EducationalEvaluation and Policy Analysis

Winter 2006, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 287-313

Effects of Class Size and Instruction on Kindergarten Achievement

Carolina Milesi
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Adam Gamoran
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Although experimental results indicate that smaller classes promote higher achievement in early
elementary school, the broader literatureon class-size effects is inconclusive. This seeming contra-
diction raisesquestions about the generalizabilityof experimental evidence, an issue that this article
addressesby examining the effects of class size on achievement in kindergarten with datafrom a na-
tionwide survey, the Early Childhood LongitudinalStudy-Kindergarten Classof 1998-99. To distin-
guish class-levelfrom individual-level effects, this analysis utilizes hierarchicallinear models. In re-
sponse to concerns about selectivity, teacherfixed-effects models are also estimated. In an effort to
understand the inconsistentfindings of the past, the authors examine classroom conditions that may
affect the link between class size and academicachievement, and also consider whether class size has
different effects for different groups of students. The authorsfind no evidence of class-size effects on
student achievement in either reading or mathematics, and results indicate that class size is equally
insignificantfor students from different race/ethnic,economic, and academic backgrounds. Teacher
fried-effects analyses also yield null findings for class size. Instructional activities offer significant
boosts to achievement, but the effects of instruction do not differ between small and large classes.
The authorsdiscuss why the small class size advantage evidenced by experimental researchmight not
generalize to nonexperimental,naturally occurringsettings throughoutthe nation.

Keywords: class size, ECLS-K, instruction, student achievement

IN THE last two decades, class-size reduction (CSR)
has become a popular, yet controversial, educa-
tional initiative. An array of researchers, teachers'
unions, policymakers, and politicians have debated
the benefits and costs of reducing class size.
Despite mixed evidence, school districts through-
out the nation have conducted CSR programs
while hoping to improve student achievement. In
1999, the federal government awarded $1.2 bil-
lion to the states for schools to hire "fully quali-
fied teachers" for primary-grade classrooms to
cut down class size in the early grades. In 2000,
federal funding for CSR programs increased to
$1.3 billion. The goal of this program was: "over
seven years, to hire 100,000 new teachers and re-
duce kindergarten through grade 3 classrooms
across the country to an average of 18 children"
(U.S. Department of Education, 2000, p. 7). When
announcing this initiative, U.S. Secretary of Ed-
ucation Richard W. Riley commented that, "any
parent or teacher will tell you that class size really
makes a difference. [... ] Smaller classes mean
more individual attention for students, more or-
derly classrooms for teachers, and a better learning

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, GA,
August 2003, and at seminars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Chicago. The authors appreciate the
valuable advice they received in those forums and are further grateful for helpful comments from the EEPA editors and reviewers.

287
Milesi and Gamoran
environment for everyone" (U.S. Department of
Education, 1998).
Under the Bush administration, the CSR pro-
gram was incorporated into Title II of the 2001
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA), known as the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB). Although no longer a
separate federal program, CSR remained an al-
lowable use of funds under Title II, Part A (U.S.
Department of Education, 2004). This program
provides funds to school districts to promote
teacher quality by addressing such challenges
as teacher preparation and qualifications of new
teachers, recruitment and hiring, instruction, pro-
fessional development, teacher retention, and prin-
cipals' leadership. Within this new framework,
school districts can hire new teachers to reduce
class size only in accordance with the provision to:
"prepare, train, and recruit high-quality teachers
and principals capable of ensuring that all children
achieve to high standards" (U.S. Department of
Education, 2005). By embedding CSR into this
provision, NCLB establishes that aiming at teacher
quality supersedes the intent to reduce class size.
If, as some have argued, the demand for increased
teacher quantity that results from CSR conflicts
with the aim to improve teacher quality, it may be
more difficult for school districts to reduce class
size in this new context. However, if teacher qual-
ity is more important than class size for achieve-
ment, the emphasis on quality may be warranted.
Even as federal policy has deemphasized CSR,
several states continue to battle over CSR policies.
Florida, for example, has made national headlines
since November 2002 when voters approved a
constitutional amendment to limit class size to
18 students in kindergarten through third grade,
22 in fourth through eighth grades, and 25 in high
school, all to be fulfilled by 2010. The Florida
Association of District School Superintendents
and Florida's Governor Jeb Bush, among others,
have contested this citizen-proposed amendment
because of its cost and the shortage of qualified
teachers (see Gewertz, 2003; Goodnough, 2003;
Kennedy, 2003; Richard, 2004). However, cur-
rently, amendment opponents have not gathered
enough support in the legislature to place a refer-
endum on a statewide ballot asking voters to re-
peal or trim down the 2002 class size amendment.
Support for small classes has relied heavily on
the positive results of a CSR experiment con-
ducted in Tennessee in the 1980s called Student/
288
Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR). As one of
the few large-scale randomized experiments in
education, Project STAR has been given ample
credibility. Researchers have referred to STAR
as: "one of the great experiments in education in
U.S. history" (Mosteller, Light, & Sachs, 1996),
and CSR initiatives have praised STAR's exper-
imental design as authoritative proof that small
classes are beneficial for student outcomes.
Furthermore, the current policy environment
regards randomized field trials as the "gold stan-
dard" for establishing the effectiveness of an in-
tervention. Within this framework, STAR con-
stitutes "strong" evidence that CSR "works" to
raise student achievement. Indeed, STAR's evi-
dence appropriately warrants causal claims. Be-
cause the Project STAR's research design en-
tailed the random assignment of teachers and
students to treatment and control conditions, one
can be confident that observed differences in
student achievement result from solely the inter-
vention, namely a reduction in class size. Random
assignment created groups of "equal" students
and "equal" teachers at the outset. Thus, differ-
ences between the treatment and control groups
were not affected by selection bias or by the
presence of confounding variables that also im-
prove student achievement, as may occur in a
nonexperimental study of naturally occurring
variation.
Although crucial, the causal evidence that a
randomized trial provides is not sufficient to
extrapolate experimental findings into policies.
From a policy perspective, it is also necessary to
confirm that experimental findings are generaliz-
able to "real-world" settings. The generalizabil-
ity of Project STAR's findings to other locations,
populations, and scales of treatment remains open
to question, especially in light of mixed results of
CSR in other contexts. For example, partly on the
basis of STAR's findings, the state of California
embarked on a statewide CSR initiative aimed at
reducing class size to 20 students in all kinder-
garten through third-grade classrooms over a
3-year period, starting in fall 1996. However, the
California initiative failed to live up to STAR's
promise, probably because whereas STAR was
fully funded by the state and implemented with
an ample supply of facilities and qualified teach-
ers, the CSR initiative in California dealt with
limited financial resources, a shortage of quali-
fied teachers, insufficient classroom space, and a
 Class Size and Instruction on KindergartenAchievement
substantively more diverse student population
(Stecher & Bohrnstedt, 2002).
The comparison of CSR initiatives in Ten-
nessee and California shows that the results of
CSR in one context may not hold in another.
More broadly, given the prominence of CSR pro-
posals in many districts throughout the country,
the comparison illustrates the importance of un-
derstanding the effects of class size in the nation
as a whole under the prevailing schooling condi-
tions. Until recently, the lack of national data on
class size and student achievement at the ele-
mentary level prevented such a nationwide analy-
sis. The release of the Early Childhood Longitu-
dinal Study, a nationally representative survey
that began with kindergarteners in 1998, makes
it possible to examine the effects of class size
throughout the country, in the naturally occur-
ring conditions of schools.
This article focuses on the kindergarten year to
pose three questions that address the scope and
generalizability of class-size effects. First, what
is the impact of class size on reading and mathe-
matics achievement, given the natural conditions
in which class-size variation occurs? Of course,
addressing this question in the absence of an ex-
periment requires serious attention to causal in-
ference, which is addressed not only with rigor-
ous controls for other class and student conditions
but also with teacher fixed-effects models in
which the authors examine class size variation
for teachers who instruct more than one kinder-
garten class during the same year. Second, what
classroom conditions are relevant for class-size
effects on achievement? Assessment of condi-
tions inside classrooms is rarely possible in ex-
perimental situations and thus is an important
facet of a study of nonexperimental, naturally oc-
curring variation such as ours. Third, does class
size have different effects for different students?
Although class size may not be consequential on
average, it may still matter for some students. By
addressing these questions, we aim to further the
debate on class size and to illuminate differences
between experimental studies and those of natu-
rally occurring variation.
Class-Size Effects in Experimental and
Nonexperimental Studies
What Are the Effects of Class Size?
Unlike most research in education, evidence
on the effect of class size on achievement en-
compasses an array of experimental, quasi-
experimental, and nonexperimental studies.
Among the first type of studies, the best known
findings come from Project STAR, a large-
scale randomized experiment conducted in
Tennessee from 1985 to 1989. STAR followed
a between-subjects, within-school design. In each
participating school, students entering kinder-
garten were randomly assigned to one of three
types of classes: a small class (13-17 students),
a regular class (22-25 students), or a regular
class (22-25 students) with a full-time teacher
aide. Students were to remain in their treatment
condition for four years and then return to their
regular-size classroom. Also within schools,
teachers were randomly assigned to one of the
three treatments each year. Other than the change
in classroom configuration, no other intervention,
such as teacher training or special curricula,
occurred.
