Emil J. Haller

Predictors of High School Academic Course Offerings: The Role of School Size

Relationships between high school structural characteristics and curricular offerings are examined in this study using survey data from High School and Beyond. Emphasis is placed on the role played by high school size. The study’s central thesis is that the effects of school size on the curriculum will vary depending on subject area, the character of the course being offered (e.g., advanced versus remedial), and the setting in which the school is located. The influence of other structural features, most notably socioeconomic status (SES), unionization, urban location, and grade configuration, are also examined. Findings are consistent with the basic proposition that the effects of size are differentiated within high schools. The findings have implications for assessments of equality of educational opportunity as well as for the renewed debate over optimal high school size.

High School Size and Student Indiscipline: Another Aspect of the School Consolidation Issue?

School consolidation is again an issue in rural areas. Traditionally, such controversies have turned on criteria of equity and efficiency: Large schools are alleged to be more equitable and more efficient than small ones. However, the research on both criteria is exceedingly ambiguous; neither goal seems to be routinely served by making small rural schools larger. This article investigates another possible criterion for judging the desirability of creating larger schools, student indiscipline. Both theory and evidence suggest that large schools are more disorderly than small ones. Using data from a nationally representative sample of high schools, this study suggests that creating larger institutions will increase student misbehavior. However, the increase experienced by small rural high schools—those most at risk of consolidation—will border the trivial. Thus, indiscipline provides no less ambiguous a criterion for deciding consolidation issues than does equity or efficiency. Arguably, when “technical” criteria provide no clear guidelines for an important public policy decision, citizen preferences should be determinative.

Pupil Race and Elementary School Ability Grouping: Are Teachers Biased Against Black Children?

This study investigates the claim that pupil race affects the reading grouping decisions of elementary school teachers, causing black children to be overrepresented in lower ability groups. Analyses were carried out of teachers’ remarks made while engaged in the process of grouping children, and of the racial composition of the groups they actually formed. Taken together, these analyses failed to uncover evidence of conscious or unconscious racial bias, though black pupils were much more likely to be placed in the lowest groups.

School Size and Program Comprehensiveness: Evidence From High School and Beyond

The demand for school improvement has increased concern over the ability of small high schools to offer comprehensive programs and has raised anew the pressure for consolidation. However, although large schools clearly offer more courses than do small ones, it is less clear that they offer more comprehensive programs. In this study we use the High School and Beyond data to address three questions, (a) Are the math, science, and foreign language programs of large schools more comprehensive than those of small ones? (b) For any given school size, are these programs equally comprehensive? (c) Is there some point on the school size continuum beyond which comprehensiveness shows little change? We find that although large schools offer more comprehensive programs than do small ones, there is substantial variation in comprehensiveness among the three programs at any given school size, and there is no common point where the programs of smaller schools approximate the comprehensiveness of larger ones.

Questionnaires and the Dissertation in Educational Administration

This study tests a model intended to help account for the prevalence of questionnaire methodologies among doctoral students in educational administration. Weaknesses of such methodologies for research on administrative phenomena are discussed, and several attributes of students and their doctoral programs are advanced as promoting these methods.

Does Socioeconomic Status Bias the Assignment of Elementary School Students to Reading Groups

This study examined the standardized reading test scores, family socioeconomic status (SES), and teacher-assigned reading groups of pupils in 37 midelementary classrooms from four school districts. The analysis assessed: (1) the relative relationship of SES and reading test measurements with assignments to reading groups; (2) the relative degree of socioeconomic segregation resulting from grouping based on teacher judgments and reading tests; (3) the relationship of teachers’ own SES background to the extent of socioeconomic segregation in their classrooms. Little support was found for the conjecture that either pupil or teacher social class plays a major role in reading grouping in elementary schools.

Fiscal Accountability for Low-Wealth School Districts: Perceptions and Consequences of High Local Taxes for Education Governance:

Low wealth localities pose special challenges to centralized officials seeking to raise pupil performance. Similarly, there are concerns about the effects of high local taxes on the ability and willingness of localities to respond positively to centrally developed increased performance standards. The New York State Board of Regents recently funded a study that examines decision making processes and accountability mechanisms within low wealth and high taxation school districts. In this article, the authors report what has been learned from this study about these districts. They place their findings in the larger context of what needs to be known about the use of indicator data to improve the accountability of schooling units. The research offers insights into how communities cope with exceptionally limited wealth bases and the attendant upward pressures on local tax rates. The article concludes with a discussion about implications.