Overview
Summary
Fact Sheet
Project STAR Data
Project STAR Documents
Bibliography and References

Tennessee's K-3 Class Size Study

The Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project was a large-scale, four-year, experimental study of reduced class size.

As stated by Frederick Mosteller, Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Statistics at Harvard University in The Future of Children: Critical Issues for Children and Youths (Summer/Fall 1995), the STAR Project is considered:

"one of the most important educational investigations
ever carried out and illustrates the kind and magnitude
of research needed in the field of education to strengthen schools."

Overview

The Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) was a four-year longitudinal class-size study funded by the Tennessee General Assembly and conducted by the State Department of Education. Over 7,000 students in 79 schools were randomly assigned into one of three interventions: small class (13 to 17 students per teacher), regular class (22 to 25 students per teacher), and regular-with-aide class (22 to 25 students with a full-time teacher's aide).  Classroom teachers were also randomly assigned to the classes they would teach. The interventions were initiated as the students entered school in kindergarten and continued through third grade.

The analysis of academic achievement consistently and significantly (p<.01) demonstrated the advantage of small classes over regular size classes and regular sized classes with a teaching assistant. As Jeremy Finn and C.M. Achilles stated in the American Educational Research Journal (Fall 1990), "This research leaves no doubt that small classes have an advantage over larger classes in reading and math in early primary grades."  Tennessee's Project STAR was featured in the American School Boards Journal in May, 1992 and in many different periodicals since.

A feature edition of The Peabody Journal (Vol. 67, No. 1, Fall 1989/1992), edited by John Folger, included research findings from Project STAR and the fourth grade follow-up. In the paper "Carry-over Effects of Small Classes" J.D Finn, B.D. Fulton, J.B. Zaharias, and B.A. Nye reported that "The results of Project STAR show clearly that average pupil performance in the primary years can be increased (with reduced class size) by approximately one fourth to one third of a standard deviation without the introduction of new materials or curricula and without retraining the teachers." They also stated that in contrast to other education reforms that focus on specific subject areas and generally require some reorganization of course content, teaching strategies, and/or class scheduling "the effects of reduced-size classes were found on every achievement measure administered in Project STAR... To realize proformance gains as extensive as this through any combination of student grouping, individualized instruction, or tutoring would be both difficult and expensive, if it were even possible to implement or maintain such an approach". In summarizing their fourth grade findings, the authors stated that "Significant achievement advantages in a broad range of content areas were maintained one full year after the small classes were disbanded. Further, there is evidence that pupils who had attended small classes became more assertive in classroom participation behavior in comparison to their peers who attended regular size classes".

Donald Orlich of Washington State University referred to Project STAR in Phi Delta Kappan (April, 1991) as "one of the most significant studies in education during the past 25 years."  Project STAR class size research has been presented internationally at several conferences including the Project STAR conference organized by the London Institute of Education, University of London, England. Education policy in several states and on a national level regarding elementary class size has been impacted by Tennessee's class size research.


Current Research

In 1996, Health and Education Research Operative Services (HEROS), Incorporated was funded to conduct a tenth grade follow-up study of Project STAR. To be on-schedule during the 1995-1996 school year, Project STAR students would be high school sophomores (10th Grade). The researchers reviewed the Tennessee Competency Examination (TCE) data for the 1993-94, 1994-95, and 1995-96 school years. Schools begin administering the TCE to students in eighth grade and they are required to pass the TCE prior to graduating from high school. Data were collected for each administration of the TCE to a Project STAR student. A significantly larger percent of small-class students (52.9%) versus students who had attended regular (49.1%) and regular/aide (48.0%) classes passed the TCE Language requirement at grade 8. The same was true for the mathematics requirement, where 36.4% of the small-class students passed versus 32.3% of the regular class and 30.3% of the regular/aide class students.

Additional data were collected from Nashville-Davidson County Schools for the school dropout pilot study. Researchers had access to three years of data from this system (1993-94, 1994-95, and 1995-96 school years). When STAR students were not found with their appropriate grade level cohort (grade ten, 1995-96), investigators searched all grades from these years and were able to identify students who were still in the system, but who were appearing at a lower grade level. This review showed that more regular and regular/aide class students than small-class students had been retained in grade levels prior to tenth grade. In the 1993-1994 school year, a significantly higher percentage (12 to 19%) of students in regular and regular/aide classes were in lower grades than their counterparts in small classes (about 8%). This difference grew with time. By the 1995-1996 school year, twice the percentage of students who attended regular or regular/aide classes were found in lower grades than their STAR peers who attended small classes.