STAR results revealed that students in small
classes increased their reading and mathematics
achievement by 0.15-0.27 SD, compared to their
peers in regular classes with and without a full-
time aide (Finn & Achilles, 1999). The small
class-size advantage widened between kinder-
garten and first grade but remained constant or
even narrowed in second and third grade (Finn
& Achilles, 1999; Grissmer, 1999).'
The interpretation of STAR's findings has
raised issues of internal and external validity. In-
ternal validity refers to the correct measurement
and interpretation of the causal relationship being
studied. Among the threats to STAR's internal
validity are the attrition of approximately 50%
of the initial participants, switching among
class types ("treatment crossover"), and differ-
ential exposure to experimental conditions re-
sulting from attrition or addition of new experi-
mental subjects (Ehrenberg, Brewer, Gamoran,
& Willms, 2001; Hanushek, 1999; Nye, Hedges,
& Konstantopoulos, 1999). External validity,
on the other hand, pertains to the ability to gen-
eralize the effects of small classes on achieve-
ment to conditions beyond the experimental
setting. There are three main concerns in this re-
spect. First, schools were not randomly selected,
because schools volunteered to participate and had
to be large enough so that all three types of classes
could be established in each grade (Ehrenberg
et al., 2001; Grissmer, 1999; Hanushek, 1999).
Second, there were well-supplied experimental
289
Milesi and Gamoran
conditions, with no shortages of teachers or facil-
ities, as has been documented in the implemen-
tation of the CSR program in California (Ehren-
berg et al., 2001; Stecher & Bohrnstedt, 2002).2
Third, actors in the experiment were not blind
to the treatment condition to which they were
assigned. Because the Tennessee legislature
conceived STAR as a "demonstration" (Ritter
& Boruch, 1999), teachers and school adminis-
trators could have expected the experiment's
results to influence the adoption of a statewide
CSR policy (Ehrenberg et al., 2001; Hanushek,
1999). If this were the case, the incentive condi-
tions would have been altered such that schools
would have made a better use of small classes in
Project STAR than if CSR were fully enacted
(Hoxby, 2000).
Nonexperimental studies have both supported
and contradicted Project STAR's results. In a re-
view of 277 different estimates of the effect of
class size and teacher-pupil ratios on student out-
comes, Hanushek (1999) found that estimates
were almost equally divided between those sug-
gesting that small classes are better and those sug-
gesting that they are worse.3 Hanushek obtained
similar results when he separated estimates taken
from elementary and secondary schools, when he
restricted the universe of estimates to those with
a value-added research design, and also when he
solely considered value-added studies within a
single state-a strategy that attempts to correct
for differences in state-school policies. Based on
this evidence, Hanushek concluded that, given
the current organization and incentives some
schools have, CSR "is a very ineffective educa-
tional policy" (2002).
Other writers have criticized Hanushek's work
for its methodological approach and for its pol-
icy recommendations. Krueger (2002) objected
to how Hanushek summarized the estimates-
counting each estimate as a separate result, even
though some studies provided multiple, non-
independent estimates. Based on the same pool
of estimates as Hanushek (1999), Krueger used
alternative procedures to weigh the estimates and
found that the relationship between small classes
and student achievement was more positive and
consistent than Hanushek claimed. In particular,
the ratio of estimates showing a positive versus a
negative relationship between smaller classes
and student achievement was 1.07 when Krueger
weighted each estimate equally-as Hanushek
290
had done-and 1.57 when he weighted each
study equally (Krueger, 2002, Table 1-2, p. 14).
Krueger argued that this evidence, by itself, does
not mean that CSR is worth the investment. To
answer this question, he asserted, it is necessary
to have: "knowledge of the strength of the rela-
tionships between class size and economic and
social benefits, knowledge of how these relation-
ships vary across groups of students, and infor-
mation on the cost of class size reduction"
(Krueger, 2002, p. 21).
Hedges and Greenwald (1996) highlighted
other limitations of Hanushek's strategy. They
advocated the use of a formal statistical proce-
dure (meta-analysis) that combines statistical sig-
nificance levels (p-values) from different studies,
each of which tests the same conceptual hypoth-
esis. In contrast, Hanushek considered the p-value
of each estimate separately, emphasizing the large
number of statistically insignificant coefficients.
Hedges and Greenwald (1996) argued that be-
cause individual studies may have low statistical
power, the proportion of statistically insignifi-
cant estimates might be large even in the pres-
ence of small-to-moderate effects in each study.
Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine (1996) used this
combined significance testing to review 60 stud-
ies pertaining to the effect of different school re-
sources on student achievement, including 29 of
the 38 studies Hanushek (1989) summarized.
They found positive and negative effects of small'
teacher-pupil ratios, but the positive coefficients
were more consistent across different subsets of
studies.
In addition to testing the direction of the effect
of teacher-pupil ratio, Greenwald, Hedges, and
Laine (1996) summarized the magnitude of this
effect across different studies. The median stan-
dardized effect of teacher-pupil ratio was between
0.027 and 0.047, meaning that 1 SD reduction in
teacher-pupil ratio raises student achievement
by 0.027-0.047 SD. Compared to other school
resources, the effect of teacher-pupil ratio was
the smallest. According to the authors' calcula-
tions, if the expenditure per student increased by
$500-approximately 10% of the national aver-
age of per pupil expenditure in 1994-and if that
amount was devoted to reducing teacher-pupil
ratios, the increase in student achievement would
be 0.04 SD. If the same $500 per student were
used in teacher education, teacher experience,
or teacher salary, the increase in student achieve-
 Class Size and Instructionon KindergartenAchievement
ment would be 0.22, 0.18, and 0.16 SD, respec-
tively (Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine, 1996,
Table 7, p. 378).
The debate among Hanushek, Krueger, and
Hedges and associates prompts the question of
why nonexperimental studies draw inconsistent
conclusions regarding the direction and magnitude
of class-size effects. Ehrenberg et al. (2001) and
Grissmer (1999) suggested that model misspeci-
fication and violation of model assumptions may
explain the differences among these analyses. In
particular, selection bias is a pervasive problem
in studies of naturally occurring variation that rely
on survey data. In the case of class size, princi-
pals may selectively allocate teachers to different-
sized classes, and teachers and parents may selec-
tively allocate students to different-sized classes.
Varied selectivity patterns may account for in-
consistent results among nonexperimental stud-
ies, as well as for differences between the results
of experiments and those of nonexperimental re-
search. Class-size researchers have developed
several strategies to address, at least partially, the
issue of selection bias in nonexperimental studies
(see Angrist & Levy, 1999; Betts & Shkolnik,
1999; Hoxby, 2000). Because our analysis relies
on survey data, we seriously consider the prob-
lem of selectivity later in this article. Our evidence
does not allow us to make causal claims that are
as strong as those generated by experimental ev-
idence, but our data are more representative of
current schooling conditions than an experiment
such as STAR or a state initiative such as CSR in
California may be.
What Classroom Conditions Matter
for Class-Size Effects?
The studies we have reviewed so far are guided
by the question: "Do small classes result in im-
proved academic achievement in elementary
grades?" (Finn & Achilles, 1999). Attempts to
respond to this question are at the core of studies
of educational production functions (Coleman
et al., 1966). However, as Barr and Dreeben (1983)
stated more than two decades ago, understanding
the relation between class size and achievement
as an input-output problem leaves the schooling
process as a black box. In this section, we review
aspects of classroom conditions that may link
class size with student achievement. We focus on
processes that occur within the classroom, because
it is the most direct context of student learning.
Because the "business of schooling" is mainly
instruction (Barr & Dreeben, 1983), what occurs
within the classroom may affect the association
between class size and student achievement. Thus,
these classroom processes may help us understand
why class size benefits student achievement in
some contexts and not in others.
1. Teachers may teach differently in largerand
smaller classes. The most common explanation
of class-size effects refers to a change in teach-
ers' behaviors. The expectation is that teachers in
smaller classes alter their instructional strategies
in a way that benefits student learning, therefore
raising achievement. Although this explanation
is intuitively appealing, it has almost no empiri-
cal support.
Evidence from survey analyses reveals weak
associations between class size and instructional
practices. Using data on 2,170 math classes
from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth
(LSAY), Betts and Shkolnik (1999) reported that
differences in class size provoked only slight
changes in teachers' allocation of time. Accord-
ing to Betts and Shkolnik's estimates, if class size
increases from 20 to 40, the largest reallocations
of time would be a 3% decrease in time devoted
to review and a 2.5% percent increase in time de-
voted to disciplining students. An interesting fea-
ture of this sample is that many teachers taught
more than one math class, and teachers filled
out a separate questionnaire for each class they
taught. Thus, Betts and Shkolnik were able to
conduct a regression with fixed effects for teach-
ers. This type of regression model removes all
the variation among teachers in the dependent
and independent variables, therefore clearing
out any bias resulting from unobserved teacher
traits. In this case, the fixed effects yielded the
same conclusions as the least squares regres-
sions: class size had little impact on instructional
practice.
