Something to keep in mind is that East has no school district. Almost a decade (maybe more) ago Portsmouth City Schools wisely decided to consolidate. The Sciotoville Community banded together to create a community school (a charter school). It would be really hard to consolidate a school with no district.
That being said, I am a fervent supporter of consolidation. As much as I love athletics and the community spirit created by these schools, they don't matter. To be blunt, the small school districts put our kids at a disadvantage from the beginning. Kids in Scioto County do not have access to the higher level of classes and competition that kids in larger cities see. I know this all too well having grown up in Scioto County and leaving the state to go to college. Though it was ultimately a great experience, I was at a disadvantage because of where I had been born.
Currently, I live in Evanston Illinois. Evanston is the closest suburb to Chicago (shares a border) and has a population of 75,000. Scioto County has a population of 75,000. Evanston has 1 school. Scioto County has 10 public schools. Evanston Township High School is a big school but it produces many successful students and athletic programs.
One school for Scioto County would be a great idea, but maybe not the most practical application. Instead, the county could (and should) be divided into 2 or 3 schools. Let Portsmouth maintain its school (with an expanded district) and then have a school for the rural areas. Or, divide the county into east and west or north and south. More money, better academics, better athletics, more competition.
Consolidation Topic
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maintenanceman
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
Maybe I'm missing something, but how would a D1 school create a better education than a small school? Classes would have to be larger, much larger. Would be like taking a core class at Ohio State where the Instructor has to use a microphone. Absolutely no one-on-one. Kids are scared to ask a question.
Then athletically, you have tons of good athletes that either won't see the field or won't play because they know they won't. Go to a Colarain or St. Xavier game where they dress 80. They have guys that don't play who would start for any team in our county. What about basketball where they dress 12 and most have an 8 man rotation? I just don't see how this is a good thing for kids.
The other thing is money. To have a public school you have to bus? Is driving all-over the county saving money in diesel fuel? At what point does that overcome the upkeep on a school? Right know you have kids out in the county who ride the bus for an hour every day. What would it be with consolidation?
Then athletically, you have tons of good athletes that either won't see the field or won't play because they know they won't. Go to a Colarain or St. Xavier game where they dress 80. They have guys that don't play who would start for any team in our county. What about basketball where they dress 12 and most have an 8 man rotation? I just don't see how this is a good thing for kids.
The other thing is money. To have a public school you have to bus? Is driving all-over the county saving money in diesel fuel? At what point does that overcome the upkeep on a school? Right know you have kids out in the county who ride the bus for an hour every day. What would it be with consolidation?
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maintenanceman
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
You seem to have a very strange view of how all of this would work. Why would classes need to be bigger? Consolidation wouldn't put two schools together and only use the staff from one of those schools. Of course, some teachers would lose jobs, but the hope would be that the best teachers get to keep doing there thing.
Busing would be a different issue, but the busing budget would be increased. Once again, you aren't joining two or more schools together and using the budget of only one of those schools.
I love sports, but to be honest I couldn't care less about who gets to play and who doesn't. What is most important is that the levels of academics at the school are increased.
Busing would be a different issue, but the busing budget would be increased. Once again, you aren't joining two or more schools together and using the budget of only one of those schools.
I love sports, but to be honest I couldn't care less about who gets to play and who doesn't. What is most important is that the levels of academics at the school are increased.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
Ok, so some teachers do loose jobs. So no matter how the schools are combined, the teacher to student ratio would decrease. So how does lumping them all in one building instead of two make a better education?
And remember teachers are union. The best teachers don't necessarily work. The most senior ones do.
And remember teachers are union. The best teachers don't necessarily work. The most senior ones do.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
I don't think I totally agree that athletics and community spirit don't really matter. I think sometimes we overemphasize how important they are but they do have a influence on who we are as adults. Kids in this area may be at a disadvantage in some areas but I think they have advantages in other areas. There have been many successful people that I went to school that went away to major universities in big cities and many stayed there until they started families. When they started families many moved back to scioto co to raise their kids the same way they were raised.maintenanceman wrote:Something to keep in mind is that East has no school district. Almost a decade (maybe more) ago Portsmouth City Schools wisely decided to consolidate. The Sciotoville Community banded together to create a community school (a charter school). It would be really hard to consolidate a school with no district.
That being said, I am a fervent supporter of consolidation. As much as I love athletics and the community spirit created by these schools, they don't matter. To be blunt, the small school districts put our kids at a disadvantage from the beginning. Kids in Scioto County do not have access to the higher level of classes and competition that kids in larger cities see. I know this all too well having grown up in Scioto County and leaving the state to go to college. Though it was ultimately a great experience, I was at a disadvantage because of where I had been born.
Currently, I live in Evanston Illinois. Evanston is the closest suburb to Chicago (shares a border) and has a population of 75,000. Scioto County has a population of 75,000. Evanston has 1 school. Scioto County has 10 public schools. Evanston Township High School is a big school but it produces many successful students and athletic programs.
One school for Scioto County would be a great idea, but maybe not the most practical application. Instead, the county could (and should) be divided into 2 or 3 schools. Let Portsmouth maintain its school (with an expanded district) and then have a school for the rural areas. Or, divide the county into east and west or north and south. More money, better academics, better athletics, more competition.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
Just a question...Is anyone on this blog from Northwest? I remember when I was in school that Northwest was not around and we had Otway, Rarden and I can not remember the other school..I ma wondering how the combining of those schools into Northwest went as far as academics? I was around when Portsmouth first went to Junior High and I was at Wilson and we had to merge with Grant, Massie and Scudder..that actually went very well..I know I am talking about 7,8 and 9th grade and not moving a great distance to go to school...How about it Northwest,,,you are a great example of combing....wipalawalt
Re: Burg and Green combining?
