NCPEA Publications
Why NCPEA Publishes Policy Briefs
As a result of the NCPEA 2010 Conference in Washington, D.C., discussion began to address the need for NCPEA to publish Policy Briefs to be disseminated to membership and their State Education Associations and their state and federal legislators.
Editor of the Policy Briefs Initiative
A Call and Search was conducted to select an Editor to oversee the Policy Briefs Initiative. Selected was
Cornelia Shurtleff, PhD
Chair, Department of Leadership Studies
School of Education and Human Development
Shenandoah University
Winchester, VA
Downloading and Reading the Briefs
Full text of Policy Brief #2 is attached below in PDF download. Permission is granted by NCPEA Publications to download multiple copies and/or photocopy for further use or dissemination. If printing, we strongly recommend printing to a "color printer."
Note: This Policy Brief 1,1 is available as an eBook (ePub) and available FREE at
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© October 2012 by NCPEA Publications
Class-Size Policy: The STAR Experiment and Related Class-Size Studies
Volume 1, Number 2 (October 2012)
Executive Summary
This brief summarizes findings on class size from over 25 years of work on the Tennessee Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) randomized, longitudinal experiment, and other Class-Size Reduction (CSR) studies throughout the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Sweden, Great Britain, and elsewhere. The brief concludes with recommendations.
The STAR research shows that small classes (15-17 pupils) in kindergarten through third grade (K-3) provide short- and long-term benefits for students, teachers, and society at large. Although all students benefit; poor, minority, and male students reap extra benefits in terms of improved test outcomes, school engagement, and reduced grade retention and dropout rates.
Differing formulas for counting students and teachers are a major impediment to understanding and using small classes correctly: a pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) is a division problem, class-size is an addition problem. The two are not the same, and thus PTR data cannot be used as a substitute for actual class-size data.