212 CHAPTER 7: Governing and Administering Public Education better afford high-quality personnel, a wider range of educational programs and special services, and efficient transportation systems. Most studies of this subject over the past sixty years have placed the most effective school district size as between ten thousand and fifty thousand students.37 Today, however, small is often considered better in school districts as well as in individual schools; the perception is there is too much waste in large systems. Proponents of smaller districts contend they are more cost effective and efficient. The small size is more inviting to parental involvement, and management of the system is more transparent to the citizens of the community than in larger districts.38 Arguments and counterarguments aside, the trend in American education has been toward larger school districts. By the 2008–2009 school year, 22.63 percent of all public-school students were in the 100 largest districts—.6 percent of all public-school districts, each serving 47,000 or more students. In most cases, the larger school systems are located in or near cities, the largest being the New York City system with approximately 1,041,000 students in more than 1,500 schools, followed by the Los Angeles Unified School District with 662,000 students.39
consolidation The combining of small or rural school districts into larger ones.
Consolidation School districts increase enrollment through population growth and through consolidation, when several smaller school districts combine into one or two larger ones. As Figure 7.3 illustrates, consolidation dramatically reduced the overall number of districts from more than 130,000 in 1930 to 13,567 in 2012, with the bulk of the decline taking place in the thirty years between 1930 and 1960.40 School districts consolidate for a variety of reasons; chief among them are the following: ●● Size. Larger school districts permit broader, more rigorous curriculum offerings and more specialized teachers. ●● Services. Larger districts justify hiring counselors, assistant principals, and team leaders not normally found in smaller districts. ●● Economics. There is an efficiency of scale where purchasing decisions (for example, books, paper, and art supplies) should yield significant cost savings when ordering in bulk. Consolidation also permits older buildings to be retired at considerable cost savings. Redundant high-salaried central-office positions may also be cut when school districts combine.41 Though thousands of districts were consolidated in the earlier part of the previous century as the United States transitioned away from a rural economy, state legislatures Donna Driscoll, Dennis Halcoussis, and Shirley Svorny, “School District Size and Student Performance,” Economics of Education Review (April 2003), pp. 193–201; and John T. Jones, Eugenia F. Toma, and Ron W. Zimmer, “School Attendance and District and School Size,” Economics of Education Review (April 2008), pp. 140–148. 38 Craig Howley and Robert Bickel, “The Influence of Scale,” American School Board Journal (March 2002), pp. 28–30; S. L. Bowen, “Is Bigger That Much Better? School District Size, High School Completion, and Post-Secondary Enrollment Rates in Maine,” Maine View, (2007), pp. 1–5; and Joshua Bendor, Jason Bordoff, and Jason Furman, An Education Strategy to Promote Opportunity, Prosperity, and Growth (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2007), p. 14. 39 Jennifer Sable, Chris Plotts, and Lindsey Mitchell, Characteristics of the 100 Largest Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts in the United States: 2008–2009 (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2011) at http://nces .ed.gov/pubs2011/2011301.pdf (January 19, 2015); and “2013 AS&U 100: Largest School Districts by Enrollment,” American School & University at http://asumag.com/research /2013-asu-100-largest-school-districts-enrollment#node-34011 (January 19, 2015). 40 Nora Gordon, The Causes of Political Integration: An Application to School Districts (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2006); and Digest of Education Statistics, 2013, Table 214.30 (January 2014) at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables /dt13_214.30.asp (May 28, 2015). 41 Glenn Cook, “The Challenges of Consolidation,” American School Board Journal (October 2008), p. 10; and William D. Duncombe and John M. Yinger, “School District Consolidation: The Benefits and Costs,” School Administrator (May 2010), pp. 10–17. 37
Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