The state can force a consolidation of a district from what I understand. In the mid 1970s the Gallia County had 5 different schools districts. They were Gallipolis City, Hannan Trace, Southwestern, Kyger Creek and North Gallia. Because Kyger Creek was a small school district with a huge tax base (Kyger Creek and Gavin power plants) the state pulled the of the county schools charters and forced Kyger Creek to consolidate into the Gallia County Local School District. Now the county only has two districts. Instead of having 4 school boards for each of the small high schools it was merged into one Gallia County Local School Board. The district operated 4 high schools for almost 20 years until it was forced to give up 30% (I think that's the number) of it power plant tax base to other districts in which transmission lines passed through. It crippled the district financially and forced the school board to consolidate the 4 high schools into the old Kyger Creek building and rename it River Valley. After the district emerged from the state loan fund, it decided to reopen the old Hannan Trace building as South Gallia. From what I understand, the state can force a merger of districts but it's the local board of education that will decide what schools to operate unless once again you want state matching funds for a new high school. As many know Gallia County Local just opened new high schools for South Gallia and River Valley. The district could have waited to come up on the state matching funds list but if they did they had already been told they would have to once again consolidate South Gallia and River Valley. Because the district has such a large tax base with the two power plants, the board of education passed on the states money and the district passed a levy only using local tax dollars. That has been Gallia County's experience when it comes to consolidation in name only, to actual consolidation of the 4 high schools, then to de-consolidation from one high school to two high schools. It's confusing I know. The lesson is if you take the state matching funds or are in the state loan fund, you will have to play by there rules. I am sure we will face the consolidation discussion again in the future but it will be in the distant future. Because of the geography of the two districts in Gallia County, another consolidation will only work if it involves the city district.
We were very lucky at South Gallia on how consolidation affected our school. While a lot of us old timers do miss Hannan Trace, we also recognize we were able to get all the benefits of consolidation (new high school/junior high and other new facilties, ect) and come out of it with an enrollment maybe 20-25% larger than the old Hannan Trace. The biggest pain has been finding a conference with similar size schools. The SOC turned us down I think a million times and thank goodness the TVC welcomed us in despite our distance from several of the schools.
We were very lucky at South Gallia on how consolidation affected our school. While a lot of us old timers do miss Hannan Trace, we also recognize we were able to get all the benefits of consolidation (new high school/junior high and other new facilties, ect) and come out of it with an enrollment maybe 20-25% larger than the old Hannan Trace. The biggest pain has been finding a conference with similar size schools. The SOC turned us down I think a million times and thank goodness the TVC welcomed us in despite our distance from several of the schools.
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yabbadabbadoo
- SEOP
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
I believe Governor-Elect is speaking of consolidating administrations of districts, not the actual physical districts. Building more buildings at this point - and asking for money to do it - is political suicide (especially from a Republican) and he knows it.
The only talk of physical consolidations is happening at barber shops and on this site.
However, for discussions sake, I offer my synopsis which was posted three years ago (my apologies for the formatting):
“In the Power of Their Ideas, Meier (1995) suggests that we abandon adolescents just at the time when they most often need to be in the company of trusted adults†(Wasley, p.3)
“Some districts might be too big, and might do better to de-consolidate†(Cook, 2002, p. 4)
According to the multitude of research, smaller schools need to be the priority of any impoverished school district.
Introduction
The word community has no better definition than in small-town America, where everything that encompasses it is intertwined. Businesses, homes, people, school: all melded and compressed so densely that one is often not officially disassociated or disconnected with the others. This “small-town†aura yields many advantages, one prominent being the relaxed atmosphere. The same comfortability lends itself to many dynamics, none of which more profound than the success of the local school district.
Having come from an academically successful, 1,300-1,500 student school system, I can stand assured that smaller schools are completely capable of producing a coherent and competent curriculum that would satisfy even those who need to be challenged. My hometown in south-central Ohio claims around 5,000 people within its limits, yet many residents feel they probably are familiar with the majority of the populace. Every aspect of the community travels in a circle where one is always associated with the others in a homeostatic state. In this condition, problems are often solved consistently, where bureaucracy - in a more formal setting - would have normally intervened causing more distress.
With this familiarity, I have birthed a fascination with the similarities and successes of smaller schools. Alongside said obsession come the obligatory research of others’ research, and the results are staggering: Smaller schools are usually more successful than larger ones, especially where poverty is a concern. The following presentation is two-fold. First, I will present a small portion of the mountain of evidence that proves, in low socio-economic areas, schools of smaller size have been overwhelmingly more successful than larger ones. With this presentation will come pertinent statistics that validate this point. Lastly, I will provide an example of how one Appalachian Ohio school district could have used recent monies from the State of Ohio to deconsolidate their county-wide school system into smaller, more successful schools.
The Instigator: Consolidation
There exists no clear history on school consolidation in Ohio on the internet. In 1920, there were 271,000 public schools in the United States; by the late 1980s, there were only 83,000. The number of school districts also declined dramatically, by approximately 90 percent (Hylden, 2004, p.2). However, a large number of rural districts consolidated in the 1960’s in the face of new legislation that promised more funding to districts that consolidated:
Legislation providing free public transportation was passed by the state of Massachusetts in 1869, paving the way for consolidation of rural schools. The invention of the automobile and paving of roads allowed students to travel longer distances in shorter amounts of time, decreasing the need for the many one-room schools built by early settlers. (Rural School Consolidation Report, 2005, p.1)
This same deal was offered in many states from the 1930’s even to the present. The reasons for consolidations were/are many. “At issue in the consolidation movement have been concerns of efficiency, economics, student achievement, school size, and community identity.†(Rural School Consolidation Report, 2005, p.1). This belief was coupled with the notion that education could mimic many techniques used in industry.
Fitzwater defines “consolidation†in regards to schooling as “the merging of two or more attendance areas to form a larger school†(1953). In this sense, the term “consolidation†can be used when speaking of combining two or more school buildings into one school building (even in the same district). “Reorganization†stipulates only the merging of two independent districts. Most use the term “consolidation†meaning either of the two.
