An Examination of the Effect of Elementary School Size on Student Academic Achievement

Prior studies that have investigated the relationship between school size and student academic achievement have produced conflicting results. For example, some studies found a positive relationship between school size and student achievement; other studies found that the relationship is negative. Typically, however, these past studies have not accounted for the influence of student ability in their analysis of the impact of school size on student achievement. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of school size on student achievement while accounting for student ability, among other variables. The results reported in this paper suggest that school size has a nonlinear relationship with respect to student achievement. Thus, there is an optimal school size with respect to the maximization of student achievement.