School panel seeks volunteers for class size policy reasearch

The Lincoln K-8 School Committee is creating a Class Size Research Committee to survey and summarize the recent educational research about the effects of class size on student achievement. The research committee will comprise one member of the School Committee and two to four members of the Lincoln community. We invite members of the community who are interested in participating in this effort to contact the School Committee and tell them about your relevant background.

The School Committee has reviewed its class size policy every seven years or so. The last comprehensive review was in 2007, and so now the School Committee wants to know whether there is recent research that might justify a broader review of the current policy. The specific aims of the research committee will be to identify any new research, to clarify the findings that might be relevant to the Lincoln Public Schools, and to present to the School Committee a summary of the high-quality evidence and insights that might guide a formal review of the whole policy. (The broader review would then consider expenditures on class size reduction in the context of the district’s educational and fiscal priorities and of the town’s spending plans and capacity.)

Any interested member of the community should submit his or her name to the School Committee at schoolcomm@lincnet.org by Friday, Feb. 27. The School Committee will appoint the members of the Research Committee at its meeting on March 5. TheClass Size Research Committee would then work for six weeks, and would submit its final report to the School Committee by April 20.