Smaller-Class Value Shown in Tennessee

Tennessee’s ongoing study on smaller class sizes proved that such programs can benefit primary-grade students--but its researchers also point out that the successes these pupils had gained waned over time.

Initiated in 1985, Tennessee’s Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) was the model that prompted Gov. Pete Wilson to push California’s class-size reduction program.

The controlled experiment assigned about 6,500 kindergartners--randomly drawn from various socio-economic backgrounds and regions of the state--to three different classroom conditions: 1) small classes of roughly 15 pupils per teacher; 2) regular classes with 25 students; and 3) regular classes of 25 students with a teacher and an instructional aide.

After researchers from four national universities and the Tennessee Department of Education tracked these students through the third grade, they found that pupils in the smaller classes--especially during the kindergarten and first grade--scored higher on standardized reading and math exams than their peers in the other two categories. But after the first grade, the differences among the students in the varying class sizes narrowed.

“The portion of gains were retained up to two to three years,” said Barbara Nye, the lead evaluator on the project and a researcher at Tennessee State University. “We have found that there has been some diminishing in the gains.”

In the first grade, small-class students scored at the 64th percentile in reading, whereas students in the regular class sizes fell in the 53rd percentile. By third grade, that difference narrowed by 4 percentile points.

Nye said the achievement differences continued to taper off over time, especially after the third grade when all students returned to the regular class sizes of about 25 pupils per teacher.

“Students acquired gains during the small-class treatment phase,” Nye said. “Those gains were sustained over time, but no additional gains were seen when they were no longer in small classes.”

Researchers also found that the number of students repeating a grade dropped 7.5%, and that poor and minority children demonstrated the greatest improvements and gained self-confidence.

Other findings ran against expectations: Although some instructors were trained to teach differently in smaller classrooms, their students showed no more accomplishment over smaller classes run by untrained teachers. Also, students in small classes showed no more academic motivation than other students.

The use of teacher aides had no significant advantages over the regular classrooms, the study found.

These Project STAR students are now in high school and researchers will continue to monitor their performance through their 1998 graduation.

Tennessee’s experiment prompted subsequent studies and class-size reduction programs in 11 other states, including Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin. Officials from these states have received inconclusive results from class-size evaluations.

In Nevada, where district class-size averages are capped at 16 students per teacher, a 1995 study that heavily focused on student test scores resulted in inconsistent findings.

“We didn’t get any really clear cut-results from the standardized tests we used,” said Nevada’s Department of Education evaluation consultant Mary Snow. “We found that the class size seems to make a difference for some subjects in some years. It wasn’t really strong evidence.”

Perhaps the most solid discovery was a steady drop in special-education referrals, which fell from 2.9% of the student population in 1991 to 2.05% in 1996.

One of the main problems in getting solid results was that districts used varying standardized tests, Snow said.

Nevada’s state Department of Education has asked for $420,000 from the Legislature this year to conduct more thorough evaluations.

Mary Peterson, Nevada’s superintendent of public instruction, said she firmly believes that smaller class sizes offer advantages. But to sustain state funding for this program, one lingering question continues to tug at her and other state officials: “Can we fully and convincingly measure the benefits of this program? We’ll have to see.”