Size of Schools and School Districts

child can develop. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, research suggests that students in the Tulsa Area Community School Initiative (TACSI) that implemented the community schools characteristics outperformed noncommunity schools in math by 32 points and reading by 19 points. TACSI schools also exhibited greater student trust of teachers, school identification among students, and parent trust in school than comparison schools.32 Programs such as these are especially helpful for low-income families.

As part of the community schools plan, schools share their personnel and facilities with other community agencies or even businesses. In return, schools may expect to share facilities, equipment, and personnel with other community agencies, local businesses, and area universities. This type of sharing is especially important in a period of retrenchment and school budget pressures.

7-1f size of schools and school districts

Educators have long debated the question of size: How many students should be enrolled in a single district? How large should a school be? Five decades ago, James Conant argued that the most effective high schools were the ones large enough to offer comprehensive and diversified facilities. More recently, however, other educators have contended that small schools are more effective.33

In 1987, after reviewing several studies, two researchers concluded that high schools should have no more than 250 students. Larger enrollments, according to this analysis, result in a preoccupation with control and order, and the anonymity of a large school makes it harder to establish a sense of community among students, teachers, and parents.34 More than twenty-five years later, school systems are applying these lessons to high schools. For example, a recent study of more than 100 small high schools in New York City, known as small schools of choice (SSCs), which are limited to 100 students per grade, found that the SSCs improved graduation rates of educationally and economically disadvantaged students without increasing school operating costs.35

Countering the small school research, past studies indicated that learning is most effective in high schools of 600 to 900 students; learning declines as school size shrinks, and students in very small schools learn less than students in moderate-size schools. Teachers in schools with populations larger than the 600 to 900 range were more likely to report that apathy, tardiness, and drug use were serious problems than were teachers in relatively smaller schools.36

The debate about school size parallels similar disputes about the optimum size of school districts. Larger school districts, according to their proponents, offer a broader tax base and reduce the educational cost per student; consequently, these districts can

32Curt M. Adams, The Community School Effect Evidence from an Evaluation of the Tulsa Area Community School Initiative (Tulsa, OK: The Oklahoma Center for Educational Policy, 2010); Coalition for Community Schools, What is a Community School? at www.communityschools .org/aboutschools/what_is_a_community_school.aspx (January 21, 2015); and Virginia Myers, “Community Schools,” American Teacher (May 2012), pp. 12–15. 33James B. Conant, The American High School Today (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959); and Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi, “A Review of Empirical Evidence about School Size Effects: A Policy Perspective,” Review of Educational Research (January 1, 2009), pp. 464–490. 34Thomas B. Gregory and Gerald R. Smith, High Schools as Communities: The Small School Reconsidered (Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa, 1987); and Hanna Skandera and Richard Sousa, “Why Bigger Isn’t Better,” Hoover Digest (Summer 2001). 35Howard Bloom and Rebecca Unterman, “Can Small High Schools of Choice Improve Educational Prospects for Disadvantaged Students?” Journal of Policy Analysis & Management (Spring 2014), pp. 290–319. 36David C. Berliner, “By the Numbers: Ideal High School Size Found to Be 600 to 900,” Education Week (April 24, 1996), p. 10; Board on Children, Youth and Families, Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students’ Motivation to Learn (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2003); and Brian V. Carolan, “An Examination of the Relationship among High School Size, Social Capital, and Adolescents’ Mathematics Achievement,” Journal of Research on Adolescence (September 2012), pp. 583–595.

consolidation The combining of small or rural school districts into larger ones. 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 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

37Donna 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. 38Craig 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. 39Jennifer 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). 40Nora 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). 41Glenn 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.