Meta-Analysis of Research on Class Size and Achievement

Abstract

THERE IS No POINT IN RECORDING THE obvious about class size: that teachers worry about it more than nearly anything else, that administrators want to increase it, that it is economically important, and the like. The problem with class size is the research. It is unclear. It has variously been read as supporting larger classes, supporting smaller classes, and supporting nothing but the need for better research. Review after review of the topic has dissolved into cynical despair or epistemological confusion. The notion is wide-spread among educators and researchers that class size bears no relationship to achievement. It is a dead issue in the minds of most instructional researchers. To return to the class-size literature in search of defensible interpretations and conclusions strikes many as fruitless. The endeavor is surrounded by a faint aroma of Chippendale, which it resembles in other respects: unwieldy and antique. One could document the confusion in previous reviews of research on the class-