Re: Re: classroom size question

[Rob Schaap <bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joel Blau wrote:
> I think it is one that Virginia Postrel cited in the New York Times   >last week in her economics column. Apparently, there have been a      >couple of conservative article recently contending that class size    >does not matter.

Even if the stats were collected and calculated well (I'd look at the sampling
first), I suggest you'd find a pronounced geographical disparity, as we do
here.  And the remarkable coincidence here is that the poorer suburbs and
towns produce the lower average high school exit marks (I know - amazing,
huh?).  We're talking juicy degrees of confidence, too.  Seumas Miller is one
Australian academic who's done a bit on this.

Of course, if you hit the community of economists with that, my modelling
suggests we should expect 'em to compete, in that great American way of
theirs, for the big money suddenly on offer for an appropriately reworked
*Bell Curve* - a Smithian continuum of traders, perhaps, but all selling
exactly the same commodity ...

In Oz, we might find our results changing a tad over the next few years as the
current government has just reworked the school funding formulae - and bugger
me if the private sector didn't end up with the cream of the public funding!
Yeah, I know - amazing ...

Cheers,
Rob.

> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> > Does anybody know anything about this article?
> >
> > Hoxby, Caroline M. 2000. "The Effects of Class Size on Student
> >    Achievement: New Evidence from Population Variation." Journal of
> >    Economics, 115: 4 (November): pp. 1239-85.
> > She argues that class size does not have much of an effect on
> >    student achievement.
> > -
> > Michael Perelman
> > Economics Department
> > California State University
> > Chico, CA 95929
> >
> > Tel. 530-898-5321
> > E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx