The Size of High Schools in South Dakota as a Variable in Developmental Ability

This study attempts to show the relationship of developed ability and achievement to size of high school. The feeling that an ultimate criteria for determining optimum school size should be student achievement prompted an investigation based on the following purposes: 1) to compare the ability and developed ability of student groups from high schools differing in enrollments, using the variable size of high school; 2) to determine whether a relationship exists between first year college grade point average and size of high school; and 3) using the same variable as mentioned previously, to contrast college freshmen English grades. The student sample used for comparing ability and developed ability encompassed 5, 068 South Dakota high school seniors during the 1956-57 school year who met specified criteria. Comparison of college freshmen grade point averages and English scores included the students from this group who entered South Dakota colleges in the fall of 1957 and completed the first year of college. Conclusions of the study were: 1) ability levels of ninth grade students from different size high schools are relatively the same; 2) developed ability of twelfth grade students from different size high schools is significantly different, with a clear and significant difference favoring the larger school groups over the smaller school groups; 3) size of high school has little influence on the achievement of students during their first year of college; and 4) students from different size high schools attain relatively the same English scores during their freshmen year of college