In a similar vein, Rice (1999) analyzed eighth-
grade math and science classes from the National
Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS). She re-
ported that in the case of math, class size was
negatively associated with the amount of time
spent working with small groups, the amount of
time devoted to innovative instructional practices,
and the amount of time devoted to whole-group
discussions. Even though these effects were sta-
tistically significant, their magnitude was small
291
Milesi and Gamoran
and class size did not affect instruction in science
classes.
Like the U.S. national surveys, an international
survey of mathematics achievement yielded no
evidence that curriculum coverage or instruc-
tional practices provided a link between class size
and achievement (Pong & Pallas, 2001). Compa-
rable findings emerged from the CSR initiative
in Grades I through 3 in California: Stasz and
Stecher (2000) reported that teachers in reduced
and nonreduced classes (with maximums of 20
and 33 students, respectively) covered the same
general topics in mathematics and language arts
and did so for similar amounts of time. Some dif-
ferences appeared in teaching practices, particu-
larly teachers in small classes spent less time
disciplining students and taught to the whole class
less often. Also, students in small classes carried
out more activities that are consistent with cur-
riculum reforms in reading and mathematics, such
as writing narrative pieces in language arts and
playing mathematics games and using patterns to
find relationships in mathematics.
Evidence from an experimental study con-
ducted in the early 1970s confirms the tenuous
link between class size and instructional practices
(Shapson, Wright, Eason, & Fitzgerald, 1980). In
three school districts in metropolitan Toronto,
teachers and students were randomly allocated to
fourth- and fifth-grade classes of four sizes: 16,
23, 30, and 37. In responses to questionnaires,
teachers indicated they made changes to adjust to
classes of different size. Teachers who went from
a large to a small class between the two years of
the study were significantly more likely to like
the current (small) class, report a higher level
of personal energy, and believe their students
contributed more, paid more attention, and were
more satisfied than students in larger classes.
However, observations of classroom processes
revealed few effects of class size on instruction.
As researchers stated, "class size did not affect
the amount of time teachers spent talking about
course content or classroom routines. Nor did it
affect the choice of audience for teachers' verbal
interactions; that is, when they changed class
sizes, teachers did not alter the proportion of their
time spent interacting with the whole class, with
groups, or with individual pupils" (Shapson et al.,
1980, p. 150). These findings are important be-
cause, in contrast to the survey-based studies
mentioned, teachers were randomly allocated to
smaller and larger classes. Therefore, the ob-
292
served similarity in teachers' methods of instruc-
tion cannot be attributed to selection bias. Stu-
dents were also randomly allocated to classes of
different sizes, and contrary to Project STAR in
the United States, only one out of the six mea-
sures of student achievement (i.e., mathematical
concepts scores) exhibited a positive and statisti-
cally significant association with smaller classes.
The authors concluded that a small class: "makes
a large difference to the teachers but little differ-
ence to the students or to the instructional meth-
ods used" (Shapson et al., 1980, p. 151).
2. Some instructionalpractices may be more
effective than others in small classes. If teachers
do not change their behaviors and practices in
small classes, why do small classes still raise stu-
dent achievement in some contexts? One possi-
bility is that small classes benefit student learning
when they occur in combination with particular
methods of instruction (Ehrenberg et al., 2001).
The intuition behind this account is as follows.
When the teacher carries out group instruction,
the time he or she devotes to each student does
not change if there is a reduction in class size.
Thus, in classes where teachers allocate most
of the instructional time to lecture, whole-class
recitation, and seatwork, CSR may not affect stu-
dent achievement. In other words, this teaching
approach may be equally "effective" in large and
small classes. In contrast, when the teacher car-
ries out small-group or individual instruction, the
time he or she spends with each student is no
longer a constant but a function of class size: as
the number of students in the class decreases, the
teacher devotes more time to each student. Ac-
cording to this account, a positive effect of small
classes on student achievement would arise from
the interaction between small classes and a teach-
ing approach that emphasizes small-group or
individual activities. As far as we know, no pre-
vious study has tested this hypothesis.
3. Students may behave differently in larger
and smaller classes. Student behavior may also
provide a context for the effect of class size on
student achievement. Research consistently shows
that teachers in smaller classes spend less time
maintaining order (Betts & Shkolnik, 1999; Rice,
1999; Stasz & Stecher, 2000). One reason why
student behavior is relevant to academic achieve-
ment is that, given a fixed amount of class time,
a reduction in noninstructional time may result
in an increase in time spent in instruction, thus
 Class Size and Instruction on Kindergarten Achievement
benefiting student learning. Another reason is that
students' behavior reflects their engagement in
the classroom. In an extensive review of studies of
class size and student engagement, Finn, Pannozzo,
and Achilles (2003) found that students in small
classes are more engaged in learning behavior
and display less disruptive behavior compared to
students in large classes. This pattern, they
pointed out, is consistent with sociological and
psychological theories of group size and member
participation. According to these formulations,
students in small classes are more "visible"-thus
more pressured to be attentive and to participate-
and have a stronger sense of belonging, which
encourage them to become and remain engaged.
Does Class Size Matter Morefor Some
Students Than for Others?
From a policy perspective, it is essential to in-
vestigate whether CSR has different effects for
different groups of students. Class-size effects
may be larger for some students than for others,
and even when class size has no effect on aver-
age, it may still matter for some students. Such
evidence would support targeted, rather than uni-
versal, CSR policies. If class size has different
effects for different groups of students, targeted
implementation may maximize its benefit, re-
duce its cost, and help reduce the achievement
gaps (Ferguson, 1998; Krueger & Whitmore,
2001; Rice, 2002).
In Project STAR, the benefits of small classes
were two to three times larger for minority students
(mainly Blacks) than for Whites (Finn & Achilles,
1999; Krueger & Whitmore, 2001). Likewise,
Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee in
Education (SAGE) program evidenced larger
benefits of small classes for Black students. Mol-
nar et al. (1999) reported that although there was
a still a statistically significant Black-White test
score gap at the end of first grade in all schools,
the gap was smaller in SAGE than in comparison
schools. The effect of class-size reduction for
academically disadvantaged students has re-
ceived less attention, but using data from Pro-
ject STAR, Nye, Hedges, and Konstantopoulos
(2002) reported no additional advantage of class
size for low-achieving students. 4 Elsewhere, the
CSR program in California found that class size
did not benefit English-language learners differ-
ently from the rest of students in the state, for
whom class size did not have an impact overall
(Stecher & Bohrnstedt, 2002). The variety in
these patterns of findings makes it important to
assess the effects of class size for students who
differ by race/ethnic, economic, and academic
backgrounds in the nation as a whole.
Data and Methods
Data for this study come from the Early Child-
hood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of
1998-99 (ECLS-K), the only nationally repre-
sentative study that provides data on children's
status at kindergarten entrance. The sample con-
sists of 21,260 children enrolled in approximately
1,000 kindergarten programs during the 1998-
1999 school year, including children from public
and private kindergartens, as well as from full-day
and part-day kindergarten programs. The sample
includes children from different racial-ethnic and
socioeconomic backgrounds, with oversamples of
Asian children, private kindergartens, and private-
school kindergartners. The National Center for
Education Statistics (NCES) selected the sample
in three stages. First, NCES selected 100 Primary
Sampling Units (counties or groups of counties).
Second, within those Primary Sampling Units,
NCES selected schools using a public-school
frame to select public schools and a private-school
frame to select private schools. Finally, in fall 1998,
NCES selected 23 kindergartners within each of
the sampled schools (West, Denton, & Germino-
Hausken, 2000).
NCES collected data twice during the base
year of the study-in fall 1998 and spring 1999.
These two waves correspond to the beginning
and end of children's kindergarten year. The data
NCES collected in fall 1998 provides informa-
tion on children's status before exposure to their
first year of formal schooling. So far, ECLS-K has
followed children through their fifth-grade year in
school. NCES will conduct additional follow-up
surveys of the sample in the springs of 2007, 2009,
and 2011, corresponding to the years when most
of the cohort will be in 8th, 10th, and 12th grade,
respectively. The focus of this article is the kinder-
garten year, so we only use data collected in fall
1998 and spring 1999.
Data on children's social background come
from interviews with their parents or guardians
during the fall and spring of kindergarten. Data
on students' cognitive achievement come from
children's assessments at these two waves. These
293
Milesi and Gamoran
assessments consisted of untimed one-on-one
computer-assisted personal interviews in three
cognitive domains, namely reading, mathemat-
ics, and general knowledge. 5 We use data on
students' performance in the reading and math-
ematics assessments. Specifically, we use the
reading and math item response theory (IRT)
scores, which reflect children's overall perfor-
mance in each cognitive domain. Data on chil-
dren's classroom experience, including class size
and teachers' instructional practices, stem from
interviews with teachers during the fall and
spring of kindergarten.
