Effects Of School Size Research Articles

The effect of school size and class size on school preparedness.

The purpose of the present study was to understand students' school readiness as a function of student and teacher behaviors but also school size and class size using both linear and non-linear analytical approaches. Data came from 21,903 schools distributed across 80 countries as per the 2018 cohort of the PISA database. Results pointed to a preference for the Cusp model in that the relationship between school and class sizes with achievement proved to be best described by the non-linearity of the Cusp catastrophe model. The critical benchmarks were a school size of 801 students and a class size of 27 students for which increases beyond those thresholds were linked to nonlinearity and unpredictability in school readiness. For this reason, we suggest using the cusp catastrophe model from Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Theory (NDST) to understand more fully such complex phenomena.

The Effect Of School Size, Demographics, And Socioeconomic Status On Headgear Use In Girls Lacrosse

The Effect Of School Size, Demographics, And Socioeconomic Status On Headgear Use In Girls Lacrosse

Sense of School Belonging: The Illusion of a School-Size Effect

Over the past thirty years, the sense of school belonging received increasing attention in the educational field because of the many developmental and educational advantages associated with it. Previous research suggested that small schools are in a better position to create a strong sense of belonging among students. The aim of our study was to test the effect of school size on students’ sense of school belonging and to test whether this effect holds after considering the effect of the classroom after controlling for individual differences. The study was conducted on a sample of 1698 sixth- and seventh-grade students distributed among 20 school institutes in Switzerland. Multilevel analyses have been conducted. While first results showed an effect of the school size on the sense of school belonging, a comparison of the two-level and three-level hierarchical linear models showed that this effect is no longer significant when considering the intermediate level of the classroom in the analysis, indicating that previous research may have overestimated the effect of school size on the sense of school belonging. These evidence raises the question of which levels of the school environment are more relevant to better understanding individual differences in the sense of school belonging.

Capacity-related factors associated with computer science access and participation in Georgia public high schools

States across the United States are enacting policies aimed at increasing computer science (CS) courses and content in K–12 schools. We explore the relationship between such policy with the capacity of high schools to teach CS courses and student access to and participation in CS courses. To do this, we focus on Georgia, a state that has had a robust CS education movement over the past two decades. This paper investigates two research questions: 1) What factors at the school or district level are related to whether a high school teaches CS in Georgia? 2) What factors are related to CS enrollment rates in Georgia high schools? We examine these questions within the context of national and state policy factors that increase capacity of schools to teach CS. We describe the results of correlation and regression analyses of publicly available data for each school and district from 2016 and school CS enrollment from 2012 to 2016 in answering these questions. Results indicate that the odds of a school offering CS in 2016 were greatest for schools that taught CS the prior year, although median income and school size were also significant factors when prior CS was not considered. For CS enrollment, the model that included prior CS enrollment rates explained the most variance, although school size, median income, and the percentage of students who identify as Asian were also significant when prior CS enrollment was not included in the model. CS-specific policy has the potential to mitigate the effects of school size and income by offering capacity supports to schools that do not currently offer CS and can contribute to the sustainability and growth of CS offerings. These results have implications for policy efforts beyond the state of Georgia and provide direction for future research examining the causes of sustained CS offerings and enrollment patterns.

School size and students' achievement. Empirical evidences from PISA survey data

abstract The issue of school size has become prominent for researchers and policy makers alike. Many different arguments have been offered in order to explain how school size might affect student achievement. Overall, if smaller schools are associated with higher students' achievement in primary level, this conclusion cannot be clearly stated for the secondary schools. Empirical evidences highlight that the effect is often mixed: some studies have found higher achievement among students enrolled in smaller schools, while others have detected higher achievement in very large schools, still others have suggested a non linear relationship. In this paper, analyzing OECD-PISA 2012 data, the effect of school size is investigated considering Italian students' achievement, in order to answer the question if there is an optimal school size in Italy. For our goal, due to the hierarchical structure of data (the students are nested within school) we specify a mixed model with random intercept.