Conant’s Curse
A proper understanding of the case for small schools can only be had in light of the case for large schools, which was made by educational reformers like Ellwood Cubberley and James Conant. Their opinions have been the prevailing wisdom in the United States for nearly a century. A hundred years ago, when this policy first began to be advocated, the world of industry was highly influenced by what was known as the “scientific industrial management†model of manufacturing. Techniques to improve efficiency were transforming American industry, exemplified by Henry Ford’s revolutionary assembly-line system of mass production. These ideas filtered into the work of education reformers, who believed that the modern American school should be constructed with no less efficiency than the modern American factory (Hylden, 2004, p.5)
Conant, former President of Harvard University, published a groundbreaking book in 1959. The book, more than any other single contribution, was significant in the school consolidation movement; other contributors believed to assist in the consolidation movement are, among others, the Cold War and Sputnik. In this book, The American High School Today, Conant stated that the biggest problem in education was the small high school. He claimed that the elimination of small high schools would result in two benefits for public education: Increased cost-effectiveness (through economies of scale) and greater curricular offerings. A larger curriculum is seen as an obvious luxury; however, its importance in the grander scheme of education lies in the beholder. On the other hand, cost-effectiveness can not be ignored – especially by politicians who possess the necessary control to implement consolidation.
Hylden demonstrates his opinion – and Conant’s deficiencies - in his 2004 research:
To be fair, Conant did not specifically advocate the creation of megaschools with enrollments of over a thousand students: he defined “small high schools†as those with enrollments of under one hundred students. As Toch points out, however, his rhetoric “led educators to think in terms of vastly larger secondary schools (Toch, p.5). And as Conant did not choose to examine whether academic achievement was affected by school size, he provided no warning against creating schools that were too large. Conant’s advice was taken by many in the educational community, and the trend towards the construction of large, comprehensive high schools that had begun during the Progressive era continued on with renewed vigor. Many educators today still use Cubberley and Conant’s arguments in favor of the large-school status quo, defending the idea that large schools provide more resources to students more efficiently at lower cost, and are thus preferable to small schools. Their arguments, however, were wrong then, and they are wrong now (Hylden, 2004, p.7)
As a major figure in early debates over the merits of larger schools, Conant (1959) contended that “The enrollment of many American public high schools is too small to allow a diversified curriculum except at exorbitant cost†(p. 77). Though his vision of the ideal high school size only included 100 students per graduating class, a small school by today’s standards, Conant’s argument about the relationship between larger schools and a low-cost, comprehensive curriculum provided grounds for the policy shift toward larger schools.
Advocacy
The argument for the effectiveness for the smaller school is not a new one. For decades, researchers have studied the ineffectiveness of “mega-schools†and their distinct ability to lose sight of any relationship between teacher and student. Whether general or specific, smaller schools have consistently had advantages that larger schools simply can not obtain. Harvard University’s Jordan Hylden summarizes successfully:
A growing body of data shows clearly that small schools, by nearly all significant measurements, outperform large schools. Students in small schools perform better academically, graduate at higher levels, are more likely to attend college, and earn higher salaries later on in life. They participate more in extracurricular activities, have better rates of attendance, report greater positive attitudes towards learning, and are less likely to face school-related crime and violence. Their teachers report greater job satisfaction, and are more likely to feel as if they are succeeding in their work. Their administrators and teachers are often more able to identify problems, respond innovatively and effectively, and adapt to change. Their parents and relatives are more likely to become involved in the school (Hylden, 2004, pg. 4).
This statement seems all-encompassing and idealistic; however, Hylden is not alone. Barbera Lawrence also notes the distinct advantage according to financial strain:
For the past 30 years, no credible researcher has advocated large schools; in fact, education researchers have demonstrated consistently that small schools are the best places in which to educate students, particularly those children marginalized by low income and/or race (Lawrence, p.1)
Dr. Craig Howley of Ohio University has remained on the forefront of advocacy for the smaller school for the better part of two decades. Along with his wife Aimee, Dr. Howley has conducted much research on the topic, including state-confined work in Alaska as well as his home state of West Virginia, where school consolidation into larger districts is state law. His research was the first to discover the direct correlation between socio-economic status (SES), school size, and rate of effectiveness. He states:
Small rural schools, by contrast, tend to represent traditional arrangements, both in political and pedagogical terms; and reformers tend to see such schools as “backward†and corrupt. These judgments, based primarily on political and ideological grounds, attend little to the empirical findings about school size, which tend to show that small schools confer advantages in all locales to all but the highest-SES students (Howley, 2004, p.1).
He also reiterates some of Hylden’s findings:
Many of the claims currently made for smaller schools are difficult to warrant empirically, but several are comparatively well established: (1) impoverished children have higher achievement in smaller schools, (2) the link between poverty and achievement is weaker in smaller as compared to larger schools, (3) dropout rates are lower in smaller schools, and (4) participation rates in school activities are much higher in smaller schools (Howley, 2004, p.1)
However, as both Howley’s have found, the higher the SES level, the larger the school may become without a drop in effectiveness: “Up to the upper limit, the more affluent the community, the larger the school can be without damaging achievement levels†(Howley & Howley, 2004). Lee and Smith counter with a possible threshold: “Above the applicable upper limits, however, the larger the size the greater the damage done to the achievement of almost all students†(Lee & Smith, 1997).
The findings of SES level contrasted with school size are not confined to the Howley team from Ohio University. Researchers from across the country have found indistinguishable results in different locales with identical SES levels. Note Huang and Howley’s findings in Alaska as reported by John Alspaugh:
In a study of individual student achievement, Huang and Howley (1993) also found that small elementary schools in Alaska benefited disadvantaged students more than high SES students. Howley (1996) also reported similar findings for both elementary and high school students in West Virginia (Alspaugh, 2003, p.6).