Data Limitations
For the purpose of this study, the data ECLS-K
collected from teachers' questionnaires present
two limitations. The first limitation is that informa-
tion on instructional practices stems from teachers'
questionnaires only. This strategy of data collec-
tion raises some validity concerns, because the
pedagogical practices reported from the teachers'
perspectives may capture teachers' intentions more
than what teachers accomplish in the classroom
(Porter, 1991). As Porter explained: "A teacher
may, for example, intend to be teaching the con-
cept of fraction when his or her pedagogical prac-
tices would be viewed by an external observer as
drill-and-practice on naming fractions" (Porter,
1991, pp. 17-18). Although Porter recommended
the use of external observers for cases in which
instruction is linked to student achievement (1991,
p. 18), this alternative would have been too costly
for the national scope of ECLS-K. Nevertheless,
encouraging findings come from one study that
specifically examined the validity of teachers'
self-reports to measure the percentage of time
teachers use different mathematics instructional
practices (Mayer, 1999). Using data from one large
school district, this study found a strong correla-
tion (r = .85) between a composite of classroom
practices based on self-reported survey data and
a parallel composite based on classroom observa-
tions. Both composites measured teaching practices
that were consistent with the standards proposed
by the National Council of Teachers of Mathe-
matics (NCTM). The teacher survey did not ad-
equately capture the quality with which teachers
engage in the type of practices advanced by
NCTM, but it was a valid instrument to measure
the amount of time teachers use these practices in
their classrooms.
294
The second limitation refers to the period of the
school year when teachers reported information
on their instructional practices. ECLS-K included
most of the questions on instruction in the spring
questionnaire at the end of the kindergarten year.
Thus, we need to assume that teachers' accounts
at this point in time are a good representation of
teachers' instruction throughout the whole school
year. Even though this validity concern is some-
what worrisome, it is common to research in edu-
cation that uses NCES datasets (Brewer & Stasz,
1996). Indicators in this study may be less valid
than those generated by classroom observation
(usually developed in small-scale projects) but
equally valid to those in studies such as High
School and Beyond, the National Educational
Longitudinal Study (NELS), the Schools and
Staffing Survey (SASS), and the National Assess-
ment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Variables and Measures
The two dependent variables in this analysis
correspond to the IRT scores the child attained in
reading and mathematics during spring 1999,
that is, by the end of his or her kindergarten
year. We included, as statistical controls, the IRT
scores the child achieved in those two subjects at
the beginning of kindergarten (fall 1998). In this
study, controlling for prior achievement is a way
to parcel out the possible selection of students
with different levels of cognitive performance
into classes of different size.
Class size is the main independent variable of
interest. ECLS-K did not ask teachers directly
about the size of the class they teach. However,
it is possible to calculate class size using three
different questions available in the fall kinder-
garten teacher questionnaire. One question asks
teachers about the number of children in their
classes at different age levels (from 3 to 9 years
old). The sum of the number of children with dif-
ferent ages indicates class size. We obtained a
second measure of class size by summing the
number of children in each class belonging to
different racial and ethnic groups. The last mea-
sure corresponds to the sum of girls and boys in
each class. In the majority of cases, these three
6
measures of class size were identical .
Researchers and policymakers alike have doc-
umented the nonlinear nature of class-size effects.
For instance, Rice (1999) found that the effect of
class size on instruction varied across the class-
 Class Size and Instruction on KindergartenAchievement
size distribution, such that class size had a
stronger impact on teachers' use of instructional
time when there were fewer than 20 students per
class-the same limit that the CSR program in
California implemented. Project STAR and the
SAGE Program in Wisconsin set lower class-size
thresholds. Small classes in STAR had between
13 and 17 students per class; SAGE classes had
between 12 and 15 students per teacher. In this
study, we use three categories of class size: small,
regular, and large. To create these categories, we
followed the same strategy as Pong and Pallas
(200 1). Based on the distribution of all classes in
the sample, we divided classes into quintiles and
subsequently specified three categories of classes:
those in the lowest 20% of the distribution, those
in the middle 60% of the distribution, and those
in the highest 20% of the distribution. Classes in
the first quintile, which we refer to as small
classes, have 17 or fewer students. Classes in the
second, third, and fourth quintiles, which we refer
to as regular classes, have between 18 and 23 stu-
dents. Classes in the fifth quintile, which we con-
sider large classes, have 24 or more students.7 In-
terestingly, the upper limit of classes we define as
small (17 students per class) is the same as Proj-
ect STAR's limit for small classes. This limit is
lower than the limit established by CSR programs
in California and Florida (20 and 18, respec-
tively) but higher than that of SAGE (15 stu-
dents). As a check on our specification strategy,
we computed several different measures of class
size and estimated the effect of class size in mod-
els with different combinations of linear and non-
linear indicators of class size (see Table AI in the
appendix). Because we obtained comparable re-
sults in all these models, we are confident that the
class-size effects we report do not depend on any
particular categorization of class size. For ease of
presentation, we show estimates of the effect of
small and regular classes obtained from models in
which large classes (those in the fifth quintile of
the distribution) were the reference category.
To evaluate other classroom conditions that may
relate to class size effects, we considered two as-
pects of instructional practices: class organization
and teachers' time allocation, on one hand, and
type of instructional activities on the other hand.
ECLS-K measured class organization and teach-
ers' time allocation as the amount of time per day
(in a "typical day") in which teachers use teacher-
directed whole-class activities, teacher-directed
small-group activities, and teacher-directed in-
dividual activities.8 Since teachers did not re-
port this information separately for language and
mathematics, we introduced these variables in
models predicting both reading and mathematics
achievement.
Previous research has evaluated whether class
size affects not only the distribution and alloca-
tion of time but also the type of activities teach-
ers conduct in classes of different size (Rice,
1999; Stasz & Stecher, 2000). We constructed
two reading and two mathematics scales of in-
structional activities. The spring teacher ques-
tionnaire contains a 23-item question regarding
the frequency of teachers' practices in reading
and language arts and a 17-item question regard-
ing the frequency of instructional practices in
math. 9We conducted an exploratory factor analy-
sis using reading and mathematics items sepa-
rately. We retained two factors in each subject.
Each of the four factors had an eigen value larger
than 1. Based on this evidence, we constructed
four scales of instructional activities by summing
the responses to the items with higher loadings
on each of the factors. While the two reading
scales include four items each, the two mathe-
matics scales include three items each. Substan-
tially, the scales represent extreme positions
within the reading and mathematics "curriculum
wars": Whole Language versus Phonics in read-
ing and Teaching for Understanding versus Drill
in mathematics.
The Whole Language scale sums the follow-
ing four items: write with encouragement to use
invented spellings, if needed; read books that
children have chosen for themselves; compose
and write stories or reports; and write stories in
a journal. The four items in the Phonics scale
are: work on phonics, work on learning the names
of the letters, practice writing the letters of the
alphabet, and work in a reading workbook or on
a worksheet. Cronbach's alpha is 0.77 for the
Whole Language scale and 0.44 for the Phonics
scale. The Teaching for Understanding scale
contains the following three items: work with
counting manipulatives to learn basic operations,
solve math problems in small groups or with a
partner, and work on math problems that reflect
real-life situations. Finally, the three items in
the Drill scale are do mathematics worksheets,
do mathematics problems from children's text-
books, and complete mathematics problems on
295
Milesi and Gamoran
the chalkboard. Cronbach's alpha is 0.63 for
the Teaching for Understanding scale and 0.59
for the Drill scale.
To evaluate another class condition that may
link class size with achievement, we considered
students' behavior in class. ECLS-K collected
this information in the fall teacher question-
naire, obtaining teacher ratings of children's
behavior in each of the classes he or she teaches,
on a I to 5 scale, with 5 indicating very well-
behaved classes.' 0
To adjust for the potential nonrandom assign-
ment of students to classes of different size, we
included in the model several variables that may
be simultaneously correlated with class size and
student achievement. At the student level, we
controlled for students' family socioeconomic
background, race, gender, and age, in addition to
their achievement at the beginning of the school
year, as previously mentioned. Family socio-
economic status (SES) is a continuous variable
that ranges from -4.75 to 2.75. NCES computed
SES as an average composite of up to five mea-
sures: father/male guardian's education and oc-
cupation, mother/female guardian's education
and occupation, and household income. NCES
standardized these variables, imputing approx-
imately 10% of each variable through a hot-deck
procedure (West et al., 2000). With respect to the
students' race and ethnicity, we included three
dummy variables indicating whether the student
is Asian, Black, or Hispanic, using non-Hispanic
White students as the reference category. At the
class level, we included three variables: (1) the
percentage of Black students in the class, as
reported by teachers; (2) the percentage of Hispanic
students in the class, also reported by teachers;
and (3) an indicator of whether the child at-
tended a half-day kindergarten program (either
a morning or afternoon class) versus a full-day
program.
Analytic Strategies
Two methodological limitations abound in
studies of the relationship between class size and
achievement that rely on survey data reflecting
variation in class size that occurs without exper-
imental manipulation. The first is that class size
is treated as an individual (student) attribute
when, in fact, it is a contextual variable (Pong &
Pallas, 2001). We use hierarchical linear models
296
(HLM) (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) to properly
account for the level of aggregation at which
class size occurs. Thus, we treat student achieve-
ment as a function of both individual-student and
aggregate-class characteristics. An important
advantage of this two-level framework is that it
allows us to test whether different individuals
within the same context benefit more or less from
the characteristics of that context. By modeling
the interaction between these two levels (i.e.,
cross-level interactions), we address the question
of whether class size has different effects for dif-
ferent groups of students within the same class.
