Experimental Estimates of Education Production Functions This
paper analyzes data from Project STAR, an experiment in which
11,600 Tennessee kindergarten students and teachers were
randomly assigned to one of three types of classes beginning in
the 1985-86 school year: small classes (13-17 students),
regular-size classes (22-25 students) teacher's aide. According
to the original design, students were to remain in their initial
class type through the third grade. In practice, however,
students in regular-size classes were randomly re-assigned at
the end of kindergarten, and about 10 percent of students moved
between class types in second and third grade. Attrition was
also common. Several statistical methods are used to investigate
the impact of these limitations. The main conclusions are: (1)
on average, performance on standardized tests increases by about
4 percentile points the first year students are assigned to a
small class, irrespective of the grade in which the student
first attends a small class; (2)