountability systems have increased, so has interest in the contribution of many school-level variables – including school size – to student outcomes. Intuitively, school size would appear to have considerable impact on both student achievement and discipline in the school. Smaller size is often associated with more personal attention, more opportunities for involvement, less anonymity for students, and a more caring environment. These factors are then hypothesized to lead to more positive student outcomes (Finn, 1989; Holland & Andre, 1987). Larger schools, however, are said to offer a broader and deeper curriculum along with economies of scale that often appeal to policymakers. Studies of student behavior indicate that smaller schools are generally associated with more positive behavioral outcomes for students. Larger schools are reported to have higher dropout and expulsion rates than smaller schools (Fetler, 1989; Fowler & Walberg, 1991; Pittman & Haughwout, 1987; Schoggen & Schoggen, 1988). Larger schools also have been shown to have more problems with most major behavioral issues including truancy, disorderliness, physical conflicts among students, robbery, vandalism, alcohol use, drug use, sale of drugs on school grounds, tobacco use, trespassing, verbal abuse of teachers, teacher absenteeism, and gangs (Haller, 1992; Heaviside, Rowand, Williams, & Farris, 1998; Lindsay, 1982; Page, 1991). There is also a substantial body of research that indicates that students in smaller schools are more likely to be involved in extracurricular activities (Baird, 1969; Barker & Gump, 1964; Grabe, 1981; Lindsay, 1982; Morgan & Alwin, 1980; Schoggen & Schoggen, 1998). School size has also been studied in relationship to student achievement, at both the elementary and high school levels. The majority of studies at the elementary level point toward an inverse relationship, i.e., smaller elementary schools tend to have higher achievement. For example, a study in New York found that reading and math test scores were higher in elementary schools with smaller enrollments, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors (Kiesling, 1968). Caldas (1993) found a small negative relationship between school size and general achievement among elementary schools in Louisiana. Wendling and Cohen (1981) also found that third graders from smaller schools demonstrated higher achievement in reading and math than their counterparts in larger schools. In that study, the average enrollment in the lower-achieving schools was 776, while the average enrollment of the higher-achieving schools was 447. Fowler (1995) reviewed a number of studies of school size and achievement in elementary schools, all of which again suggested a negative relationship. Several of the studies Fowler reviewed, however, were not widely published or were not published at all. Even so, there is little contrary evidence in the educational research literature to refute the conclusion that smaller elementary schools are associated with higher achievement. Although the findings for elementary schools would appear fairly consistent, the research on high school size and achievement is less conclusive. Using state achievement test data from 293 public high schools in New Jersey, Fowler and Walberg (1991) found that school size was inversely related to test scores in mathematics and writing. They also found that smaller schools were associated with higher passing rates on the reading portion of the state’s Minimum Basic Skills Test as well as on the mathematics and writing portions of the state’s High School Proficiency Test. These effects were statistically significant even after controlling for students’ family income level, but the actual size of the effects was not clearly reported. The schools in this study had enrollments ranging from 147 to 4,018, with an average enrollment of 1,070. Other studies have demonstrated similar results. Fetler (1989), in a study of all public high schools in California, found that schools with smaller enrollments tended to have higher achievement scores, although the relationship was not strong and the analysis did not take into account any student background factors. Walberg and Walberg (1994) used data from the 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics assessment to examine Education Policy Analysis Archives Vol. 12 No. 58 3 relationships among size, expenditures and achievement. Their analyses demonstrated that states with larger schools tended to score lower on the NAEP mathematics assessment, even after controlling for per-pupil expenditures and percentage of non-Caucasian students in the state. Other studies, however, have failed to demonstrate higher levels of achievement for smaller high schools. Lindsay (1984), analyzing data from a nationally representative sample of almost 14,000 high school students, found no meaningful relationship between school size and academic ability. Academic ability in this study was measured by a standardized composite score based on four tests (vocabulary, reading, inductive reasoning, and mathematics) that were used in the National Longitudinal Study conducted by the U. S. Department of Education. A study by Jewell (1989) reached similar conclusions. In examining the relationship between school size and college entrance exam scores across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, he found no significant relationship between high school size