The second problem that survey-based studies
face is selection bias. Selective allocation to classes
of different size can occur among students as well
as among teachers. Students can be nonrandomly
assigned to classes based on parents' or schools'
choices. For instance, parents from higher socio-
economic backgrounds may be able to enroll
their children in small classes, either because they
select schools with small classes or because they
manage to register their children into the school's
smaller classes. Also, while some schools may
assign low-achieving students to small classes as
a compensatory strategy, other schools may allow
high-achieving students or students from advan-
taged backgrounds to systematically secure place-
ment in smaller classes. On the side of teachers,
two contrasting scenarios are plausible. On the
one hand, small classes may operate as rewards to
more qualified and experienced teachers within
schools. On the other hand, it may be the case that
"good" teachers are assigned to large classes
either to minimize students' misbehavior or to
compensate students for any "learning disadvan-
tage" large classes might yield.
This article deals with selection bias in two
ways. We control, at both the student and class
levels, for relevant confounding variables that are
simultaneously correlated with students' achieve-
ment and their allocation to classes of different
size. Most noticeable among these factors are
student's family SES and prior achievement,
characteristics of classes such as SES and racial
composition, and indicators of their "remedial"
character. Second, to account for the possible
nonrandom assignment of teachers to classes of
different size, we carry out a fixed-effects re-
gression at the teacher level. Following Betts and
Shkolnik's approach (1999), we take advantage
of the fact that 16% of teachers in ECLS-K teach
 Class Size and Instructionon KindergartenAchievement

two kindergarten classes in the same school, that PlIj = 700 + 0o, (Mean Fall Achievement)j
is, two classes in the same school where there is
at least one ECLS-K sampled student. In the + 702 (Mean Family SES)j
fixed-effects model, estimates of class-size ef- + 703 (Small-Size Class),
fects are based solely on the different class sizes
that individual teachers encounter. This model + Y70
(Regular-Size Class)j
draws inferences about class-size effects from
within-teacher variation in class size rather than + 70, (Half-Day Program)j
from between-teacher variation in class size.
+ Y7 (Percent Black)j
With the exception of class size, this model holds
constant all teacher characteristics, both observed + 707 (Percent Hispanic)j + g,oj
and unobserved. Even though this strategy de-
creases the statistical power and generalizability This first model, and in particular the coeffi-
of results, it has the important advantage of elim- cient 703, allows us to address the first research
inating possible bias resulting from unobserved question regarding whether class size is associ-
heterogeneity among teachers. Comparing the ated with student achievement. To answer the re-
estimates obtained from the HLM and fixed- maining research questions, we successively es-
effects regressions provides a robustness test for timate three other models. Models 2 and 3 differ
our results. from the first only in that they include additional
HLM Models class-level covariates. In these two models, p0j is
still the only Level-2 random effect. In the final
Our conceptualization established class size model, we allow certain slopes to vary across
and instruction as the two crucial contextual pre- classes. The Level-I equation remains the same
dictors of student achievement. Because both in all models.
class size and instruction take place at the class- The second model adds two of the class con-
room level, it is appropriate to carry out an analy-
ditions that may matter for class-size effects-
sis where students are nested within classes." The
the instructional practices teachers carry out in
specific within-class model for kindergarten
classes and the behavior of students in the class:
achievement Y,j of the ith student in thejth class is:
01 = 70o + 70, (Mean Fall Achievement)j
(Spring Achievement)j
+ "" + ,,0(Whole Language/Teaching
= 0,j +P,j (Fall Achievement)ii
for Understanding Scale),
"+P2j (Family SES),j + P•3j (Black)j
+ Y09 (Phonics/Drill Scale)j
"+ 1,j (Hispanic) 0 + 3,j (Asian)j + P,j (Male),
+ 7010 (Whole-Class Activities),
"+Pj (Age),j + r,
+ 70H (Small-Group Activities)j
where p30j is the intercept, P3I-7j are slopes, and r,j
is the student-specific random error. We center + y,02 (Individual Activities)
fall achievement, family SES, and the indicator
for Black at their class means, and we include the + 7013 (Fall Class Behavior)j + ot
corresponding class means in the Level-2 equa- In the third model, we add to the intercept in-
tion for the intercept. The rest of the variables are teraction terms between class size and instruc-
in their original metric. In the first model we es- tional practices:
timate, we allow the intercept Poj to vary from
class to class, but we constrain the slopes associ- Poj = Y00 + Y., (Mean Fall Achievement)1 + +.-
ated to all student characteristics to be equal
across classes. Thus, in this first model, only the 70,4 (Small-Size Class * Whole Language/
equation for the intercept represents variation be- Teaching for Understanding Scale)1
tween classes. We set this intercept to be a func-
tion of the following classroom characteristics: + 70,5 (Small-Size Class * Phonics/
297
Milesi and Gamoran
Drill Scale)i + 70, 6 (Small-Size Class
Whole-Class Activities)i
+ 7 0 17 (Small-Size Class * Small Group
Activities)i + Y0,8 (Small-Size Class *
Individual Activities)i + g0j
Models 2 and 3 address our second research
question regarding classroom conditions and their
relation to class-size effects on achievement. In
Model 2, the coefficients yo8, yo9, T1o, ]'11, and 712
show the impact of instructional strategies on stu-
dent achievement, and the coefficient T13 does the
same with regard to student behavior. In Model 3,
the coefficients 7T4, To15, T016, TO17, and To,8 assess
whether instructional practices are particularly ef-
fective at raising student achievement when
teachers carry them out in small classes.
To address our third research question, regard-
ing whether class size has different effects for dif-
ferent students, we estimate cross-level interac-
tions in Model 4. This model allows variation
across classes to depend not only on a random in-
tercept but also on random variables. We allow the
slopes of three predictors to vary across classes:
fall achievement, family SES, and the Black indi-
cator. Thus, in Model 4, the Level-2 equation for
the intercept Poj remains the same, but the specifi-
cation of P31j.P 2j.and P3j changes to12 :
3
P,= T70 +T, (Small-Size Class)j + p.,j
P32j = Y20 + 72, (Small-Size Class)j + lt2i
P3j T
730 + T'3 (Small-Size Class)j + l`t3j
where 3 kj = yko, k = 4, 5, 6, 7.
The coefficients Ti1, y2 , and yj I test whether
the association between student achievement, on
one hand, and prior achievement, family SES,
and being Black, on the other hand, is different
in small classes from regular or large classes. In
other words, these coefficients allow us to exam-
ine whether small classes contribute to reducing
within-class achievement gaps among students
with different academic levels, among students
with different SES backgrounds, and among
Black and White students.
ECLS-K provides files at the student, teacher,
and school levels, so we had to construct a class-
level file by matching students and teachers. We
298
* could not match students who had no teacher
identification number associated with them or
teachers who had no student identification num-
ber associated with them. Out of the 3,832 possi-
ble classes, 3,549 had student and teacher
records that matched, meaning that we retained
92.6% of original classes. These 3,549 classes
contain 18,173 sampled students.
As a result of missing data, we excluded ap-
proximately a third of student and class cases. At
the student level, achievement scores constitute
the main source of missing data. In the analysis
of reading achievement, we excluded 17% of stu-
dents because either their fall or their spring
scores were unavailable. For the same reason, we
excluded 12% of students from the math analy-
sis. At the class level, we used variables from
multiple ECLS-K instruments, which magnified
the amount of missing cases. While 14% of
classes do not have information on class size (a
variable we draw from the teacher Fall A ques-
tionnaire), an additional 9% of classes have no
information on the instructional activities we use
to create the math and reading instructional fac-
tors (variables we draw from the teacher Spring
A questionnaire). Because our analyses rely on
the nested structure of students within classes,
missing data in any of the class-level variables
imply that no students in these classes have a
complete record at Level 2.
To minimize missing data, we performed mean
imputation in the case of four independent vari-
ables that had a substantive amount of item non-
response, namely, students' age at kindergarten
entrance, teachers' rating of class behavior, and
percentage of Black and Hispanic students in the
class. When carrying out the regression analyses,
we used these four mean-substituted variables in
addition to four dummies (one for each of these
variables) indicating whether we had imputed a
value for that particular student or class. For the
rest of the variables, we applied listwise deletion.
The HLM analyses have an average of 7.3 sam-
pled children per class. Models that predict read-
ing achievement use a sample of 11,567 students
and 2,437 classes. The sample for the math
achievement models includes 12,153 students and
2,556 classes. The slightly larger number of cases
in the models of math achievement is due to the
fact that Hispanic children who were only orally
proficient in Spanish at kindergarten entrance took
the math, but not the reading, assessment.I3
 Results
DescriptiveResults
Table I presents the descriptive statistics for
all the student-level and class-level variables we
use in this analysis. Table 2 presents these same
descriptives but lists them separately for small,
regular, and large classes. In both tables, we
weighted the statistics at the student level but not
at the class level (see note 11). In the case of the
four variables we imputed, Tables I and 2 show
the descriptive statistics for both the original and
the mean-imputed variable.
Table 2 shows some evidence of the differen-
tial allocation of students to classes of different
size. Although students in large classes were
0.03 SD below the mean of SES background, stu-
dents in small classes were 0.03 SD above this
mean. Racial minority students also seemed
more likely to be in large classes. Within large
classes, 17% of students were Black and 22%
were Hispanic. In contrast, Black and Hispanic
students represented 14% and 13% of students
within small classes. Students in large classes
were slightly younger (by less than half of a
month) than their counterparts in large classes.