Learning and Motivation in Thailand: A Comparative Regional Study on Basic Education Ninth Graders

<p class="apa">This qualitative research studied regional motivation and learning of the basic education 9th graders in Thailand. Second topic was the school size and its possible effect on motivation. Furthermore, the data gave an opportunity to discuss, whether international research on motivation and learning was valid in Thai classrooms. The informants were randomly selected from northern, north eastern, central, and southern regions of the country. Altogether 12 schools, ranging from smaller than 500 students to larger with more than 1 500 students, participated. Three teachers and their students from each school assessed their learning and motivation into a questionnaire after lessons. Researchers selected randomly two male and female students to represent each class. Research questions were:</p><p class="apa">What is the motivation and learning of the students in the four main regions of the Thailand?</p><p class="apa">Does the school size affect the motivation and learning? If it does, what is the impact?</p><p class="apa">Research findings revealed that the most motivated Thai students study in south. The internal motivation wasn’t low anywhere, however, but it could easily drop to a situation-based interest or even less. Second, the motivation was higher in classes, in which teachers analyzed students’ motivation and learning in the same way as students did. Third, the more the students liked the teacher, the better their motivation was. Regarding school size effects, the trend favored smaller units. To foster the future development, this study urges to study motivation in all teachers training. Second, teachers’ personal motivation needs surveys in a broad context.</p>

Class size, school size and the size of the school network

In many transition countries, including Ukraine, decreases in population and fertility have led to substantial falls in the number of school-aged children. As a consequence, these countries now have school networks that consist of many small schools, leading many countries to consider reorganizing their networks by closing smaller schools and reallocating students. Using a rich data-set of almost the entire population of Ukrainian secondary schools, we estimate the effect of school size and class size on the performance of secondary schools on Ukraine's External Independent Test. We find that larger schools tend to have somewhat better performance, both in terms of test scores and in terms of test participation. The size of this effect is relatively small, however, especially in rural areas for which the estimates are likely to be less biased. Class size is found to be insignificant in most specifications and, if significant, of negligible size. The importance of this finding for the ‘rationalization’ of the large school networks in Eastern Europe is discussed.

Long-term effects of school size on students’ outcomes

We estimate the effect of school size on students’ long-term outcomes such as high school completion, being out of the labor market, and earnings at the age of 30. We use rich register data on the entire population of Danish children attending grade 9 in the period 1986–2004. This allows us to compare the results of different fixed effect and instrumental variables estimators. We use the natural population variation in the residential catchment areas and school openings and closures to instrument for actual school size. We find a robust positive but numerically fairly small relationship between school size and alternative measures of long-term success in the educational system and the labor market. The positive impact of school size seems mainly to be driven by boys and students from families with a low educational level.

Long-Term Effects of School Size on Students' Outcomes

We estimate the effect of school size on students' long-term outcomes such as high school completion, being out of the labor market, and earnings at the age of 30. We use rich register data on the entire population of Danish children attending grade 9 in the period 1986-2004. This allows us to compare the results of different fixed effect and instrumental variables estimators. We use the natural population variation in the residential catchment areas and school openings and closures to instrument for actual school size. We find a robust positive but numerically fairly small relationship between school size and alternative measures of long-term success in the educational system and the labor market. The positive impact of school size seems mainly to be driven by boys, students from families with a low educational level and students attending schools in urban areas.

Private education provision and public finance: the Netherlands

One of the key features of the Dutch education system is freedom of education – freedom to establish schools and organize teaching. Almost 70% of schools in the Netherlands are administered by private school boards, and all schools are government funded equally. This allows school choice. Using an instrument to identify private school attendance, it is shown that the Dutch system promotes academic performance. The instrumental variable results show that private school attendance is associated with higher test scores. Private school size effects on math, reading, and science achievement are 0.19, 0.31, and 0.21, respectively.

