The Effect of Primary School Size on Academic Achievement

School quality, broadly defined, is an impor-tant predictor of educational attainment and labor-market success (e.g., Altonji & Mansfield, 2011). School size is one potential measure of school quality over which policymakers have some control. For example, the school consolida-tion movement in the United States in the middle of the 20th century was predicated on the notion that larger schools could offer more specialized instruction, increase administrative efficiency, and reduce per-student costs by exploiting econo-mies of scale (e.g., Berry, 2006; Conant, 1959; Duncombe & Yinger, 2007). The movement suc-cessfully eliminated about 70 % of schools and increased the average school enrollment from less than 100 to about 440 between 1930 and 197