June 30, 2011 by Irene Sege
Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children
Two Harvard researchers have studied the long-term effects of class size and classroom quality in kindergarten through third grade and find that both produce lasting benefits into adulthood. In an article (“The Long-Term Effects of Early Childhood Education”) in the current issue of Communities & Banking, a quarterly journal of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman write that the effects of both small class size and high classroom quality show in higher rates of college attendance, savings, marriage and neighborhood quality.
Chetty and Friedman examined data from Tennessee’s large-scale Project Star. Between 1985 and 1989, about 11,500 children and their teachers were
