Class Size is a Major Factor in Contributing to Academic Success

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Education is the most important phenomenon in the modern society and is an issue of research which focuses on ways to how to improve it. Today’s most important issue about education is that how to improve the academic achievement of students and it became a heated debate among researchers. Recently, class-size reduction is an approach to increase student achievement and it has been debated among researchers for several decades. However, although there have been some dubious results from research and some of them contradict with each other, but most of them assure that class size is the major factor in academic achievement. This essay will firstly discuss some studies, and then it will explain why and how exactly class-size reduction can help certain groups of students. Next, it will explain some advantages and disadvantages of class size reduction. Even though, class-size reduction cost a lot of money, it helps students in improving their academic achievement.

Although, there have been many researches study on class-size effects on academic achievement, only few of these studies are of high quality and give us sufficient relevant information to provide the positive effects of class size reduction policy. In order to reduce class-size school districts need to hire more teachers, add more classes, and purchase more supplies. So the class size reduction is associated with contract with more teachers and constructing bigger school with more classes.

The most prominent and reliable class reduction program in recent years is the Student Teacher Achievement Ratio, or STAR, which was commissioned by the state legislature in Tennessee during the mid-1980s (CPE, 2006, ¶ 3). Tennessee project STAR found significant evidence that improvemen...

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... there has been lots of research done against and pro of class size reduction but the most of the researches especially STAR shows that the positive effects of class size reduction on academic achievement of students are much more. However there have been some advantages and disadvantages, but if the class size reduction policy work then the benefits will be a lot and it can also outrun the investment cost from economic benefits.

Works Cited

Achilles, C. M., Finn, J. D., & Pate-Bain, H. "Measuring class size: Let me count the ways." Educational Leadership (2002): 24-26. Journal.

Ehrenberg, Brewer, Gamoran, WIllms. "Does class size matter?" (2001): 78-85. electronic version.

Lavy, Joshua D. Angrist and Victor. "Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement." Quarterly Journal of Economics (1999): 533–575. web.

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