Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, Room 811, Mail Code 3355, New York, NY 10027, USA.
J Youth Adolesc. 2010 Feb;39(2):163-76. doi: 10.1007/s10964-009-9402-3. Epub 2009 Mar 3.
In an effort to increase both adolescents' engagement with school and academic achievement, school districts across the United States have created small high schools. However, despite the widespread adoption of size reduction reforms, relatively little is known about the relationship between size, engagement and outcomes in high school. In response, this article employs a composite measure of engagement that combines organizational, sociological, and psychological theories. We use this composite measure with the most recent nationally-representative dataset of tenth graders, Educational Longitudinal Study: 2002, (N = 10,946, 46% female) to better assess a generalizable relationship among school engagement, mathematics achievement and school size with specific focus on cohort size. Findings confirm these measures to be highly related to student engagement. Furthermore, results derived from multilevel regression analysis indicate that, as with school size, moderately sized cohorts or grade-level groups provide the greatest engagement advantage for all students and that there are potentially harmful changes when cohorts grow beyond 400 students. However, it is important to note that each group size affects different students differently, eliminating the ability to prescribe an ideal cohort or school size.
为了提高青少年对学校的参与度和学业成绩，美国各地的学区都创建了小型高中。然而，尽管规模缩小改革得到了广泛采用，但对于高中规模、参与度和结果之间的关系，人们知之甚少。有鉴于此，本文采用了一种综合的参与度衡量标准，结合了组织学、社会学和心理学理论。我们使用这种综合衡量标准，结合最新的具有全国代表性的十年级学生数据集——教育纵向研究：2002 年（N=10946，女性占 46%），更好地评估了学生参与度、数学成绩和学校规模之间的普遍关系，并特别关注了队列规模。研究结果证实，这些衡量标准与学生的参与度高度相关。此外，多层次回归分析的结果表明，与学校规模一样，中等规模的队列或年级群体为所有学生提供了最大的参与优势，而当队列规模超过 400 名学生时，可能会发生有害的变化。然而，需要注意的是，每个群体规模对不同的学生有不同的影响，从而无法规定一个理想的队列或学校规模。