Irregular Bedtime and Nocturnal Cellular Phone Usage as Risk Factors for Being Involved in Bullying: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Japanese Adolescents

PurposeA number of studies have tried to identify risk factors for being involved in bullying in order to help developing preventive measures; however, to our knowledge, no study has investigated the effect of nocturnal lifestyle behavior such as sleep pattern or cellular phone usage. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between school bullying and sleep pattern or nocturnal cellular phone usage in adolescents. The effect of school size on school bullying was also examined.MethodsData from the cross-sectional survey of psychopathologies conducted for 19,436 Japanese students from 45 public junior high schools (7th–9th grade) and 28 senior high schools (10th–12th grade) were analyzed.ResultsBullying status was significantly associated with irregular bedtime (OR = 1.23 and 1.41 for pure bullies and bully-victims, respectively) and e-mail exchange or calling after lights-out (OR = 1.53 and 1.31 for pure bullies and bully-victims, respectively) after controlling domestic violence and substance usage. In addition, school size was significantly associated with the increased risk of bullying in junior high school students (OR = 1.13 for bully-victims).ConclusionsThe present results suggested that sleep pattern and nocturnal cellular phone usage might be risk factors for being involved in school bullying in adolescents. Although further accumulation of data is needed, progressive trend towards nocturnal lifestyle and increasing usage of cellular phone might impair the well-being of adolescents. School-based interventions for lifestyle including sleep pattern and cellular phone usage may be encouraged to reduce school bullying.

Emergence of Oblong School Shape: Models and Empirical Data of Fish

AbstractThe main benefit of the oblong shape of schools of fish is supposed to be the protection against predation. Models of self‐organised travelling groups have shown that this shape may arise as a side effect of the avoidance of collisions with group members. These models were developed for schools of fish in open water, whereas the oblong shape of schools of real fish has mostly been observed in schools in tanks. Therefore, it is not known how school shape in a tank originates neither in models nor in real fish. To find out what causes this shape, we use the combination of a theoretical and an empirical study. We test the predictions produced by our earlier models regarding the effect of school size on the school shape both in a model of self‐organised schooling in a tank and empirically. Empirically, we study the 3D positions of all individuals in the schools of 10–60 real mullets (Chelon labrosus). We calculate for each individual its distance to its nearest neighbour and its velocity and we measure per school its length and width. The relation between school shape and size in the model and in the real mullets supports our prediction and thus supports the hypothesis that school shape may be emergent from the avoidance of collisions during coordinated travelling.

A Review of Empirical Evidence About School Size Effects: A Policy Perspective

This review examined 57 post-1990 empirical studies of school size effects on a variety of student and organizational outcomes. The weight of evidence provided by this research clearly favors smaller schools. Students who traditionally struggle at school and students from disadvantaged social and economic backgrounds are the major benefactors of smaller schools. Elementary schools with large proportions of such students should be limited in size to not more than about 300 students; those serving economically and socially heterogeneous or relatively advantaged students should be limited in size to about 500 students. Secondary schools serving exclusively or largely diverse and/or disadvantaged students should be limited in size to about 600 students or fewer, while those secondary schools serving economically and socially heterogeneous or relatively advantaged students should be limited in size to about 1,000 students.

Student Background, School Climate, School Disorder, and Student Achievement: An Empirical Study of New York City's Middle Schools

ABSTRACT This study develops and tests a school disorder and student achievement model based upon the school climate framework. The model was fitted to 212 New York City middle schools using the Structural Equations Modeling Analysis method. The analysis shows that the model fits the data well based upon test statistics and goodness of fit indices. The model accounts for 82% of the variance of student achievement scores on state standardized examinations. The study supports the model hypothesis that poverty and minority status of student population predict school disorder. Lower level of student SES is also associated with lower level of academic achievement directly, and indirectly mediated through school disorder. School disorder affects student academic achievement directly and indirectly mediated by student attendance rate. The effect of school size is in the hypothesized direction, i.e., smaller schools tend to have lower disorder and higher learning. Nevertheless, the effect is small and statistically insignificant, after controlling for student background and school culture variables in the model. The evidence of the study implies that school culture as reflected in school disorder and student attendance hold great potential for improving student learning. The reduction of school size, as currently used by many school districts to improve student learning, may prove to be ineffective if applied alone. In the large context and in the long run, reducing urban poverty will help close the gap between high and low achieving schools.

