The Non-Cognitive Returns to Class Size

Thomas Dee and Martin West, “The Non-Cognitive Returns to Class Size, ” NBER Working Paper 13994, 2008. “Our results indicate that smaller classes in 8th grade lead to improvements in measures of student engagement ….Using the estimated earnings impact of these non-cognitive skills and the direct cost of a class-size reduction, the implied internal rate of return from an 8th-grade class-size reduction is 4.6 percent overall, but 7.9 percent in urban schools.”