BUSI 630: Data Models & Decision Making David Croushore

Team Assignment 1 James Hawkins

1 October 2010 Kristen LaMotte
Nick Rygiel
The Impact of Class Size on Test Scores
In Los Angeles County
Background:

Education is a much-discussed topic in the United States today. The US public education system was
founded on the idea that every person had the right to a quality education. Due to the gravity of this
topic, there are many intricacies and debates associated with it. A range of ideas from length of
summer vacation, to parental demographic factors, to teaching length of service, factor into decisions
and opinions held on public education.

We are investigating the potential impact of class size and total school enrollment on standardized
test scores, as well as examining the effectiveness of public charter schools in comparison to non-
charters. Should any of these variables have a significant effect on test scores, it would suggest
ramifications for public policy in LA County and elsewhere. Our sample consists of 199 schools in LA
County (nearly 170,000 students) across multiple districts using data from the 2008-2009 school year.

We compiled our data from the California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) website
(http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2008/) that maintains the individual school test scores and identification for
charter schools from 2008 and from the California Department of Education data and statistics
website (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/) for all other variables. The unique school code identifier served as
our primary key for referencing the data from the two sources and the year 2008 was chosen as that
is the most current year for data available on the California Department of Education data and
statistics website.

Hypothesis:

We hypothesize that decreases in average class size are an effective way to increase standardized
test scores. Expressed in statistical terms:

Let µ be the mean test score of the population of students in LA county, and let α be the mean
number of students per class.

H0: For class size, y < α, the mean test score, x ≤ µ

Ha: For class size, y < α, the mean test score, x > µ

Key Variables
In order to explore our hypothesis, we utilized a random number generator and SAS software to
randomly select a sample of 199 from a population of 1970 schools in LA County. The resulting data
set has the following independent variables:

 Enrollment (Quantitative Variable)

 Charter School (Categorical Variable)
 Average Class Size (Quantitative Variable)

The dependent variable for our analysis is schools’ mean student score on the STAR test.

Initial Findings:

Our initial findings point to an interesting relationship between average class size and average test
scores. In order to meaningfully graph the data, we stratified the sample by class size into three
groups: small classes (0-15 students); medium classes (15-25 students), and large classes (25
students or more per class).
BUSI 630: Data Models & Decision Making David Croushore
Team Assignment 1 James Hawkins
1 October 2010 Kristen LaMotte
Nick Rygiel
Our initial hypothesis was that large class sizes would produce the lowest mean test scores, while
small class sizes would produce the highest mean test scores. This was not the case. The poorest
performing classes (in relation to average test score), by a large margin, were those small class sizes
(0-15 students), the ones with the very best student to teacher ratio; however, owing to the fact that
these classes are, in fact, small, they are more subject to the effects of outliers on their mean. In
Figure 1, another outlier affect is clearly visible.

Class Size vs Test Score

600

500
Average Test Scores

400

300

200

100

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Class Size

Figure 1

In medium sized classes (15-25,) students average test scores were the highest, about 10-15 percent
better than large sized classrooms.

Another interesting finding is that there is

not a direct relationship between class
size and enrollment (See Figure 2), but in
Table 1, it is clear that both have an
impact on test scores. While our sample
contains more schools with fewer than
1500 students, the scatter chart shows a
decrease in average test scores as
enrollment increases.

Table 1

Enrollment vs. Class Size

40
35
30
Class Size

25
20
15
10
5
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
Enrollment

Figure 2
BUSI 630: Data Models & Decision Making David Croushore
Team Assignment 1 James Hawkins
1 October 2010 Kristen LaMotte
Nick Rygiel
We are also looking at the impact of charter schools on test scores. In Los Angeles, 9% of schools are
charter schools. In our sample, 16 out of the 197 schools selected are charter schools (8.1%). Overall,
we found that non-charter schools out performed their chart school counterparts in the higher class
sizes (Table 2). In the smaller class sizes, charter schools performed better, (average of 287) but still
well below the average test scores for each school type.
Average of Charter
Test_Scores_Mean
Class Size Classification No Yes Grand
Total
Large (25+) 376 363 375
Mid (16 – 24) 421 370 417
Small (Less 15) 252 287 256
Grand Total 399 363 396
Table 2
Conclusion:

Our initial findings do not support our hypothesis, nor do they offer conclusive evidence against it.
While the relationship between class size and test scores seems weak from the above scatter plots, a
more robust statistical analysis will help determine if any correlation exists.

In Appendix 1, we present several charts and graphs in order to summarize the characteristics of our
dataset.
BUSI 630: Data Models & Decision Making David Croushore
Team Assignment 1 James Hawkins
1 October 2010 Kristen LaMotte
Nick Rygiel
Appendix 1
Class Size in the Sample:
Average Class Size Distribution of Schools by Class Size
60 3%
0% 1%

50 4%
10%
0-5
40 5-10
28%
10-15
30 15-20
Average Class Size
20-25
20 25-30

54% 30-35
10

0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37

These charts clearly shows that the majority of our sample consists of schools with average class
sizes between 20 and 30. The mean class size for the sample is 22.8, the median is 22.3, and the
mode is 20.4.
(Note: these numbers represent the mean, median, and mode of “average class size” so the mode of
20.4 does not indicate that 4 tenths of a student is sitting in a number of classrooms in LA County)

Enrollment in the Sample:

Enrollment (in 100's)
60

50

40

30
Enrollment

20

10

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

The chart above shows that the majority of schools in our sample have enrollments between 900 and
1300 students. The mean enrollment is 844.25, the median is 582, and the mode is 410.