Small schools (with enrollments of 300 or less) are being rediscovered as models for effective schools. Currently 26.9% of America's school systems enroll over 500,000 students in more than 26,000 small schools staffed by 50,000 teachers. Small schools have pioneered many educational "innovations": non-graded classrooms, individualized…

Research indicates that the relationship between class size and instructional effectiveness depends on a multitude of related variables, such as age level of students, subject matter taught, and instructional methods used. Recent statistical syntheses of this research reveal that the instructional benefits of smaller classes are most significant…