As well as Alspaugh’s own findings:
With socioeconomic status held constant, the findings of this study imply that small schools appear to have an academic achievement advantage. This was more evident for schools in relatively impoverished areas than for schools form affluent areas (Alspaugh, 2003, p.17).
A Rural School and Community Trust found that the SES level and schools size phenomenon was found to be constant over multiple states. Its findings:
A series of studies in seven states (Alaska, California, Georgia, Montana, Ohio, Texas, and West Virginia) indicates that smaller schools reduce the harmful effects of poverty on student achievement and help students from less affluent communities narrow the academic achievement gap between them and students from wealthier communities. The implication is that the less affluent a community, the smaller the school and school district serving that community should be in order to maximize student achievement (A Rural School and Community Trust, 2002, p.5)
It generalizes by saying: “In more affluent communities, the impact of school and district size is quite small, but the poorer the community, the stronger the influence†(A Rural School and Community Trust, 2002, p.5), as well as “The achievement gap between children from more affluent and those from less affluent communities is narrowed in smaller schools and smaller districts, and widened in larger schools and larger districts (A Rural School and Community Trust, 2002, p.5). Overbay finds the same correlation in his studies: “This evidence suggests that smaller school size may have a positive impact on student achievement, but may be especially important for populations most at risk for school failure†(Overbay, 2003, p.5).
Fowler and Walberg conducted a study in 1991 of school size and student outcomes using 23 variables. Of these 23 they actually found that “the one most consistently associated with student achievement was district socioeconomic status†(Overbay, 2003, p.6). In other words, the financial welfare of all families in the district was the biggest deciding factor of effectiveness in these small districts. The second, according to the study, was the “percentage of students from low-income families in the school†(Fowler and Walberg,1991).
Cox states another general truth: "Behavior problems are so much greater in larger schools that any possible virtue of larger size is canceled out be the difficulties of maintaining an orderly learning environment." (Cox, 2002, p.10). This difficulty is consistent with teachers’ gripe about having too many students in any given class; it’s impossible to keep behavior to an acceptable level because you can’t keep all of the students engaged all of the time.
Financial Arguments for the Smaller School
The ever-present “economies of scale†was evoked – and is still evoked – as the clear, first priority indicator of the need to consolidate. This concept states that “a production process in which an increase in the number of units produced causes a decrease in the average cost of each unit†(Wikipedia, 2007). Economy of scale clearly rationalizes schools as businesses and students as “product.†This business-comparison of public schooling leads many to believe that decisions for adminstrating school districts can be made using business criteria. Consider:
The concept of economies of scale implies that it costs more per pupil to educate pupils in small school districts than in large school districts. Several studies have documented the relatively high per pupil costs in small districts, especially those caused by pupil-teacher ratios, fixed overhead, or purchasing. However, not all researchers agree that bigger districts are more cost-efficient; some also support the idea that diseconomies of scale may cause per pupil costs to increase again as the size of the school district increases beyond an optimal point (School District Size Factors, 1999, p.2)
The insistence on larger schools being more cost-efficient seems to be lost on more people than one might think, especially at the research level. Consider:
Big districts have failed to deliver. Up to a certain size districts can save costs by consolidating, but districts above that size begin to experience "diseconomies of scale," including misallocation of funds toward bureaucracy rather than instruction. While they deliver a wide range of academic courses and extracurricular activities, large districts don’t seem to measure up when it comes to teaching basic skills. When their standardized test scores are examined in light of the socioeconomic situation of the students, on average large districts’ test scores fall in the lower end of their expected ranges, while on average smaller districts’ test scores fall in the upper end of their ranges (Cox, 2002, p.2)
Cox states that there actually exists definitive proof that smaller districts are more cost-efficient as he cites Web and Ohm: “Webb & Ohm (1984) found smaller districts ‘more efficient than larger ones in both dollars per student and numbers of administrators per student’ †(Cox, 2002, p.7)†Antonucci provides explanation on what states like Colorado have already discovered when he says: “Paradoxically, the larger a school district gets, the more resources it devotes to secondary or even non-essential activities.†Mary Anne Raywid concluded that, “When viewed on a cost-per-student basis, they (small schools) are somewhat more expensive. But when examined on the basis of the number of students they graduate, they are less expensive than either medium-sized or large high schools.†(1999, p.2, EDO-RC-98-8). Funk et al. (1999) indicated that dropouts are three times more likely to be unemployed; two and a half more likely to receive welfare benefits, and over three times more likely to be in prison than high school graduates with no college. Therefore, “small schools help increase the number of economically productive adults and cut government costs.†(The Rural School and Community Trust, 2004).
The Rural School and Community Trust concludes effectively:
“School consolidation produces less fiscal benefit and greater fiscal cost than it promises. While some costs, particularly administrative costs may decline in the short run, they are replaced by other expenditures, especially transportation and more specialized staff. The loss of a school also negatively affects the tax base and fiscal capacity of the district. These costs are often borne disproportionately by low-income and minority communities.â€
Transportation Arguments for the Smaller School
For many larger schools – both individual buildings and entire districts – transporting students to and from campuses daily can have great impact. Often, students in larger districts, specifically those with one school building serving many students, must travel long distances morning and evening for their education. This voyage may not hamper the child. However, rural schools having larger populations usually indicate long distances between students on the outer edges of the district and the school buildings. This long commute can prove harmful to students’ ability to function both during school and afterwards.
