Reducing the number of students in a classroom is a popular strategy for raising test scores, and it’s one that has some evidence of success. But states trying out the idea have learned the hard way that the price tag can be hefty, leaving some policymakers to wonder, “Was it really worth the expense?”

Now the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, can help. Launched last year by a pair of economists, the center specializes in calculating and comparing the long- and short-term costs—and probable payoffs—of different educational strategies that promise to improve students’ lives.

“Educators never really connect the effects of education with the costs,” said Henry M. Levin, the Teachers College professor who co-directs the center with Clive R. Belfield, an assistant professor of economics at Queens College at the City University of New York. “Educators look at costs as constraints on spending and then they ask, ‘What do we know about what seems to work?’ They never seem to connect the two.”

Studies conducted by the center so far have examined the costs and benefits of preschool and dropout-prevention programs, the payoffs from state-specific investments in education in Minnesota and California, and the public savings that might result nationwide from strategies that bring the high school graduation rate for black males up to that of white males. (The answer to the last question, the economists say, is $3.98 billion a year.)

Source: Education Week, 4.8.08