An academic progress pilot study was conducted by reviewing student records from the 1996-1997 school year where students who remained on-target with their cohort would have been in eleventh grade. Three school systems, Nashville-Davidson County, Pickett County, and Fentress County had agreed to participate in this pilot. Students who attended school in Nashville-Davidson County Schools were analyzed separately from those attending Fentress and Pickett County Schools. When student records were not located within the eleventh-grade files, the tenth-grade files (1996-1997) were searched, and if still not located the ninth-grade records were searched (1996-1997). The findings were strong and unambiguous. Nashville-Davidson County students who attended small classes (K-3) consistently made better grades than students in regular and regular/aide classes by the end of the 1994-1995 school year. In English, math, and science, the students in the small classes outscored their counterparts by over 10 points.

Since most colleges and universities require foreign language courses, investigators analyzed these data. Significantly more small-class students enrolled in such courses than regular and regular/aide-class students. Approximately 26 percent more small-class students than regular or regular/aide-class students from rural areas were enrolled in foreign language courses. In the inner-city sample, 20 percent more students from the small-class group than the other two class types are enrolled in a foreign language course. This information is especially important because it provides investigators with the first look at the academic "track" of STAR students.


Recent Findings

On April 30th 1999, HEROS Incorporated conducted a press conference on Class Size at the National Press Club. Project STAR Researchers reported that students placed in small class sizes in grades K-3 have better high school graduation rates, higher grade point averages, and are more inclined to pursue higher education.

  • Students in small classes are more likely to pursue college: STAR students who attended small classes - and black students in that group in particular - were more likely to take the ACT or SAT college entrance exams, according to Princeton University economist Dr. Alan B. Krueger, who researched test data linked to the Project STAR database. "Attendance in small classes appears to have cut the black-white gap in the probability of taking a college-entrance exam by more than half," Krueger said.
  • Small classes lead to higher graduation rates: Preliminary data from participating STAR school districts in Tennessee show that students in small classes were more likely to graduate on schedule; they were less likely to drop out of high school; and they were more likely to graduate in the top 25% of their classes, according to Dr. Jayne Boyd-Zaharias, a STAR researcher since 1986. In addition, Boyd-Zaharias found that small class students graduated with higher grade point averages (GPAs) than regular class size students.
  • Students in small classes achieve at higher levels: Three other researchers - Dr. Jeremy D. Finn, professor of education at SUNY Buffalo, Susan B. Gerber of SUNY Buffalo, and Charles M. Achilles, Ed.D., of Eastern Michigan University, together with Boyd-Zaharias - released new findings showing that STAR students who attended small classes in grades K-3 were between 6 and 13 months ahead of their regular-class peers in math, reading, and science in each of grades 4, 6, and 8. "Our analyses show that at least three years in a small class are necessary in order for the benefits to be sustained through later grades," wrote the researchers. "Further, the benefits of having been in a small class in the primary years generally increase from grade to grade."

Summary

To summarize the data from the follow-up studies, the HEROS analysis showed that over the years, the students from small classes were less likely to fail a grade level, or be suspended than their peers who were in regular and regular/aide classes. Small-class students were found to be making better grades in their high school courses and to be taking more advanced courses than students from the other two cohorts. This enables investigators to compare the academic paths taken by STAR small, regular, and regular-aide class students. The STAR Follow-up Studies (1996-97) Report contains more detailed finding, as well as material on the research methodologies used. The report is available below.

The Tennessee Department of Education contracted with HEROS, Incorporated to continue the Project STAR class size follow-up research. Findings on the analysis of graduation rates, types of diplomas and other academic measures will be available in the future.

As a part of current funding, HEROS, Incorporated is offering the educational research community a public access data set that includes variables from the Project STAR (kindergarten to third grade) database .

The documents listed below from Project STAR and the Follow-up Studies conducted by HEROS, Inc. are available in Adobe Acrobat format:

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