A study performed in a Hocking County, Ohio county-wide school district by Dr. Aimee Howley and Elementary Principal Rod Ramage shows many of the detrimental effects of busing long distances:
Several of the reports provided to these researchers suggested that children who experienced long bus rides tended to participate in fewer after school activities. Children with the longest rides also reported little time to do homework, especially when compared with children who walked or had short rides. Furthermore, children who experienced the longest rides over rural roads described the physical exhaustion that resulted from those rides (Spence, 2000a; Spence, 2000b; Zars, 1998) (Ramage, Howley, 2005, p.2)
They continued elsewhere with the concerns of the length of the bus commute:
Parents reported ride length as another significant concern. In fact, in the interviews with those parents who commented on ride length, this concern was always the first mentioned. According to one parent, the "roads take too much time in bad weather. [Children are] getting home late ... after dark." Another noted that "the too-long ride hinders [the child's] performance. He is worn out and sleeps a lot in class." Several other parents also voiced concerns about early departure times (e.g., a 6 am pick up time when school didn't start until 8 am) and late arrival times after school (e.g., a 5 pm arrival time when school ended at 2:55 pm). In addition, parents commented that long rides were boring. As one parent noted, "it's too long. [My children] do not like assigned seats." Another said, "They get restless." According to another, children were expected to read during the long bus ride, but her child "hates to read." (Ramage, Howley, 2005, p.18).
Hylden speaks extensively of the deregatory impact of longer bus rides in this study from 2004:
…transportation costs, for example, are often prohibitive in large rural school districts. Rising fuel costs has made busing students highly expensive for many schools, sometimes to the point where consolidating two or more small rural schools actually becomes a more expensive proposition than leaving them as is. Studies have shown, too, that long bus rides often have the effect of negatively impacting students’ academic performance and discouraging involvement in extracurricular activities, simply due to the large chunks of time that bus rides remove from each day (Hylden, 2004, p.31).
Bussing students to and from schools adds another dimension to the consolidation issue. Lu and Tweeten (1973) found that achievement scores were reduced by 2.6 points for fourth-grade students for every hour spent riding a bus. High school students were not affected as adversely as students in elementary school, losing only0.5 points per hour spent riding a bus.
Eyre and Finn (2002) tell the story of a 4 year-old preschooler who rides the bus for 1 hour and 20 minutes each way-a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes a day. The child leaves home at 6:30 and gets home at 4:40 in the afternoon. In the winter the students are leaving their homes in the dark and returning in the dark.
As one can see, even a staple of American public school education like the school bus can hold hidden, detrimental characteristics. Bussing, for larger districts that might be spread out physically, can actually cause financial loss for school districts. More importantly, bussing can be harmful to academic success if experienced in the extreme.
Relationships
“Ernest Boyer in High School: A report on Secondary Education in America, John Goddard in A Place Called School, and Theodore Sizer in Horace’s Compromise all described the “too-large†size of many high schools as creating an impersonal and uncaring atmosphere which was detrimental to a positive learning environment (Toch, p. 11).
Deborah Meier, author of such titles as The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem , talks candidly on the topic of school size and its effects: “Large schools neither nourish the spirit nor educate the mind…What big schools do is remind most of us that we don’t count for a lot†(Meier, p.30). “Perhaps the most important element…is simply the fact that students and teachers know one another: instead of being cogs in a large, impersonal, bureaucratic machine, teachers and students at Meier’s schools know each other by name, and often form close relationships with one another†(Meier, p. 26).
Meier continues: “Small schools mean we can get to know a student’s work, the way he or she thinks…This close knowledge helps us demand more of them; we can be tougher without being insensitive and humiliating. It also means we know their moods and styles - whom to touch in a comforting way and whom to offer distance and space in times of stress. It means that every school feels responsible for every kid and has insights that when shared can open up a seemingly intractable situation to new possibilities†(Meier, p.111)
“Knowing one’s students matters, including, and perhaps especially, those who are hardest to know†(Meier, p.11).
Perhaps the single most important factor in the success of small schools is the degree of personalized attention that they make possible….But in large schools, Meier points out, such personal interaction is all too often impossible. In most large public high schools, with enrollments in the thousands, and in which each teacher is responsible for as many as 150 or even 200 students per day, it is simply not possible for teachers to know their students personally. Students who stand out for one reason or another-for high academic ability or athletic talent, as well as for severe academic and disciplinary problems-will receive some form of personalized attention, but the vast majority of “average†students will not. This means, among other things, that most student (likely as many as 70-80 percent) in large schools are deprived of meaningful communities of learning which include adults as vital, influential members (Hylden, 2004, p. 19).
Small school/learning unit proponents typically declare that a major reason these schools are safer and more successful than large schools is that staff members are much more likely to know all of their students well. When teachers and students are able to build relationships, both are motivated to work and to make a success of the schooling enterprise. Teachers, moreover, can become knowledgeable about students’ learning strengths and needs and identify ways to respond to them in a way that is not possible in the typical large high school (Cotton).
Significantly, this level of personalized attention often allows teachers to give extra help to the students who need it most. Students in large schools, since they usually do not form meaningful relationships with their teachers, are always in danger of “falling through the cracks†of the system. In small schools, teachers will be more able to know their students’ needs, and thus will be better able to respond to problems that may go unnoticed in a large school. In light of this, it is not surprising that disadvantaged students are found to respond particularly well to small-school environments. Personalized attention may directly benefit students in many ways. Students are likely to have higher levels of academic achievement when teachers are able to meet their specific academic and personal needs, and are in turn more likely to graduate. Numerous studies have shown that the relationships made in small schools enable adults to positively influence students’ post-high school choices, particularly with regard to college attendance (Raywid, p. 34-39).
Small schools, as a direct result of their smallness, are far less likely to allow vast numbers of students to fall through the cracks of the system. Small schools, with their cohesive and purposeful learning communities, in which all students receive personalized attention, and in which teachers, parents, and community members are heavily invested, are more likely to be characterized by high levels of expectation for every student. (Toch, p.14)
Another significant aspect of the normative climate of small schools, even if somewhat intangible, is the sense of belonging that many students feel. In large schools, most students, if they are not star quarterbacks or academic standouts, have trouble fitting into any sort of positive community. As a result, many students, simply to survive, form their own communities in which to belong, which are often directed towards negative ends (Hylden, 2004, p. 30)
“Small schools, on the other hand, do a much better job of including all of their students in a positive, learning-based culture. It is impossible to abolish cliques among teenagers, small schools force students of different backgrounds and interests to get to know one another, if only because there are fewer people to know…Teachers are better able to influence students in such environments, as both students and teachers feel themselves to belong to the same community: the school itself†(Hylden, 2004, p. 30, 31).
