This is the protocol for a Campbell review. The objective of this systematic review is to uncover and synthesise data from studies to assess the impact of small class sizes on the academic achievement, socioemotional development, and well-being of students with special educational needs. Where possible, we will also investigate the extent to which…

Stakeholders in Nigeria have raised concerns over the trend of poor academic performance of students in all categories of schools Nigeria. Foremost concern has hitherto been narrowed on the quality of teachers, teaching process, school administrative efficacy and the apathetic attitude of students to their studies due to distractions that impede…

Schools across the United States are facing budgetary pressures on a scale not seen in generations. Times of fiscal exigency force policymakers and education practitioners to pay more attention to the return on various categories of public investment in education. The sizes of the classes in which students are educated are often a focus of these…

This article addresses three questions: Does reduced class size cause higher academic achievement in reading, mathematics, listening, and word recognition skills? If it does, how large are these effects? Does the magnitude of such effects vary significantly across schools? The authors analyze data from Tennessee's Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio…

This paper addresses the relationship between class size and student-teacher interactions as an explanation for effects of class size on achievement. Observations were conducted in kindergarten and Grade 1 classes from 46 Dutch primary schools in order to address the effect of class size on the amount and type of student-teacher interactions. The…

Healthful living has been a cornerstone of Seventh-day Adventist belief and practice almost from the very beginning of the church's history. The problem was that no one had studied the role healthful practices play in Seventh-day Adventist education using the entire Seventh-day Adventist student population. The correlations between four aspects of…

The findings on the social distribution of the immediate and lasting benefits of small classes have been mixed. We used data from Project STAR and the Lasting Benefits Study to examine the long-term effects of small classes on the achievement gap in mathematics, reading, and science scores (Stanford Achievement Test). The results consistently…

Small classes in the elementary grades have been shown to boost students' academic performance. However, researchers continue to seek a consistent, integrated explanation of "why" small classes have positive effects. This article forwards the hypothesis that when class sizes are reduced, major changes occur in students' engagement in the…

This report addresses some of the concerns surrounding smaller classes and looks at whether reduced class sizes result in higher achievement levels, and concludes that it in fact does increase student achievement, so long as classes do not exceed 17 students. But many critics question whether the high cost of reducing classes to 17 or fewer…

As poverty, dysfunctional families, and special needs continue to affect students, educators seek improved ways to start children in formal education. One such approach is to lower the teacher-to-pupil ratios, and recent research shows that this method positively influences pupil achievement. How the process works is not well understood. To fill…

Despite evidence from the USA that children in small classes of less than 20 do better academically there is still a vociferous debate about the effects of class size differences in schools, and considerable gaps in our understanding of the effects of class size differences. This article summarises results from the most complete UK analysis to…

There is a strong relationship between students' socioeconomic status and their levels of academic achievement. Although educators should be held accountable for improving the performance of all students, including those living in poverty, schools alone can't eliminate the negative factors associated with poverty that lead to a large achievement…

Although experimental results indicate that smaller classes promote higher achievement in early elementary school, the broader literature on class-size effects is inconclusive. This seeming contradiction raises questions about the generalizability of experimental evidence, an issue that this article addresses by examining the effects of class size…

The effects of class size on academic achievement have been studied for decades. Although the results of small-scale, randomized experiments and large-scale, econometric studies point to positive effects of small classes, some scholars see the evidence as ambiguous. Recent analyses from a 4-year, large-scale, randomized experiment on the effects…

This research brief summarizes a report by Christopher Jepsen and Steven Rivkin, "Class Size Reduction, Teacher Quality, and Academic Achievement in California Public Elementary Schools" (2002) [ED497298]. Intuitively, class size reduction is a good idea. Parents support it because it means that their children will receive more…