David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

example, has historically had quite large
elementary school classes. The country’s
educational system uses the
“Maimonides Rule,” named after the
twelfth-century rabbi who decreed that
classes should not exceed forty children.
That means elementary school classes
can often have as many as thirty-eight or
thirty-nine students. Where there are
forty students in a grade, though, the
same school could suddenly have two
classes of twenty. If you do a Hoxby-
style analysis and compare the academic
performance of one of those big classes
with a class of twenty, the small class
will do better. That shouldn’t be
surprising. Thirty-six or thirty-seven