Personalized attention, effective governance, teacher collaboration, parent and community involvement, high expectations, low rates of violence, mutual respect—all of these are made easier in communities which are truly communities; where people truly feel bound together by their mutual effort towards a common goal (Hylden, 2004, p. 31). “The majority of the studies indicate that smaller schools promote educational attainment through creating a cohesive sense of community and facilitate the bonding of students with their schools†(Alspaugh, 1994, p. 4).
The time is ripe for educators to make the case for what research suggests and what our own experience has been telling us for years: Students do best in places where they can’t slip through the cracks, where they are known by their teachers, and where their improved learning becomes the collective mission of a number of trusted adults (Wasley, Fine, 2000, p.3).
Recently, larger schools have received a substantial amount of criticism, including charges of greater bureaucracy and lack of intimacy (Oxley, 1997), and lack of student engagement (Cotton, 1996), so proponents of smaller schools consistently cite evidence that the more intimate environment of smaller schools increases student engagement. In one of the earliest studies of the differences between large and small-school environments, Barker and Gump (1964) indicated that smaller schools offer students more opportunities for involvement and interaction. Studies conducted over the past two decades tend to affirm Barker and Gump’s argument, suggesting that students in smaller schools have better attendance, feel safer, experience fewer behavior problems, and participate more often in extracurricular activities (Fowler, 1995; Lee & Smith, 1993, 1997; Rutter, 1988, Overbay, 2003, p.5).
Small school advocates argue that there is a strong relationship between smaller schools and better interpersonal relations, as seen in the “evidence of increases in social bonding to teachers and school, self-esteem, academic self-concept, locus of control, and sociocentric reasoning†associated with smaller schools (Rutter, 1988, p. 31) (Overbay, 2003, p.5).
During the same decade, Columbia University research showed that small schools had “strengths of smallness†not evident in large schools (Nachtigal, 1982). The thought was that not only were small schools necessary, their strengths included a higher number of students involved in extra curricular activities, higher numbers of students taking academic courses, more attention by teachers due to lower pupil teacher ratio, and students who had a close connection to their communities (Bard, Gardener, Wieland, 2006, p.42).
Jim Lewis (2004) writing for Challenge West Virginia reported that students and parents observed that consolidated schools, with their larger enrollment, caused some students to feel anonymous resulting in students getting lost, falling behind and dropping out. Those students who are not particularly outgoing, who don’t cause discipline problems or are particularly outstanding in some area seem to disappear and fall through the cracks. Others, because of the autonomy, become anxious, unsure about themselves because of the separation from family and friends, often do not do well academically, become discipline problems, which causes them to give up on school and drop out (Bard, Gardener, Wieland, 2006, p.44).
“Smallness reportedly nurtured close and supportive relationships that in turn nurtured a shared sense of responsibility among school participants†(Howley and Howley, 2006, p.9). According to interviewees, the smallness of the district enabled all staff members to know all children and to intervene on their behalf, both with respect to academics and with respect to discipline. It allowed staff to take direct action to solve problems rather than entangling them in bureaucratic “red tape.†And it enabled the district to maintain a web of cross-generational connections that enriched relationships and perpetuated symbolic practices supporting those relationships (Howley and Howley, 2006, p.9).
Meier summarizes: “Students and teachers in schools of thousands cannot know one another well; and if we do not know one another, we may mishear one another. Families, teachers, staff, and students may assume disrespect where none was intended. The more diverse our students’ backgrounds, and the greater the gap between our faculty’s and kids’ cultures, the greater the misunderstanding may be…A culture of respect rests on mutual knowledge, and even then it’s hardly automatic. Small schools make such knowledge a possibility†(Meier).
Statistics
According to Hylden (2004), 60% of high school students in America attend high schools that serve more than 1,000 students.
We have closed nearly 70% of the schools in the United States since 1940 in a misguided effort to save money thorough consolidation. One result is that schools have swollen to the point that 28.8% have more than 1,000students. In some states, the percentage exceeds 30% and even 40%, and in Florida, more than half the students attend such schools (Lawrence, p. 1).
This statistic has not gone unnoticed. Even the richest person in the world has made a commitment to act upon the abundant research findings. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $350 million dollars towards transforming large, comprehensive high schools into smaller ones.
Small schools, in many studies, have been shown to have markedly fewer incidences of violence: a 1999 report of the U.S. Department of Education found that large schools have 875 percent more crime, 270 percent more vandalism, 378 percent more theft, 394 percent more physical attacks, 3,200 percent more robbery, and 1,000 percent more weapons incidents than small schools (The Rural Community and Trust, 2002).
The list of quantitative and qualitative findings reads as a who’s-who of educational research; uncovering similar findings:
- Increasing a state’s average school size was associated with a decline of one-third of a standard deviation in the rate of return to education for students educated there. In plain English… a 3.7 percent decline in earnings for a high school graduate (Berry, p.56-58).
- The large-scale quantitative studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s… firmly established small schools as more productive and effective than large ones (Raywid, 1999)
- Researchers at NYU have discovered that small high schools actually spend less money per graduate than large high schools, making them more economically efficient (Toch, p.10).
- In 1987, a study found that students in small schools report greater satisfaction than those in large schools, and drop out with less frequency (Pittman and Haughwout).
