UM: School Size

The New York Times poses the question “Does school size matter?” and asks several experts to weigh in, including UM education professor Valerie Lee: “In my research using data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. high schools and controlling for prior academic ability as well as other characteristics like social background, we found that there is an ideal size for high schools – ideal in terms of students learning more in mathematics over the four years of high schools. Students learned more in schools enrolling 600 to 900 students, and less in either larger or smaller schools. The relationship between school size and student learning is, thus, not linear.” [Source]