Review says flaws invalidate Florida study

Contact: Jeremy Finn, (716) 645-1126; finn@buffalo.edu

BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (July 14, 2010) - A new Think Tank Review released today finds that a recent report on the effect of Florida's class-size reduction reform on student achievement does not actually study the impact of class-size reduction.

The Impact of a Universal Class-Size Reduction Policy: Evidence from Florida's Statewide Mandate, written by Matthew M. Chingos for the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University's Kennedy School, was reviewed for the Think Tank Review Project by Professor Jeremy Finn of the University at Buffalo-SUNY. Finn, a statistics expert, was a lead researcher of Tennessee's Project STAR, a large, randomized experiment in class-size reduction (CSR).

In 2002, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment mandating CSR throughout that state's schools. The Chingos study compares test scores of students in districts and schools that before implementation of Florida's CSR policy had, on average, more than the mandated number of students per class (18 at the elementary level and 22 in the middle grades) with schools and districts whose average class size was already below the size required by the amendment. Districts that already had smaller classes received the same additional funding but could use the money as they saw fit, while those with larger classes were required to use state CSR funds to reduce class sizes.

Chingos concludes that "mandated CSR in Florida had little, if any, effect on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes" in the students examined.

Finn, however, points out that the study doesn't actually address the effect of CSR on student achievement. Instead the study compares the results of schools that reduced class size with a group of schools that received monies to use as they wished. Both sets of districts in the study had small class sizes. According to Finn, the study's finding would more accurately be stated as "administrative discretion in spending state class-size reduction funds did not affect students' academic performance."

Finn's review also points out that there are other flaws in the Chingos study: It uses the broad brush of school and district averages rather than student-level information about class sizes and test scores. Also, the actual class-size differences between the two groups were too small to make an educational difference; both of the groups had small average class sizes.

Finn concludes that the evidence presented in the PEPG report does not allow a conclusion as to whether or not Florida's class-size reduction has resulted in increased achievement in the upper grades.

The Think Tank Review Project (http://thinktankreview.org), a collaborative project of University of Colorado at Boulder's Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) and the ASU Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU), provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Find Jeremy Finn's review on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-class-size-florida

Find The Impact of a Universal Class-Size Reduction Policy: Evidence from Florida's Statewide Mandate by Matthew Chingos on the web at: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-03_Chingos.pdf

Think Tank Research Quality: Lessons for Policy Makers, the Media, and the Public, our new book based on the work of the Think Tank Review Project, is now available from Information Age Publishing at http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Think-Tank-Research-Quality, or from Barnes & Noble at http://tinyurl.com/TTRQ-B-N.

The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses.

Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/

EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org).

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