Star Trek's Mr. Spock may wish that for you, but Project STAR scientists actually know how to make it happen.

That's a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

Project STAR was a controlled experiment on the effects of small classes. Thousands of  Tennessee children were randomly assigned to classes with either 22 to 25 children or 13 to 17 children, from kindergarten through grade three. This experiment lasted from 1985 to 1989 and the students have been tracked ever since. According to Science Daily, STAR (it stands for Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) is the "the highest quality long-term experiment to date" in education.

The children in small classes seemed to benefit for many years afterwards. They earned higher scores, got in less trouble, and were more likely to graduate from high school.

The latest conclusions from the STAR data are based on the health and wealth correlates of educational attainment. The researchers reasoned like this: People who graduate from high school tend to earn more and have longer lifespans than those who don't graduate. So to the extent that STAR helped more children graduate, it also helped them live longer and prosper more -- to the tune of 1.7 years of life and nearly $170,000 in lifetime earnings, according to their computer model.

That logic's not airtight, but their results are certainly suggestive: More money for schools (to pay for smaller classes) may be a cost-effective public health investment.

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