Smaller Isn't Always Better: School Size and School Participation Among Young People*

Objective. Although political scientists studying the role of schools on political socialization have focused most of their efforts on curriculum, mainly civic education, education scholars have long recognized that schools influence outcomes through much more than curriculum and have examined school organization extensively, including school size. Much of the recent literature on school size supports smaller schools. The objective of this article is to examine the effect of school size on two political socialization outcomes: adolescent participation in school activities and volunteering. These outcomes are important because they are related to later adult participation.Method. A nationwide survey is used to conduct regression analyses as the primary method.Results. The results show limited support for smaller schools, even for those groups who are believed to benefit most significantly from small schools: racial minorities, low‐income students, and underachievers.Conclusion. I conclude with an appeal for caution among education reformers seeking to downsize schools and a recommendation to political socialization scholars to expand their analyses beyond civic education curriculum.

Factors Affecting Teachers’ Adoption of Technology in Classrooms: Does School Size Matter?

Researchers in educational technology have searched for factors to explain teachers’ acceptance and resistance to using technology for instruction. Among the many identified factors, however, organizational and school factors have not yet been explored and discussed. This study investigates the effects of school size on science and mathematics teachers’ adoption of technology in classrooms. Using national survey data collected from 940 science and mathematics teachers at junior high schools in Taiwan, we employed factor analyses, log-linear analyses, and three-way ANOVA techniques to examine interactions among school factors and teacher factors. Results obtained from the log-linear analyses suggested that both the interactions of school region with school size and school size with technology users were needed to explain teachers’ use of educational technology in classrooms. It appears that teachers at small schools were more likely to use technology for instructional purposes. Additionally, results of the study revealed that teachers at small schools tended to have positive attitudes toward technology use and that among users of educational technology in southern Taiwan, teachers at small schools designed and used significantly more instructional activities with technology. This study suggests that small schools provide a better environment for science and mathematics teachers to implement educational technology in instruction.

Is Small Really Better? Testing Some Assumptions about High School Size

Is Small Really Better? Testing Some Assumptions about High School Size Barbara Schneider Adam E. Wyse Venessa Keesler Several years ago, I was in a meeting with a group of Chicago public school coaches and physical education teachers who were discussing the negative implications of one of Chicago's recent reform initiatives, the construction of smaller high schools. Much like other urban areas, Chicago had begun dismantling some of its large high schools to form smaller entities, with an "optimal" enrollment of 600 students. The coaches were deeply concerned that the small school movement was fostering the elimination of school-sponsored athletic teams, which sometimes acted as a magnet for marginal students, encouraging them to complete high school and in some instances enroll in college. From their perspective, intramural teams were unable to fill the void left by school-sponsored teams, which had helped some students obtain postsecondary scholarships and promoted a high school identity that instilled pride in the student body. Reflecting on their comments, I was struck by how my work and that of others had championed small schools. Could we have been wrong? Small schools were generally viewed as places that fostered a strong sense of community and encouraged academic achievement and attainment. But many of us had not explored whether small schools were better for all types of students. More specifically, would the consequences of creating small-school environments prove to be detrimental, especially for low-income minority students enrolled in urban high schools? [End Page 15] The case for small schools has been made in educational research since the 1960s, when scholars such as Barker and Gump argued that smaller schools provided students with greater opportunities for participation in various extracurricular activities.1 Within a smaller student body, the average adolescent would have a better chance of being on a team, taking a leadership position in the school, and developing stronger relationships with teachers and other adults in the school. The value of small schools was further supported in the 1980s by research on public and private schools that showed that smaller religious schools produced higher graduation rates and lower dropout rates than public schools.2 Analyses of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 in the 1990s also showed that smaller public schools produced substantial gains in mathematics achievement for high school students.3 By 2000, the results of those studies were often used as evidence by policymakers and school administrators to support proposals to decrease school size as a strategy for increasing student achievement. However, initial results from small-school reforms have been inconsistent.4 In light of those results and reviews of earlier work, serious questions are being raised regarding the methodological techniques used to study the effects of school size.5 Several concerns center on the use of inappropriate research designs for assessing causal effects, such as correlational analyses rather than random clinical trials. These concerns have led several educational researchers to revisit propensity score methods for using observational data to approximate experimental designs, methods formalized by Donald Rubin more than thirty years ago.6 As I reviewed my own work and that of my colleagues, it became increasingly clear to me that many of the reforms being advocated, particularly in today's high schools, had rarely been studied using Rubin's methods. Many of the cornerstones of high school reform, including better academic preparation programs, peer tutoring, and use of mentors, often lacked a rigorous evaluation component. Uncertain of what we might find, my two colleagues, Adam Wyse and Venessa Keesler, and I decided to estimate the effects of high school size using Rubin's methods and conventional hierarchical models. This paper describes our efforts, using observational data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, to approximate an experiment on the effects of school size for several student outcomes: mathematics achievement, postsecondary expectations, college attendance plans after high school graduation, and number and type of...