Even though there are some differences in the
type of students who end up in small, regular, or
large classes, achievement averages are similar
for students attending classes of different sizes.
In math, students in small classes scored 0.36
points higher than students in large classes in the
fall of kindergarten. In the spring of kinder-
garten, the difference was 0.33 points, meaning
that during the school year students in small and
large classes gained the same in math scores. In
reading, fall scores were virtually identical for
students in small and large classes, but students
in large classes gained 0.27 points more than stu-
dents in small classes between the beginning and
end of the kindergarten year.
Some differences also appear at the class
level. Large classes were more likely to be part
of kindergarten programs that lasted longer.
While 68% of large classes are in full-day
kindergarten programs, 46% of small classes are
in such programs. Teachers in large classes seem
to spend the additional time they have carrying
out more instruction, because they report a more
frequent use of all types of instructional activities
compared to teachers in small classes. Consistent
with previous literature, teachers do not appear to
be opting for particular methods of instruction
according to the size of the class, since the rela-
tive frequency of different instructional practices
is similar across small, regular, and large classes.
Also in line with prior research, teacher ratings
of class behavior slightly favor small classes. Fi-
nally, compared to large classes, small classes
had a higher proportion of students reading
below grade level (22 versus 16), a higher pro-
portion of students with math skills below grade
level (17 versus 14), and a higher proportion of
students with diagnosed disabilities (13 versus
8). This suggests that at least some schools are
using small classes as a compensatory strategy
for academically disadvantaged students.
HLM Analysis
Tables 3 and 4 show the coefficients from the
HLM analyses of reading and math achievement,
respectively.
What is the effect of class size on student
achievement?
The first model we estimate is a random-inter-
cept model that examines whether class size is
associated with student achievement. Results show
no association between class size and student
achievement in either reading or math (Model 1
in Tables 3 and 4). The estimate for small class is
negative, indicating a small-class disadvantage
compared to large classes, and the estimate for
regular class is positive, indicating a regular-
class advantage compared to large classes, but
none of the coefficients is statistically different
from 0.
What classroom conditions matterfor
class-size effects?
Research on class size usually understands in-
struction and student behavior as mechanisms
that mediate the effects of class size on student
achievement. Although our results show no ini-
tial association between class size and achieve-
ment (Model 1 in Tables 3 and 4), instruction and
student behavior could still affect the association.
For example, if less effective teachers or more
unruly students are disproportionately assigned
to small classes, then instruction and student be-
havior could suppress the positive effects of
small classes. Model 2 allows for this possibility
299
TABLE I
DescriptiveStatistics
Variable Obs. Mean SD Min. Max.
Student-level variables
Fall reading IRT 11,567 22.11 8.27 10.08 68.66
Spring reading IRT 11,567 32.22 10.06 11.00 70.80
Fall math IRT 12,153 19.37 7.22 6.90 57.02
Spring math IRT 12,153 27.57 8.69 7.54 59.20
Male 12,153 0.50 0.50 0.00 1.00
Black 12,153 0.15 0.36 0.00 1.00
Hispanic 12,153 0.18 0.38 0.00 1.00
Asian 12,153 0.02 0.15 0.00 1.00
White non-Hispanic 12,153 0.60 0.49 0.00 1.00
Other race 12,153 0.05 0.21 0.00 1.00
Months at Kindergarten entry 11,784 65.84 4.03 50.00 84.00
Months at Kindergarten entry, mean imputed 12,153 65.83 3.97 50.00 84.00
Family SES (composite) 12,153 0.00 0.78 -4.75 2.69
Location in reading ability group
No ability grouping in class 11,074 0.60 0.49 0.00 1.00
Low-ability group 11,074 0.14 0.35 0.00 1.00
Middle-ability group 11,074 0.07 0.25 0.00 1.00
High-ability group 11,074 0.19 0.39 0.00 1.00
Class-level variables
Class size 2,556 20.38 4.77 2.00 52.00
Percent black 2,440 16.34 26.00 0.00 100.00
Percent black, mean imputed 2,556 16.35 25.41 0.00 100.00
Percent Hispanic 2,440 17.81 28.85 0.00 100.00
Percent Hispanic, mean imputed 2,556 17.87 28.19 0.00 100.00
Teacher rating class behavior fall 2,518 3.42 0.82 1.00 5.00
Teacher rating class behavior fall, mean imputed 2,556 3.42 0.81 1.00 5.00
All-day class 2,556 0.54 0.50 0.00 1.00
Half-day class 2,556 0.46 0.50 0.00 1.00
Morning class 2,556 0.26 0.44 0.00 1.00
Afternoon class 2,556 0.20 0.40 0.00 1.00
"Whole-Language" activities 2,437 17.17 4.74 4.00 24.00
"Phonics" activities 2,437 21.08 2.61 4.00 24.00
"Teaching for Understanding" activities 2,556 12.32 3.01 3.00 18.00
"Drill" activities 2,556 8.75 3.54 3.00 18.00
Frequency of
Whole-class activities 2,556 3.48 0.87 1.00 5.00
Small-group activities 2,556 2.97 0.84 1.00 5.00
Individual activities 2,556 2.35 0.68 1.00 5.00
"Remedial class" indicators
% children reading below grade level 2,489 0.18 0.15 0.00 1.00
% children w/math skills below grade level 2,489 0.15 0.13 0.00 1.00
% children with diagnosed disability 2,489 0.10 0.13 0.00 1.00
Notes. (1) Descriptive statistics are weighted at the student level (using BYCOMWO) but not at the class level. See text for de-
tails. (2) Because the regression analysis for mathematic achievement includes more cases than for reading, descriptive statistics
reported here correspond to the variables used in the mathematic analysis. The exceptions are variables that are only relevant for the
reading regression analysis (fall and spring reading scores, and reading instructional factors), as well as variables included in the
additional analyses (students' locations in reading ability groups and indicators of "remedial classes"). See text for details.

300
 Class Size and Instruction on KindergartenAchievement
by adding the indicators of instructional practices
and class behavior to the estimation of the ran-
dom intercept.
Results show that teacher-directed whole-
class and small-group activities have a positive
association with student achievement, but the
coefficients are statistically significant only in
reading. All the scales of instructional activities
(Whole Language and Phonics for reading and
Teaching for Understanding and Drill for math)
are positive and statistically significant predic-
tors of achievement. Consistent with the litera-
ture that supports a balanced curriculum, these
findings suggest that students benefit from both
pedagogical approaches in reading and math
(Kilpatrick, Swafford, & Findell, 2001; Snow,
Burns, & Griffin, 1998). As in the baseline
model, the coefficients for small and regular
classes are not statistically significant in either
the math or the reading analysis. Although our
results indicate that instructional conditions
affect achievement, class size is not involved.
Regarding student behavior in class, the esti-
mates show a positive association between well-
behaved classes and student achievement, but
this association is not statistically significant
and does not alter the association between class
size and achievement. Thus, there is no indica-
tion that either instruction or student behavior
is suppressing the effect of class size on student
achievement.
Even in the absence of main effects of class
size, certain instructional practices may still be
more effective when teachers use them in
smaller contexts. To examine this possibility,
Model 3 adds to Model 2 five interaction terms
between the small class indicator and the activi-
ties teachers carry out in the classroom. Among
these estimates, the only statistically significant
coefficient is the interaction between small class
and teacher-directed small-group activities in
the model that predicts reading achievement.
The sign of the coefficient, however, is contrary
to our expectations. The negative interaction in-
dicates that in classes with fewer children,
small-group activities are less effective for rais-
ing the class mean reading achievement. Over-
all, we detect strong effects of instruction, no av-
erage effects of class size, and little evidence
that the effects of class size depend on instruc-
tional conditions.
Does class size matter more for some students
thanfor others?
Irrespective of the relation between class size
and achievement on average, class size may have
different effects for different groups of students.
Model 4 tests this hypothesis by allowing the SES,
fall achievement, and Black slopes to vary across
classes and including small class size as a pre-
dictor of between-class variation in these slopes.
In both reading and math, Model 4 shows that
none of the coefficients for the cross-level inter-
actions is statistically significant. In other words,
the effect of class size does not vary across racial/
ethnic subgroups, and class size does not matter
more either for economically or academically dis-
advantaged students.
Additional HLM analyses
To make sure the statistical nonsignificance of
class size was robust, we carried out several ad-
ditional HLM analyses (not shown). First, we an-
alyzed half-day and full-day classes separately.
None of these models, predicting reading and
math achievement, presents a statistically signif-
icant coefficient for the small class-size indica-
tor. In a second set of models, we included indi-
cators of the student's location in reading ability
groups within the class as student-level controls
in the equation that predicts reading achieve-
ment. Using the "middle ability group" as the
reference category, results show a significantly
positive effect of being in a high-ability group
and a significantly negative effect of being in a
low-ability group. Being in a class with no abil-
ity groups does not exhibit a consistent coeffi-
cient. However, the inclusion of these indicators
does not alter the class-size estimate. It is still
small and not statistically significant.
