DOI: 10.7910/dvn/xwulm9
title: Tennessee's Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project

description: Overview The Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) was a four-year longitudinal class-size study funded by the Tennessee General Assembly and conducted by the State Department of Education. Over 7,000 students in 79 schools were randomly assigned into one of three interventions: small class (13 to 17 students per teacher), regular class (22 to 25 students per teacher), and regular-with-aide class (22 to 25 students with a full-time teacher's aide). Classroom teachers were also randomly assigned to the classes they would teach. The interventions were initiated as the students entered school in kindergarten and continued through third grade.  In 1996, Health and Education Research Operative Services (HEROS), Incorporated was funded to conduct a tenth grade follow-up study of Project STAR. To be on-schedule during the 1995-1996 school year, Project STAR students would be high school sophomores (10th Grade). The researchers reviewed the Tennessee Competency Examination (TCE) data for the 1993-94, 1994-95, and 1995-96 school years. Schools begin administering the TCE to students in eighth grade and they are required to pas s the TCE prior to graduating from high school. Data were collected for each administration of the TCE to a Project STAR student. A significantly larger percent of small-class students (52.9%) versus students who had attended regular (49.1%) and regular/aide (48.0%) classes passed the TCE Language requirement at grade 8. The same was true for the mathematics requirement, where 36.4% of the small-class students passed versus 32.3% of the regular class and 30.3% of the regular/aide class students.  Additional data were collected from Nashville-Davidson County Schools for the school dropout pilot study. Researchers had access to three years of data from this system (1993-94, 1994-95, and 1995-96 school years). When STAR students were not found with their appropriate grade level cohort (grade ten, 1995-96), investigators searched all grades from these years and were able to identify students who were still in the system, but who were appearing at a lower grade level. This rev iew showed that more regular and regular/aide class students than small-class students had been retained in grade levels prior to tenth grade. In the 1993-1994 school year, a significantly higher percentage (12 to 19%) of students in regular and regular/aide classes were in lower grades than their counterparts in small classes (about 8%). This difference grew with time. By the 1995-1996 school year, twice the percentage of students who attended regular or regular/aide classes were found in lower grades than their STAR peers who attended small classes.  An academic progress pilot study was conducted by reviewing student records from the 1996-1997 school year where students who remained on-target with their cohort would have been in eleventh grade. Three school systems, Nashville-Davidson County, Pickett County, and Fentress County had agreed to participate in this pilot. Students who attended school in Nashville-Davidson County Schools were analyzed separately from those attending Fentress and Pickett County Schools. When studen t records were not located within the eleventh-grade files, the tenth-grade files (1996-1997) were searched, and if still not located the ninth-grade records were searched (1996-1997). The findings were strong and unambiguous. Nashville-Davidson County students who attended small classes (K-3) consistently made better grades than students in regular and regular/aide classes by the end of the 1994-1995 school year. In English, math, and science, the students in the small classes outscored their counterparts by over 10 points.  Since most colleges and universities require foreign language courses, investigators analyzed these data. Significantly more small-class students enrolled in such courses than regular and regular/aide-class students. Approximately 26 percent more small-class students than regular or regular/aide-class students from rural areas were enrolled in foreign language courses. In the inner-city sample, 20 percent more students from the small-class group than the other two class types are enrolled in a foreign language course. This information is especially important because it provides investigators with the first look at the academic "track" of STAR students.  Overview Of The Data Files The STAR-and-Beyond database contains raw student- and school-level data from a longitudinal experiment conducted in Tennessee beginning in 1985. The experiment lasted for four years, with a single cohort of students progressing from kindergarten through third grade. Achievement tests and non-achievement measures were administered annually. The experiment ended in 1989. However, student achievement data continued to be collected through high school, and ancillary studies resulted in other non-achievement variables being added to the data set.  The primary student-level data file contains information on 11,601 students who participated in the experimental phase for at least one year. Information for each of grades K-3 includes: • Demographic variables; • School and class identifiers; • School and teacher information; • Experimental condition (“class type”); • Norm-referenced and criterion-referenced achievement test scores; • Motivation and self-concept scores. Additional data, added to the records of some or all students, include: • Achievement test scores for the students when they were in grades 4 – 8, obtained from the Tennessee State Department of Education; • Teachers’ ratings of student behavior in grades 4 and 8; • Students’ self-reports of school engagement and peer effects in grade 8; • Course taking in mathematics, science, and foreign language in high school, obtained from student transcripts; • SAT/ACT participation and scores, obtained from ACT, Inc. and from Educational Testing Service; • Graduation/dropout information, obtained from high school transcripts and the Tennessee State Department of Education. Other data files include: (1) Student data on 1780 students in grades 1 – 3 in 21 comparison schools, matched with STAR schools but not participating in the experiment; (2) A school-level file with additional information about each o f the 80 STAR schools; (3) A school-level file with additional information about each high school attended by STAR students.