and either ACT scores or Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) scores after controlling for poverty. In another earlier study, Baird (1969) analyzed data from over 21,000 high school students who took the American College Test (ACT) and found that students from smaller schools actually had lower ACT scores. Haller, Monk, and Tien (1993) also found no relationship between high school size and higher-order thinking skills using data from a nationally-representative sample of 10 graders from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth. Compared to the results for elementary schools, the evidence for the size-achievement relationship at the high school level appears to be more mixed. One of the more sophisticated studies of size and achievement found that students from medium-sized high schools actually demonstrated higher achievement than students in either smaller or larger schools (Lee & Smith, 1997). Using longitudinal data from a nationwide sample of over 9,000 students, the authors studied the relationship between size and achievement gains between 8 grade and 12 grade. The results indicated that after controlling for various student-level and school-level demographic characteristics, students in moderate-sized high schools tended to have higher gains in both reading and mathematics, with the effects for mathematics being somewhat stronger than for reading. Specifically, they found that the highest gains in achievement were found in high schools with enrollments between 600 and 900 students. In addition, the finding of lower mathematics gains in larger schools was especially pronounced for non-Caucasian students and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The Lee and Smith study is also one of the few studies in this area to control for prior achievement. A recent reanalysis of this same dataset, however, by Howley and Howley (2004) has questioned Lee and Smith’s conclusions regarding optimal size, contending in particular that the effects of very small schools were not adequately addressed in the analysis. They concluded that the relationship between size and achievement is in fact more linear and that smaller size (less than the 600-student cutpoint posited by Lee and Smith) does in fact benefit students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (see Lee (2004) for a critique of this reanalysis and its conclusions). The interaction between poverty and size was also echoed in a report by the Rural School and Community Trust (Howley & Bickel, 1999) using data from 13,600 public schools in 2,290 districts in Georgia, Montana, Ohio, and Texas. Specifically, schools in less affluent communities in each state demonstrated higher achievement if they were smaller, while the opposite relationship was found in more affluent communities. Howley and colleagues have labeled this phenomenon the “excellence effect” of small school size, and have also demonstrated this result across grade levels using data from other states including West Virginia (Howley, 1995) and Arkansas (Johnson, Howley, & Howley, 2002). This line of research has also forwarded the notion of an “equity effect” of size, showing that the ubiquitous poverty-achievement correlation is much stronger in larger schools and districts than in smaller schools and districts (e.g., Bickel & Howley, 2000; Friedkin & Necochea, 1998). School size, achievement, and achievement gaps 4 Overall, school size appears to be related to a host of behavioral and academic outcomes for students, with smaller schools being associated with more positive outcomes in most cases. The research on size and achievement at the high school level appears to be somewhat of an exception, however, with multiple studies reaching different conclusions. In addition, both the Lee and Smith (1997) study and the series of studies by Howley and colleagues point toward the possibility that school size may be associated with different outcomes for students from different backgrounds. Many prior studies, however, have failed to control for prior achievement, have not explored the possibility of differential effects for subgroups of students, and/or have not been able to analyze student-level variables in conjunction with school-level effects. These issues, in conjunction with the federally-driven focus on disaggregated achievement results and progress monitoring, call for further investigation of how the size-achievement relationship may operate among specific types of students. In an effort to better understand how school size relates to achievement among different subgroups of students across various grade levels, a study was undertaken to examine these relationships using data from the North Carolina public schools. North Carolina provides a particularly interesting venue to study this issue due to the wide ranges in the size of schools across the state, a relatively high average school size (Figure 1), and the availability of longitudinal achievement test data for individual students from the state’s testing and accountability program. Two primary research questions were formulated to guide the overall study: 1. What are the relationships between school size and achievement at the elementary, middle and high school levels? 2. Do size-achievement relationships vary among students with differing levels of prior achievement, students of different ethnicities, and students whose parents have different levels of education?