Finally, we considered one possible criterion
for student selection into classes of different size.
In particular, we explored whether the lack of as-
sociation between small classes and achievement
may result from the "remedial" nature of small
classes. Thus, in the Level-2 regression equation,
we included the percentage of children reading
below class level, the percentage of children with
math skills below grade level, and the percentage
of children with diagnosed disability in each
class, all reported by the teacher. As we men-
tioned, these three "remedial" characteristics are
301
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305
Milesi and Gamoran
more frequent in small than in large classes (see
Table 2). By including them in the model, we ex-
plored whether the "remedial" nature of small
classes is suppressing an association between
small classes and student achievement. How-
ever, these models show the same lack of associ-
ation between class size and achievement.
Fixed-Effects Regression
Perhaps the apparent lack of class-size effects
reflects the nonrandom assignment of teachers to
small and large classes. To counter this possibil-
ity, we estimated fixed-effects regressions for
math and reading achievement. In this model, all
between-teacher differences that might bias the
estimates of class-size effects are ruled out. As
we mentioned, because this model relies on the
variation between the classes that individual
teachers encounter, teachers who teach only one
kindergarten class in the school effectively drop
out of the analysis.
Table 5 indicates that in ECLS-K, teachers
who teach two kindergarten classes usually teach
smaller classes than teachers who teach only one
kindergarten class. In this sense, results from the
fixed-effect regression are less generalizable than
those from the HLM models, which are estimated
on all teachers, with a greater representation of
large classes. Table 5 also shows that teachers
who teach two kindergarten classes have a nar-
rower range of variability in class size than other
teachers (the standard deviation of class size is
9% smaller for teachers who teach two classes
than for teachers who teach only one kindergarten
class). Since the identification of class-size ef-
fects depends on this within-teacher variation in
class size, this set of teachers provides limited
identifying information and restricts the model's
statistical power. Nevertheless, because the fixed-
effects estimates account for observed and unob-
TABLE 5
Class Size Variation Among Teachers
Class size Small classes
Teacher category N Mean SD (< 17 students)
All teachers 2,851 20.22 5.16
Teacher who teach 2,409 20.38 5.21
one class
Teachers who teach 442 19.35 4.74
two classes
306
served teachers' traits that affect student achieve-
ment, estimates from the fixed-effects regression
provide a robustness test for our previous results.
Following Betts and Shkolnik's procedure
(1999), we included a dummy variable for each
teacher. Variables are the same as in the HLM
analysis, except for the "natural elimination" of
those characteristics that do not vary across teach-
ers, such as the half-day class indicators (because
all the "selected" teachers teach half-day classes)
and instruction variables (because teachers re-
ported their instructional practices in general, not
with respect to each specific class they taught). 14
Table 6 presents the results of the teacher fixed
effect analysis for reading and math achieve-
ment.1 5 The results are roughly equivalent to those
for HLM. The coefficients for the small and regu-
lar class-size indicators are both positive but far
from statistically significant. Although not shown,
the same nonsignificance of class size appears in
models where we specified class size as a linear
term, in models where we included both linear and
nonlinear class-size variables, in models where we
accounted for the indicators of "remedial classes,"
and in models for reading achievement where we
controlled reading ability grouping.
Discussion and Conclusions
Our research on ECLS-K offers no evidence
that class size affects reading or mathematics
achievement in kindergarten. Class size does not
affect achievement on average, nor does it affect
the achievement of particular groups of students.
Because ours was a nonexperimental study, we
were especially concerned with selection bias,
and we used two strategies to address this issue.
First, HLM models control for a theoretically dri-
ven set of covariates at both the individual and
the class levels that account, at least partially, for
the association between unobserved selection
Regular classes Large classes
(18-23 students) (24+ students) Total
23% 55% 22% 100%
21% 56% 23% 100%
32% 52% 16% 100%
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307
Milesi and Gamoran
factors and students' subsequent achievement.
Second, by using teacher fixed-effects regres-
sions, we eliminated unobserved heterogeneity
among teachers-in this case, a type of hetero-
geneity that could have caused the class-size ef-
fect to "disappear." Our findings were robust to
these alternative specifications.
A limitation of our study is that we do not have
full information about why some classes are
smaller than others. Lacking this information and
in the absence of randomization, we cannot be
certain that all selection bias has been eliminated,
despite our efforts to rid the study of such bias.
Consequently, our causal claims cannot be con-
sidered as strong as those of a randomized trial.
Still, our findings stand up to numerous plausible
specifications, and they have the advantage of
greater generalizability as compared with exper-
iments that are necessarily limited in scope.
Although we did not find effects of class size,
we did find significant effects of classroom in-
struction on student achievement. In reading, we
found that additional time spent on both whole-
class and small-group activities boosted achieve-
ment, a result that is consistent with prior re-
search showing the value of instructional time in
early reading (e.g., Barr & Dreeben, 1983).
Moreover, in both reading and mathematics, we
observed that both of the instructional orienta-
tions we examined-whole language and phon-
ics in reading and "teaching for understanding"
and drill in mathematics-contributed to cogni-
tive performance. Our findings are thus consis-
tent with the emerging consensus that a balanced
instructional approach employing various teach-
ing activities offers the best prospects for raising
student achievement (e.g., Kilpatrick et al., 2001;
Snow et al., 1998). What we did not find, how-
ever, is much involvement of class size in these
instructional effects; on the whole, instructional
effects appeared equally consequential in large
and small classes. Our results thus resonate with
other studies that indicate that what happens in-
side classrooms matters much more than the
structure in which those activities occur (for a re-
view, see Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 2000).
Interestingly, the finding that classroom in-
struction rather than classroom structure affects
achievement may also be consistent with NCLB's
emphasis on teacher quality. Whether NCLB will
in fact raise achievement through the sorts of in-
structional activities we examined depends on the
308
efficacy of the specific mechanisms favored by
NCLB: teacher qualifications and subject-matter
competence, and evidence-based practice. This is
a matter for further research.
Our findings for class size clearly differ from
those of Project STAR, a randomized field trial
that revealed a positive effect of small classes for
student achievement in kindergarten through
Grade 3. STAR occurred under specific schooling
conditions, including an ample supply of qualified
teachers, adequate and sufficient classroom facil-
ities, and a population of students that was not as
diverse as this study or many others. It is impor-
tant to examine the settings and incentives that
characterized STAR because the generalizability
of its findings are likely to depend on the condi-
tions under which it occurred. The CSR program
in California illustrates some of the "side effects"
of reducing class size at a statewide scale, with a
diverse population of students and with financial
incentives that were equal for all districts, even
though more disadvantaged districts required more
resources to meet the CSR goal of 20 students
per kindergarten through third-grade classrooms
(because of teacher scarcities and lack of space).
One of the main side effects of CSR in California
was a drop in teacher qualifications that dispro-
portionately affected disadvantaged schools. In
elementary schools serving the fewest low-in-
come students, the proportion of fully credited
kindergarten through third-grade teachers dropped
by 2% from 1995-1996 to 1998-1999 (i.e., from
the year before the intervention to the third year
of the intervention); by contrast, schools serving
the most low-income students experienced a 20%
drop during that same period (Stecher & Bohrn-
stedt, 2002, Table B. 18, p. B-9). Perhaps not sur-
prisingly, the CSR Research Consortium sum-
marized the effect of the California CSR on student
achievement as being "inconclusive" (Stecher &
Bohrnstedt, 2002).
The CSR initiative in California, as well as
CSR programs in several states throughout the
nation, have relied heavily on the evidence of
Project STAR to justify the sizable investments
they entail. However, expecting CSR programs
in the "real world" to have outcomes similar to
those of STAR requires the critical invariance
assumption to hold. This assumption states that
"the experimental version of a program must
operate as would an actual program" (Manski,
1995, p. 53). The critical invariance assumption
 Class Size and Instruction on KindergartenAchievement
is questionable in the case of CSR policies be-
cause most CSR programs have diverged from
the implementation conditions of Project STAR
(Mitchell & Mitchell, 2003). As Manski pointed
out, violating this assumption does not imply that
experimental research, such as Project STAR, is
uninformative, but it does imply that "one should
not expect the distribution of outcomes in a ran-
domly selected treatment group to coincide with
the outcomes that would be realized in an actual
social program" (1995, p. 54). In fact, under the
current, naturally occurring conditions of U.S.
kindergartners, as represented in ECLS-K, re-
ducing class size may have little impact on stu-
dent achievement. Thus, rather than contradict-
ing Project STAR, our results highlight that the
schooling conditions under which class-size re-
duction occurs are relevant for the student out-
comes we are interested in improving. More re-
search is needed to identify the conditions under
which experimental findings, such as Project
STAR, can be generalized.
To increase external validity in randomized
experiments, Cook suggested a heterogeneity-of-
replication model, "one that emphasizes how
consistently a causal relationship replicates across
multiple sources of heterogeneity" (2002, p. 188).
