Optimal Context Size in Elementary Schools: Disentangling the Effects of Class Size and School Size

Abstract

Young children's learning?and how their learning is distributed by social background?may be influenced by the truc ural an organizational properties of their school. This study focuses on one important structural dimension of these educational contexts: size. Over the past several decades, various elements of the size of educational contexts have become a major focus of researchers, politicians, and corporate leaders. Billions of pub lic and private dollars have been invested in reforms to reduce the size and scope of both classrooms and schools. Unlike many educational reform initia tives, these downsizing efforts have found support from virtually every quarter. A united front of stakeholders has coalesced behind the notion that "smaller is better." Although size-reduction policies are well intentioned, their effective ness is unclear, and some efforts have produced unintended and even undesirable consequences. Moreover, their cost-effectiveness has seldom been considered. Based on results from the famous Tennessee class-size experiment, Cali fornia invested billions of dollars encouraging its schools to limit classes in the early grades to no more than twenty students. Quite recently, the push to reduce the size of high schools has been accompanied by enormous financial support from foundations and the federal government in an effort to encourage schools within-schools, small learning communities, and small stand-alone schools. Curiously, these important policy initiatives?reduced class size and reduced