The Effects of School Size on Parental Involvement and Social Capital: Evidence from the ELS: 2002

The Effects of School Size on Parental Involvement and Social Capital: Evidence from the ELS:2002 Thomas S. Dee Wei Ha Brian A. Jacob Recent state and federal policies designed to improve American public schools have generally focused on introducing standards (for example, No Child Left Behind) or choice (for example, charter schools and vouchers). However, another increasingly prominent approach to reform has emphasized the possible benefits of creating smaller schools as well as small, focused learning communities within schools, particularly at the high school level.1 The growing national interest in the small-schools movement has been catalyzed largely by private foundations (most notably, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) rather than by explicit state and federal action.2 Regardless of its origin, this reform agenda has brought renewed attention to a long-standing research literature that examines the effects of school size on the organizational character and performance of schools. This literature focuses on how school size influences both costs and outcomes (for example, test scores and educational attainment). However, it also emphasizes how school size may change the nature of educationally relevant social interactions among students, teachers, and administrators. In particular, the apparent consensus in this literature is that the increased formalization of interactions in larger schools harms school quality by fostering alienation and a loss of organizational focus among students and staff.3 However, there appears to be little corresponding evidence on how school size influences patterns [End Page 77] of parental involvement in schools. This is somewhat surprising in light of the fact that constructive parental engagement with schools is widely seen as an important determinant of school quality.4 Furthermore, the effects of school size on parents may also matter for an important reason that is wholly unrelated to the direct objectives of schools. Public schools are often viewed as vital community institutions that can deepen social networks and promote a variety of welfare-enhancing social norms (for example, trust and reciprocity). The role of public schools in promoting this broad group of outcomes, which researchers currently group under the heading "social capital," has important implications both for the optimal design of schools as well as for the proper division between the public and private sectors.5 The size of a public school, for example, could quite conceivably influence the amount of social capital within a community through its effects on parental interactions. In this study, we present new empirical evidence on whether the size of public high schools influences measures of parental involvement and social capital. This analysis is based on nationally representative data from the base year of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). In addition to examining novel measures of outcome based on recent data, our study also engages a substantive methodological concern. Any inferences about the causal effects of school size are likely to be complicated by the fact that the unobservable traits that influence a parent's pattern of civic engagement (for example, the enjoyment a parent derives from interacting with others) may also influence the size of the public school the family chooses. The conventional approach to addressing this concern is to exploit a plausible natural experiment that influences school size.6 However, in the absence of a compelling experiment, we adopt an approach developed in a recent study by Altonji, Elder, and Taber on the effects of Catholic schools.7 Following their lead, we attempt to establish bounds on the causal effects of school size by using the differences in observed traits across parents connected to smaller and larger schools as a guide to the size and direction of their potentially confounding unobserved traits. The paper is organized as follows. The next section provides brief discussions of the school-size literature and the possible relationships between school size and the engagement of parents. This is followed by a discussion of the ELS:2002 data...

