New research from the Education Policy Initiative at the U-M Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy found that many Michigan K-12 students experience very large core classes — with 40 or more students — but that some students are at greater risk.
“Data on class size is something you think should be widely available,” said lead author Brian Jacob, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and professor of economics. “But it’s not something that historically you could just look up on the web.”
Jacob’s analysis found that 95 percent of first-graders and 98 percent of seventh- and ninth-graders were in core courses larger than the traditionally reported Michigan student-teacher ratio (for 2013-14) of 18-to-1.
