The "truth":
Save for one experiment carried out in Tennessee in the 1980s, which yielded ambiguous results that were, in any case, limited to kindergarten and the first two grades, there is no persuasive evidence that smaller classes yield higher student achievement.
Checker Finn in the New York Daily News [emphasis added]
"No" as in none, zilch, nada, nohow? I guess Checker Finn never read Gene Glass and Mary Lee Smith's 1979 meta-analysis on class size, nor Harvey Goldstein et al.'s 2002 meta-analysis in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society C, nor any other research with different results. "No" is such an absolute term, it confidently asserts that the author has read everything on the subject, and as a result that overconfident claim undermines Finn's argument in the editorial. There are plenty of decent arguments to make about why class-size reduction might be a lower priority than other policy options, from the warm-body problem of class-size reduction (where do you get all the teachers) to the capital construction costs to cost-effectiveness issues vis-a-vis other ways of spending the money. But why go to the effort of explaining opportunity cost when you can assert that an issue should be entirely ignored?
The editorial belonged in the NY Post instead, I think.
If your only come back is a meta-analysis from 1979 you don’t have a very strong case either.
Jacob: You mean, as in the Brookings report published this week?
More importantly I think you’re missing my point, which is not about whether class-size reduction is the best use of resources in all circumstances but whether the sort of rhetorical trump card Finn pulled was appropriate. I think he did the equivalent of scrawling the joker on a paper napkin and trying to pass it off.