Closing the Achievement Gap - Washington State School Directors ...

ment is as much as ten times stronger in larger schools than in smallerones.”Increase support for smaller class size, especially in grades K-4 andpass legislation for funding full-day kindergarten. Smaller class size,especially at the primary level, continues to be associated with higheracademic achievement, especially for disadvantaged children. TheNSBA Policy Research of Fall, 1999, Sizing it Right: Class Size-reductionand Student Achievement, reported that Wisconsin’s SAGE programwhich targets schools with 50 percent or more poverty and limits classsize to 15 for grades K-3, found like the Tennessee STAR study, thatstudents significantly outperformed their peers in other classrooms.Moreover, the black-white achievement gap narrowed while it widenedin other classrooms. The most recent longitudinal results from theSTAR project also provided clear evidence that past attendance in asmall class raised the average score on the ACT or SAT exam.Support legislation for increased funding and more predictable fundingfor K-12 education that eliminates crisis budget planning.Improve the disaggregation of student achievement data to avoidmaking overgeneralizations of ethnic groups and to assist in moreappropriate planning and decision-making for individual students.Support research and demonstration projects, along with disseminationstrategies, to identify and replicate promising school and districtwidepractices that effectively close the achievement gap.WASHINGTON STATE SCHOOL DIRECTORS’ ASSOCIATION51