A founding ideal of American democracy is that merit, not accident of birth, should determine individuals' income and social status. Schools have assumed a major role in judging key elements of merit among young people--namely, academic skills, hard work, self-discipline, and cooperative behavior. Schools do so mainly by evaluating students in a…

No study has comprehensively examined what types of students are attending new small schools in New York City and whether these students have different characteristics, on average, than students at the schools they replaced. This study fills this gap by comparing the characteristics of entering new small high school students with those of all…

The rapid dwindling of classes in the upper grades of U.S. grammar and high schools has been often noted, and many suggestions as to the improvement of the system of education have been emphasized by reference to this tendency. It is clear that after all that has been done, the attendance of pupils, particularly in the elementary schools, is still…