School size, as one researcher noted, “exerts a unique influence on students’ academic achievement, with a strong negative relationship linking the two: the larger the school, the lower the students’ achievement levels (Howley, 1994)
Conclusion
The disagreement over proper school size still echoes through Appalachia. These echoes are often shouted by the communitarians of West Virginia, many whose community schools have long since left to the theft of legislative consolidation. The echoes are felt in other regions of Appalachia, as well, and often in the name of monetary gains and larger curriculums. Even after abundant research showing the effects of such consolidation, many Appalachian states have continued to place their low socio-economic students at a disadvantage by throwing them in the deep end of mega-schools. One can only ponder how low this subgroup’s academic achievement must plummet before the mountain of research of the power of the Almighty Small School is appreciated and its advice followed.
References
- Alspaugh, J.W. 1998. The relationship of school and community characteristics to high school drop out rates. Retrieved July, 2006 from Academic Search Elite.
- Antonucci, Mike, “Mission Creep: How Large School Districts Lose Sight of the Objective -- Student Learning†Alexis de Tocqueville Institution Brief #176, November 17, 1999.
- Bard, Joe, Gardener, Clark, & Wieland, Regi. (2005). Rural School Consolidation Report. Prepared for the National Rural Education Association Executive Board.
- Berry, Christopher. “School Inflation,†Education Next, fall 2004, p. 56-58.
- Conant, James (1959). The American high school today: A first report to interested citizens. New York: McGraw Hill.
- Cox, David N. (January 2002). Big trouble: Solving education problems means rethinking super-size districts and schools. Retrieved may, 2006 from the Sutherland Institute. Web site: http://sutherlandinstitute.org/Publicat ... tricts.htm
- Cubberly, Elwood P. (1914). State and county educational reorganization. New York: Macmillan.
- Fine, M. & Wasley, P. A., (2000). Small schools and the issue of scale. New York: Bank Street College of Education.
- Fitzwater, C.O. (1953). Educational change in reorganized school districts. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
- Howley, Craig (2000). School district size and school performance. Rural Education Issue Digest. Retrieved August 2006 from AEL Web site: http://www.ael.org/rel/rural/pdf/digest3.pdf
- Howley, Craig & Bickel, Robert. (2001). Smaller districts: Closing the gap for poor kids. Retrieved March 2006. http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~howleyc/asbj2.htm
- Lee, V., & Smith, J. (1997). High school size: Which works best, and for whom? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19(3), 205-227.
- Lu, Y. & Tweeten, L. (1973). “The impact of busing on student achievement.†Growth and Change, 4(4), pp. 44-46.
- Meier, Deborah. The Power of Their Ideas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
- Overbay, A. (2003). School Size: A Review of the Literature. (Evaluation and Research Rpt. No. 03.03). Raleigh, NC: Wake County Public Schools.
- Pittman, R. B., and Haughwout, P. "Influence of High School Size on Dropout Rate." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 9/4 (Winter 1987): 337-343.
- Raywid, Mary Anne. “Small Schools: A Reform That Works,†Educational Leadership, 55 (4), p. 34-39.
- Ramage, W.R., & Howley, A. (2003). Children's experiences of long bus rides: Parents' perspectives. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
- The Rural School and Community Trust. Dollars and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools. Washington: KnowledgeWorks Foundation, 2002. http://www.ruraledu.org/docs/dollars.pdf
- Toch, Thomas. High Schools on a Human Scale. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.
The only talk of physical consolidations is happening at barber shops and on this site.
However, for discussions sake, I offer my synopsis which was posted three years ago (my apologies for the formatting):
“In the Power of Their Ideas, Meier (1995) suggests that we abandon adolescents just at the time when they most often need to be in the company of trusted adults†(Wasley, p.3)
“Some districts might be too big, and might do better to de-consolidate†(Cook, 2002, p. 4)
According to the multitude of research, smaller schools need to be the priority of any impoverished school district.
Introduction
The word community has no better definition than in small-town America, where everything that encompasses it is intertwined. Businesses, homes, people, school: all melded and compressed so densely that one is often not officially disassociated or disconnected with the others. This “small-town†aura yields many advantages, one prominent being the relaxed atmosphere. The same comfortability lends itself to many dynamics, none of which more profound than the success of the local school district.
Having come from an academically successful, 1,300-1,500 student school system, I can stand assured that smaller schools are completely capable of producing a coherent and competent curriculum that would satisfy even those who need to be challenged. My hometown in south-central Ohio claims around 5,000 people within its limits, yet many residents feel they probably are familiar with the majority of the populace. Every aspect of the community travels in a circle where one is always associated with the others in a homeostatic state. In this condition, problems are often solved consistently, where bureaucracy - in a more formal setting - would have normally intervened causing more distress.
With this familiarity, I have birthed a fascination with the similarities and successes of smaller schools. Alongside said obsession come the obligatory research of others’ research, and the results are staggering: Smaller schools are usually more successful than larger ones, especially where poverty is a concern. The following presentation is two-fold. First, I will present a small portion of the mountain of evidence that proves, in low socio-economic areas, schools of smaller size have been overwhelmingly more successful than larger ones. With this presentation will come pertinent statistics that validate this point. Lastly, I will provide an example of how one Appalachian Ohio school district could have used recent monies from the State of Ohio to deconsolidate their county-wide school system into smaller, more successful schools.
The Instigator: Consolidation
There exists no clear history on school consolidation in Ohio on the internet. In 1920, there were 271,000 public schools in the United States; by the late 1980s, there were only 83,000. The number of school districts also declined dramatically, by approximately 90 percent (Hylden, 2004, p.2). However, a large number of rural districts consolidated in the 1960’s in the face of new legislation that promised more funding to districts that consolidated:
Legislation providing free public transportation was passed by the state of Massachusetts in 1869, paving the way for consolidation of rural schools. The invention of the automobile and paving of roads allowed students to travel longer distances in shorter amounts of time, decreasing the need for the many one-room schools built by early settlers. (Rural School Consolidation Report, 2005, p.1)
This same deal was offered in many states from the 1930’s even to the present. The reasons for consolidations were/are many. “At issue in the consolidation movement have been concerns of efficiency, economics, student achievement, school size, and community identity.†(Rural School Consolidation Report, 2005, p.1). This belief was coupled with the notion that education could mimic many techniques used in industry.
