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This paper focuses on the influence of high school science class size on students' achievement in introductory college science courses and on the variation of teacher practice across class size. Surveys collected information about high school science class experiences from 2754 biology, 3521 chemistry, and 1903 physics students across 36 public and 19 private institutions from 31 different states. The first analysis includes a cross-tabulation of 6 different class sizes and the frequencies of teacher practices reported by students. The second analysis includes a multiple linear regression of class size and student achievement. Results show no differences for pedagogy and student achievement until class sizes fall to 10 or fewer students. These findings suggest that incremental reductions in class size are likely not to have a significant impact on later student achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two important issues concerning US education: first do monetary inputs affect educational achievement; and second, if monetary inputs do affect educational achievement, how does the US compare internationally, when considering both achievement and fiscal effort? We use several national and international reading and mathematics achievement tests as educational outputs; and US state and international income and educational expenditures per capita as inputs. Given our use of aggregate data we focus on describing the relationship between educational inputs and outputs at the state or national level. Still, our results indicate that there is an association between relative fiscal effort and achievement. We find that the US performs as expected, given its income and relative fiscal effort. We also find several US states to be as efficient as top performing foreign nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]