Class Size as an Early Intervention Strategy in White-Minority Achievement Gap Reduction.

A reanalysis of norm- and criterion-referenced achievement test data from Tennessee's Student Teacher Achievement Ration Project builds on research utilizing class size and student achievement as an independent and a dependent variable, respectively. The study examined patterns of achievement among minority and white students in small, regular, and regular-with-aide class-size treatments over varying lengths of time and at varying startup years, grades K, 1, 2, and 3. The major differences between the minority and white patterns was the magnitude of the between-treatment subsample means. Differences for white subsamples tended to be compressed relative to differences between minority subsamples; that is, class size appeared to make a bigger difference for minority students than for white students. The findings of this reanalysis support the following conclusions: (1) small class size may be an effective strategy for reducing the achievement gap between whites and minorities in the primary school years; (2) benefits accrue initially in greater measure to minorities than to whites; (3) optimally beneficial treatment begins no later than grade 1; (4) optimally beneficial treatment lasts at least 2 years; (5) the major benefit of small classes for minorities appears to be in preventing rather than remediating achievement disadvantages; (6) the differential effect of small class size for minorities appears to "fade" following 2 years of treatment; and (7) the "fade" phenomenon of early treatments can be neither confirmed nor contradicted by reanalysis. (Author/KDP)