Press Release: Smaller Schools Reduce Poverty's Power Over Texas Student Achievement

Home

About Us

Search

Publications

Links

Your State

Issues

Topics

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 4, 2000
CONTACTS: Kathy Westra, (703) 243-1487

Smaller Schools Reduce Poverty's Power
Over Texas Student Achievement
New Research Points to Benefits of Smaller Schools
for Poorer Communities

Austin, TX, February 3 -- New research released here today shows that Texas' smaller schools reduce the damaging effects of poverty on student achievement and help students from less affluent communities narrow the achievement gap between them and students from wealthier communities. The research results were presented to the media, state lawmakers, and state education officials by the Rural School and Community Trust, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to improving rural schools and strengthening the relationship between schools and the communities they serve.

Poverty is generally understood to have a negative effect on student achievement. Researchers Craig Howley of Ohio University and Robert Bickel of Marshall University sought to discover whether smaller schools can weaken this relationship. The clear conclusion is that they can.

The researchers analyzed the scores from the Texas Assessment of Academic Success (TAAS) tests. TAAS scores in reading, mathematics, and writing were considered for 8^th and 10^th grade students. Reading and math scores were considered for 3^rd and 5^th graders. The TAAS scores were analyzed from 6,288 schools in 960 suburban, urban, and rural districts. The poverty level in the schools was measured by the percentage of students in the school district who receive free or reduced-price lunches. The researchers did not compare school performance based on absolute definitions of "small" and "large," but rather on relative size: how relatively smaller schools perform compared to relatively larger ones. What they found is that:

Smaller schools produce higher achievement in poorer communities.
As school size increases, poverty has a more powerful negative effect on achievement scores. In eight of ten testing instances, there is a statistically significant negative effect on achievement due to the interaction between poverty and school size.

Howley and Bickel also calculated the proportion of the variance in test scores that can be explained by the level of the poverty in the communities served by schools. This statistic -- called "poverty's power rating" -- was calculated for larger and for smaller schools (those above and below the median size). In all grades, and in all subject areas tested, poverty's power rating is substantially lower in Texas schools that are below the median size. Specifically:

In larger schools, poverty's power rating ranged from 32 percent to as much as 62 percent.
In smaller schools, poverty's power rating ranged from just 3 percent to no more than 31 percent.
In the critical grades 8 and 10, when children are increasingly at risk of dropping out, small schools cut poverty's power by 80 to 90 percent in reading, writing, and mathematics.

Because the academic achievement of poorer students is tied so closely to school size, the researchers argue that many Texas schools serving lower- and moderate-income communities are too large to achieve top student performance. Many Texas students are in schools whose average achievement scores would likely increase if the school were smaller, and large numbers of Texas students attend "Schools at Risk" -- schools where the poverty level is high enough that any increase in school size would likely lower average TAAS test scores. The research shows that:

27 percent of Texas' 3^rd graders (80,955 students), 32 percent of 8^th graders (76,437 students), and 46 percent of 10^th graders (135,037 students) attend "at risk" schools
Of Texas schools offering 3^rd grade, 806 schools (26 percent) are "at risk." Of schools offering 8^th grade, 417 (29 percent) are "at risk." Of schools offering 10^th grade, 679 (57 percent) are "at risk."

"All of these results argue strongly for smaller schools in both urban and rural communities," said Marty Strange, the director of the Rural School and Community Trust's policy program who presented the research results at today's briefing. "If improving student scores on standardized tests is a policy goal, Texas policy-makers should support smaller schools, especially in less affluent communities."

The Rural School and Community Trust (Rural Trust) is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to enlarging student learning and improving community life by strengthening relationships between rural schools and communities and engaging students in community-based public work. Through advocacy, research, and outreach, the Rural Trust strives to create a more favorable policy environment for rural community perspectives on schooling, for student work with a public audience and use, and for more active community participation in schooling. Founded as the Annenberg Rural Challenge in 1995, the Rural Trust today works with more than 700 rural elementary and secondary schools in 33 states.

Note to editors: A more complete summary of the research findings is available upon request, or can be downloaded from our website at www.ruraledu.org/texas_sum.html. The full research report also is available.

Back to Main Page of Report