There’s a new paper from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at UM, High School Achievement in Maine: Where You Come From Matters More Than School Size and Expenditures, part of the newest Maine Policy Review.

Here are the questions asked:

Two recent education policy initiatives operate from the premise that higher student achievement at lower public cost—that is, greater efficiency—will result from creating larger schools and larger school units. Maine’s Essential Programs and Services (EPS) funding program explicitly rewards schools with enrollments above specified minimums with higher state subsidy. The state’s 2007 school administrative reorganization law seeks to consolidate administrative and educational functions, a shift that typically leads to the consolidation of schools themselves (Johnson 2006). Does the evidence support the premise that increasing the size of schools will raise achievement and reduce cost? In particular, will policy initiatives such as EPS and the reorganization law make educational opportunity more equitable statewide?

And here’s the answer:

Not convinced?  Well then, look at this!

The paper looks at the effects of school size, per-pupil expenditure, and socioeconomic status on academic achievement in Maine high schools. Through statistical analyses, the first two variables are shown to have little effect.  Along the way, a new method is developed for teasing out socioeconomic status, the older method of using free and reduced lunch figures being shown to have very limited applicability, at least at the high school level.

Thus far, correlation and regression analyses show that socioeconomic status is a powerful factor in the achievement of Maine high school students and that school size and operational expenditures have little, if any, statistically significant relationship to achievement after socioeconomic status is taken into account.

The “money” quote:

The proposition that larger sized high schools will lead to high achievement, then, is not supported by this study. Instead, policies aimed at raising achievement would more wisely address, first and foremost, the family and community conditions that appear to shape learning outcomes most powerfully.

Although this study extends our understanding of the factors affecting high school academic success, it’s important to note that an earlier study by Trostel, Improving Educational Resource Allocation in Maine, backs up this study in its essentials.

More later.