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Smart List: 60 People Shaping the Future of K-12 Education
The questions asked were not terribly demanding. Neither this post, nor the article linked to, nor the article linked by the article, deals with the “famous” reason why Bill Gates’ enthusiasm for small schools proved to be misplaced: Small schools are more likely to score high than large ones, and they’re also more likely to score low, something Bill should have known going in.
Also, the report isn’t about “small schools.” It’s about “small schooks of choice.” Was the control group “large schools of choice”? I don’t see that from the ES of the MDRC report. Also, without reading the whole report, I can’t tell the extent to which the high performance of the schools was due to a high drop-out rate of students uncomfortable with a demanding school atmosphere, which has been a “famous” issue with KIPP schools, among others.
Not all details about the design and analysis are given in the article cited above. You can find more details in the journal article ….
http://www.uaedreform.org/wp-content/uploads/Bloom_Unterman_2014.pdf
In answer to your questions. The control group was students in other NYC high schools. The authors ruled out differential attrition as an explanation of the superior impact of the small schools.