High School Size, Organization, and Content: What Matters for Student Success?

High School Size, Organization, and Content:What Matters for Student Success? Linda Darling-Hammond, Peter Ross, and Michael Milliken In recent years, the large comprehensive high school has been a subject of growing critique by researchers and reformers. "Factory model" schools have been criticized for their impersonal structures, fragmented curricula, segregated and unequal program options, and inability to respond effectively to student needs.1 Some studies have found that, other things equal, smaller schools appear to produce higher achievement, lower dropout rates, lower rates of violence and vandalism, more positive feelings about self and school, and more participation in school activities. These outcomes appear more pronounced for students who are traditionally lower achieving.2 In addition, the belief that large schools are necessarily more cost-effective has been challenged by studies finding equivalent operating costs and lower costs per graduate in smaller schools.3 However, there are competing findings about the effects of smaller schools for different groups of students and about the effects of school size and organizational features in diverse contexts. This review examines these findings across a wide range of studies over the last thirty years. We conclude that the influences of size appear to be mediated by other features of school organizations that are sometimes, but not always, associated with size, making the relationship between school size and many desired outcomes an indirect one. These other features are associated with aspects of school design, including how adults and students are organized to work together, the nature of the curriculum, [End Page 163] and how access to knowledge is organized. Smaller schools may provide the opportunity for important educational conditions such as stronger relationships, greater student involvement, and greater academic press, but they do not, by themselves, guarantee that those conditions will exist. Furthermore, the processes used to create smaller schools or units within large schools have been highly varied, including many different models (for example, schools within a school with varying degrees of autonomy, house plans, mini-schools, learning communities, clusters, magnets, and charters within larger schools or as stand-alone schools) that have been launched under widely differing conditions. We would expect—and research has confirmed—variable levels of success among school restructuring efforts launched with different designs, varying amounts of planning time and resources, and varying levels of staff experience and quality, as well as under different political conditions, collective bargaining agreements, and other factors. Finally, there are questions about what "smaller" means and about what school size may be optimum, since comparative studies have examined different size ranges. For example, research looking at data from different systems in different eras has resulted in recommended maximum high school enrollments ranging from 500 to 1,000.4 Some analysts suggest that optimum size varies with the socioeconomic status of the community, with 1,000 probably the upper limit for schools serving affluent students and substantially smaller sizes for schools serving low-income students.5 Our review of the available evidence suggests that, in addition to student backgrounds, important variables influencing high school outcomes for different groups of students include organizational structures that create more coherence and "communal" orientation, reduce curriculum differentiation, increase instructional authenticity and rigor, and enhance personalization (that is, the extent to which students are well known by adults). While we have found no research support for the large urban comprehensive schools serving several thousand students that still exist in many cities, many questions remain about what kinds of organizations should replace these gargantuan institutions. We believe that interpreting competing findings in ways that can guide productive decisionmaking requires a much more nuanced analysis of the interacting elements of relative school size, student body composition, organizational design, curriculum content, and instructional features than is typically undertaken. As Bickel and Howley note, "Seldom have policymakers or researchers asked 'Better for whom?' or 'Better for what?' or 'Better under what conditions?'"6 In what follows, we seek to address these questions. [End Page 164] Research on School Size Much of the research on school size is quantitative and correlational, using state administrative data or large national data sets such as the High School and Beyond Study and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS...

Using shocks to school enrollment to estimate the effect of school size on student achievement

Previous studies of the connection between school enrollment size and student achievement use cross-sectional econometric models and thus do not account for unobserved heterogeneity across schools. To address this concern, I utilize school-level panel data, and generate first-differences estimates of the effect of school size on achievement. Moreover, to account for the possibility that trends in both achievement and enrollment size are jointly determined, I exploit shocks to enrollment provided by school openings, closings, and mergers in a two-stage-least-squares estimation. The results suggest that smaller schools increase both math scores and attendance rates and that the benefit of smaller schools outweigh the cost.