If this model were applied to the case of class
size, then the question would be: Can the same
causal relationship between class size and stu-
dent achievement observed in Project STAR be
observed in experiments throughout different
settings, time periods, and regions of the country
and with different ways of operationalizing the
cause and effect? Based on this evidence, claims
will properly infer, and more adequately gener-
alize, the causal relation between class size and
student achievement. However, to be fully infor-
mative, researchers must combine inquiries about
whether class size affects student achievement
with studies aimed at understanding the mecha-
nisms by which class size affects student learning
in some contexts. Further knowledge of how class
size matters for student achievement may clarify
why experimental and nonexperimental studies
exhibit such inconsistent results.
Notes
Inkindergarten, the small-class advantage was 0.15
SD in mathematics and 0.18 SD in reading. In first
grade, the small-class advantage was 0.27 and 0.24 in
mathematics and reading, respectively. In Grades 2 and
3, the small-class advantage ranged from 0.20 to 0.26
in these two subjects (Finn & Achilles, 1999, Table 1).
2
In STAR, participating schools received approxi-
mately $2.5 million per year. These funds had to be
used only to hire the additional teachers and aides re-
quired by the project (Ritter & Borouch, 1999). There-
fore, schools that required additional resources to
carry out the experiment, such as extra classrooms,
were probably unable to participate in STAR (Biddle
& Berliner, 2002).
3
Class size and teacher-pupil ratios are different
measures (Ehrenberg et al., 2001). Student-teacher ra-
tios tend to underestimate true class sizes (Rice, 1999),
because teacher-pupil ratios include teachers who do
not necessarily work in mainstream classes, such as
special-education teachers or teachers who spend all
or part of the day as administrators, as librarians, or in
functions outside of the classroom. Because pupil-
teacher ratio is an aggregate measure, usually com-
puted on units larger than the classroom (i.e., entire
schools or school districts), it is an aspect of schooling
not as proximal to student learning as class size is
(Finn & Achilles, 1999).
4
Rice (1999), Betts and Shkolnik (1999), and Stasz
and Stecher (2000) tested the interactive effects of
class size and average class-level test scores on teach-
ers' instructional practices but did not use student
achievement as their ultimate outcome.
5
To avoid ceiling effects, the cognitive assessments
included a two-stage battery. The first stage entailed a
12- to 20-item routing test for each domain. In the sec-
ond stage, the child took different skill-level assess-
ments depending on his or her performance in the rout-
ing test. The reading and mathematics assessments had
three skill levels each, and the general knowledge as-
sessment had two. The IRT scores that NCES calcu-
lated and that we use as dependent variables make pos-
sible the comparison of scores across children,
regardless of which second-stage form students took
(West et al., 2000).
6
In 92.2% of morning classes, 91.2% of afternoon
classes, and 93.4% of all-day classes, these three mea-
sures of class size coincided. For the remaining cases,
we followed this set of rules: (1) When three valid
measures of class size were present and differed from
each other in only one student per class (e.g., 17, 18,
and 19 in the three measures), we assigned the median
among them. (2) When the three valid measures were
substantively different from each other, we recoded
the value of class size as missing. We carried out this
procedure in only two all-day classes. In these two
cases, the actual measures of class size, as indicated by
the sum of boys and girls, sum of children of different
ages, and sum of children of different races/ethnicities,
were 25, 6, and 3 in one case and 27, 13, and 15 in the
other. (3) When there were three valid measures of
309
Milesi and Gamoran
class size and two of the measures were equal to each
other but different from the third one, we selected the
class size indicated by the two equivalent measures.
(4) When two measures were valid and different and
the third one was a missing case, we randomly selected
one of the two valid measures.
7
As presented in Table 2, the mean number of stu-
dents in small, regular, and large classes is 14.3, 20.3,
and 26.7, respectively.
8
The response categories of these three variables are:
I = no time, 2 = half hour or less, 3 = approximately 1
hour, 4 = approximately 2 hours, and 5 = 3 hours or
more.
9
For all items in reading and mathematics, the cate-
gories of response are: 1 = never, 2 - once a month or
less, 3 = two to three times a month, 4 = one to two times
a week, 5 = three to four times a week, and 6 = daily.
10Categories of response are: 1 = Group misbehaves
very frequently and is almost always difficult to han-
dle, 2 = Group misbehaves frequently and is often dif-
ficult to handle, 3 = Group misbehaves occasionally,
4 = Group behaves well, and 5 = Group behaves ex-
ceptionally well.
"IWeselected students as Level-I units and classes
as Level-2 aggregates, because we are interested in the
effects that class-level attributes (class size and instruc-
tion) have on student-level characteristics (academic
achievement). Even though this is a well-justified con-
ceptual decision, our HLM model does not address the
dependency of observations within schools built into
ECLS-K because of its sampling design. One way to
perform a cluster correction is to add a third level of
analysis pertaining to schools. Unfortunately, this is not
a possible alternative for us because the number of
classes per school (5.1 on average) is not large enough
to allow a simultaneous specification of class and
school levels. Because a HLM analysis would drop the
aggregate units that contained fewer cases than the
number of parameters estimated, the school-level
model would have to be extremely simple to preserve
the cases with small number of classes per school.
A related issue pertains to sampling weights. At the
student level, we included the weights that ECLS-K
provides and suggests to use when the analysis includes
both rounds of children assessment, in conjunction with
fall and spring teacher and parent data (BYCOMWO).
However, ECLS-K does not provide class-level
weights. We could compute these weights if we knew
the total number of kindergarten classes per school, but
this information is not available. In any case, we expect
that the student-level weight considers the oversample
of Asian and private kindergartners, lessening the con-
cern about the lack of class-level weights.
"2We estimated different specifications of the ran-
dom-effect model, introducing these three variable
slopes-separately, in pairs, or as a set-in the baseline
and in the different subsequent models. The results
310
were consistent throughout models. In this article, we
only report the estimates for the variable slopes for the
case when we included them as a set in the full model.
"3 Children had to demonstrate a certain level of pro-
ficiency in English, according to an English-language
proficiency screener called Oral Language Develop-
ment Scale (OLDS), to take any of the cognitive as-
sessments. If a child failed to reach the cut score on
the English OLDS but was proficient in Spanish, he
or she could take the mathematics assessment in
Spanish (5% of the sample was assessed in Spanish in
the mathematics domain). Some of the children who did
not take the reading assessment in the fall of kinder-
garten became English proficient during the school year
and could take the reading assessment in the spring of
kindergarten. However, because these students do not
have a complete record-they lack a measure of fall
achievement-we cannot include them in this analysis.
4
Teachers did not report their teaching practices,
such as class organization and typical class activities,
separately for each kindergarten class they teach.
Rather, teachers reported the "typical" instructional
activities they "often" carry out in class. Given this in-
formation, we cannot determine whether the same
teacher uses different instructional practices in classes
of different size.
' 5In the fixed-effects regression, we adjust the stan-
dard errors using the same student-level weight (BY-
COMWO) than in the HLM analyses (see note 11).
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Authors
CAROLINA MILESI is a PhD Candidate, Depart-
ment of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706;
cmilesi@ssc.wisc.edu. Her areas of specialization are
stratification of educational outcomes, trajectories in
postsecondary education, and the educational impact
of early health disparities.
ADAM GAMORAN is Professor, Sociology and
Educational Policy Studies, and Director, Wisconsin
Center for Education Research, Department of Sociol-
ogy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1180 Obser-
vatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706; gamoran@ssc.
wisc.edu. His areas of specialization are inequality in
education, school and classroom organization, and
school reform.
Manuscript received January 4, 2005
Final revision received August 14, 2006
Accepted August 22, 2006
 Appendix
TABLE A I
Effect of Class Size on Spring Kindergarten Achievement With Different Specifications of ClassSize
Reading Math
Model Est. SE Est. SE
Model 1: Large classes (24 or more students) as reference categorya
Small class (17 or fewer students) -0.102 0.246 0.111 0.183
Regular class (18-23 students) 0.107 0.202 -0.231 0.149
Model 2: Classes of 18 or more students as reference category
Small class (17 or fewer students) -0.180 0.196 -0.279 0.148
Model 3: Regular classes (18 to 23 students) as reference category
Small class (17 or fewer students) -0.209 0.203 -0.341 0.153*
Large class (24 or more students) -0.107 0.202 -0.231 0.149
Model 4: Class size as a linear variable
Class size 0.008 0.017 -0.005 0.012
Model 5: Class size as linear and quadratic terms
Class size 0.122 0.063 0.167 0.046**
Class size 2 -0.003 0.001 -0.004 0.001**
Model 6: Natural log of class size
Log(Class size) 0.356 0.320 0.156 0.241
Model 7: Classes of 14 or more students as reference category
Small class (t3 or fewer students) -0.609 0.35 1 -0.586 0.268*
Model 8: Classes of 15 or more students as reference category
Small class (14 or fewer students) -0.501 0.290 -0.638 0.221**
Model 9: Classes of 16 or more students as reference category
Small class (15 or fewer students) -0.278 0.250 -0.588 0.191*
Note. All models include as level- I variables: family SES, indicators for male, Black, Hispanic, Asian, fall achievement, and age.
As level-2 variables, all models include mean fall achievement, mean family SES, percent Black, percent Hispanic, and indica-
tor for half-day class.
"Equivalent to Model I in Table 3 for Reading and Model I in Table 4 for Math.
*p> It 1.05; **p> It l.ol; ***p It l.o01.

313
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