Do Minorities Experience Larger Lasting Benefits From Small Classes?

• Published in: The Journal of educational research (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2004-11, Vol.98 (2), p.94-100
• Main Authors: Nye, Barbara, Hedges, Larry V., Konstantopoulos, Spyros
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Achievement Gap; Bias; Biological and medical sciences; Class Size; Classrooms; Demography; Differentials; Disadvantaged; Econometrics; Education; Education policy; Educational activities; Educational Objectives; Educational Research; Educational Researchers; Experiments; Federal Legislation; Federal Programs; Gender; Grade levels; Mathematics; Mathematics education; Medical sciences; Mental health; Minority & ethnic groups; Minority group students; Minority Groups; Minority students; No Child Left Behind Act 2001-US; Outcomes of Education; Prevention. Health policy. Planification; Project STAR; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reading; Reading Achievement; reading and mathematics; Reading instruction; School districts; small class size; Small Classes; Social classes; Social Distribution; Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry; Statistical significance; Student Teachers; Teachers; Variables
• ISSN: 0022-0671; 1940-0675
• DOI: 10.3200/JOER.98.2.94-114

Recent research from randomized experiments on class size points to positive effects of small classes that persist for several years, but the evidence about the social distribution of effects is less clear. Some scholars have contended that the immediate effects of small classes are larger for minorities and for disadvantaged persons (e.g., J. D. Finn & C. M. Achilles, 1990). Those claims have led to policies of class size reduction specifically to reduce inequality in educational outcomes. The authors used data from a 5-year follow-up to Project STAR to investigate whether differential effects of small classes on achievement for minority students persist. A repeated measures analysis suggested that there was a statistically significant, positive differential lasting benefit of 4 years for minorities enrolled in small classes in reading, and a negative differential lasting benefit for girls enrolled in small classes in mathematics over 5 years following the experiment. Thus, it appears that the lasting benefits of 4 years of small classes may reduce racial and ethnic inequality in reading and gender inequality in mathematics.