Friday, July 2, 2021

Insights, Made Fresh Daily

Some Unexpected Results

Counterintuitively, student-to-teacher ratios were not a reliable predictor of exam success

David White | Friday, July 2, 2021

This scatterplot shows the relationship between NYC schools’ average class size and their state exam results. The underlying data was released by the New York State Education Department (NYSED).

The data graphic shows the English Language Arts (ELA) and Math exam scores of New York City public school students in Grades 3–8. While there was a small amount of correlation between small class sizes and high exam marks, there were in fact many examples where schools with large class sizes earned high scores. Conversely, there were also several schools with small class sizes who did not perform as well as their peers.