HEROS, Inc

Description

Probably few issues in education have been studied as often as class size, yet few studies have produced satisfactory or consistent results; many have reviewed class-size reductions from 40 to 30, or 30 to 25. There have been few major, controlled class-size studies. There have been even fewer that explored the 15:1 range suggested in 1978 by Gene Glass and colleagues when they wrote "Meta-analysis of research on class size and achievement" published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. The Research Staff and Consultants at HEROS have been researching the effects of reducing class size to a ratio of 15 to 1 since 1984. Dr. Helen Pate-Bain (HEROS consultant and Board Chair) began to conduct research on the impact of reduced class size while at the Center for Excellence in the Teaching of Basic Skills to Economically and Educationally Disadvantaged Students. In the Dupont Class Size Study, she (with Ed Whittington and Ben Dennis) studied the effects of class size (1:15) on the teaching/learning process during grades 1-3 in the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County Schools. The research started with an experimental group consisted of 105 first grade students divided into seven classes of 15 students each. The control group consisted of 90 students divided among three and one-half teachers with a class size of 25 students each. A blind control group was selected comprising of 105 students drawn from 35 elementary schools, matched with the experimental group demographically according to five pre-established criteria: (a) sex, (b) race, (c) economic status, (d) date of birth within 45 days, and (e) total pre-reading raw score within four point on the California Achievement Test Level 10. The statistical analysis of pre- and post-test results indicated that the experimental group consistently achieved better results than either control group. The only intervening variable was the reduction of class size from 1:25 to 1:15. Therefore, it was concluded that reducing class size to 1:15 has a positive effect on student reading and math outcomes. The research results were in reported in the article "Effects of Class Size on First-Grade Students" prepared by Ed Whittington, Helen Pate-Bain, & C.M. Achilles and published in Spectrum, Journal of School Research and Information, Fall 1985. A more detailed summary on this research will be available online from HEROS in September 1998. In 1985, Dr. Helen Pate-Bain shared the results of the first year of her study & information on Project Prime Time in Indiana with the Tennessee State Board of Education and the House and Senate Education Committees. Based on her urging that Tennessee examine the issue of optimum class size and with the support of Rep. Steve Cobb & Sen. Doug Henry, legislation (House Bill 544) was passed to conduct a well-designed study of class size. The Tennessee State Department of Education organized to conduct the legislated study of reduced student/teacher ratio and adopted the name STAR, an acronym for Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio. Dr.

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