Fitzwater defines “consolidation†in regards to schooling as “the merging of two or more attendance areas to form a larger school†(1953). In this sense, the term “consolidation†can be used when speaking of combining two or more school buildings into one school building (even in the same district). “Reorganization†stipulates only the merging of two independent districts. Most use the term “consolidation†meaning either of the two.
Conant’s Curse
A proper understanding of the case for small schools can only be had in light of the case for large schools, which was made by educational reformers like Ellwood Cubberley and James Conant. Their opinions have been the prevailing wisdom in the United States for nearly a century. A hundred years ago, when this policy first began to be advocated, the world of industry was highly influenced by what was known as the “scientific industrial management†model of manufacturing. Techniques to improve efficiency were transforming American industry, exemplified by Henry Ford’s revolutionary assembly-line system of mass production. These ideas filtered into the work of education reformers, who believed that the modern American school should be constructed with no less efficiency than the modern American factory (Hylden, 2004, p.5)
Conant, former President of Harvard University, published a groundbreaking book in 1959. The book, more than any other single contribution, was significant in the school consolidation movement; other contributors believed to assist in the consolidation movement are, among others, the Cold War and Sputnik. In this book, The American High School Today, Conant stated that the biggest problem in education was the small high school. He claimed that the elimination of small high schools would result in two benefits for public education: Increased cost-effectiveness (through economies of scale) and greater curricular offerings. A larger curriculum is seen as an obvious luxury; however, its importance in the grander scheme of education lies in the beholder. On the other hand, cost-effectiveness can not be ignored – especially by politicians who possess the necessary control to implement consolidation.
Hylden demonstrates his opinion – and Conant’s deficiencies - in his 2004 research:
To be fair, Conant did not specifically advocate the creation of megaschools with enrollments of over a thousand students: he defined “small high schools†as those with enrollments of under one hundred students. As Toch points out, however, his rhetoric “led educators to think in terms of vastly larger secondary schools (Toch, p.5). And as Conant did not choose to examine whether academic achievement was affected by school size, he provided no warning against creating schools that were too large. Conant’s advice was taken by many in the educational community, and the trend towards the construction of large, comprehensive high schools that had begun during the Progressive era continued on with renewed vigor. Many educators today still use Cubberley and Conant’s arguments in favor of the large-school status quo, defending the idea that large schools provide more resources to students more efficiently at lower cost, and are thus preferable to small schools. Their arguments, however, were wrong then, and they are wrong now (Hylden, 2004, p.7)
As a major figure in early debates over the merits of larger schools, Conant (1959) contended that “The enrollment of many American public high schools is too small to allow a diversified curriculum except at exorbitant cost†(p. 77). Though his vision of the ideal high school size only included 100 students per graduating class, a small school by today’s standards, Conant’s argument about the relationship between larger schools and a low-cost, comprehensive curriculum provided grounds for the policy shift toward larger schools.
Advocacy
The argument for the effectiveness for the smaller school is not a new one. For decades, researchers have studied the ineffectiveness of “mega-schools†and their distinct ability to lose sight of any relationship between teacher and student. Whether general or specific, smaller schools have consistently had advantages that larger schools simply can not obtain. Harvard University’s Jordan Hylden summarizes successfully:
A growing body of data shows clearly that small schools, by nearly all significant measurements, outperform large schools. Students in small schools perform better academically, graduate at higher levels, are more likely to attend college, and earn higher salaries later on in life. They participate more in extracurricular activities, have better rates of attendance, report greater positive attitudes towards learning, and are less likely to face school-related crime and violence. Their teachers report greater job satisfaction, and are more likely to feel as if they are succeeding in their work. Their administrators and teachers are often more able to identify problems, respond innovatively and effectively, and adapt to change. Their parents and relatives are more likely to become involved in the school (Hylden, 2004, pg. 4).
This statement seems all-encompassing and idealistic; however, Hylden is not alone. Barbera Lawrence also notes the distinct advantage according to financial strain:
For the past 30 years, no credible researcher has advocated large schools; in fact, education researchers have demonstrated consistently that small schools are the best places in which to educate students, particularly those children marginalized by low income and/or race (Lawrence, p.1)
Dr. Craig Howley of Ohio University has remained on the forefront of advocacy for the smaller school for the better part of two decades. Along with his wife Aimee, Dr. Howley has conducted much research on the topic, including state-confined work in Alaska as well as his home state of West Virginia, where school consolidation into larger districts is state law. His research was the first to discover the direct correlation between socio-economic status (SES), school size, and rate of effectiveness. He states:
Small rural schools, by contrast, tend to represent traditional arrangements, both in political and pedagogical terms; and reformers tend to see such schools as “backward†and corrupt. These judgments, based primarily on political and ideological grounds, attend little to the empirical findings about school size, which tend to show that small schools confer advantages in all locales to all but the highest-SES students (Howley, 2004, p.1).
He also reiterates some of Hylden’s findings:
Many of the claims currently made for smaller schools are difficult to warrant empirically, but several are comparatively well established: (1) impoverished children have higher achievement in smaller schools, (2) the link between poverty and achievement is weaker in smaller as compared to larger schools, (3) dropout rates are lower in smaller schools, and (4) participation rates in school activities are much higher in smaller schools (Howley, 2004, p.1)
However, as both Howley’s have found, the higher the SES level, the larger the school may become without a drop in effectiveness: “Up to the upper limit, the more affluent the community, the larger the school can be without damaging achievement levels†(Howley & Howley, 2004). Lee and Smith counter with a possible threshold: “Above the applicable upper limits, however, the larger the size the greater the damage done to the achievement of almost all students†(Lee & Smith, 1997).
The findings of SES level contrasted with school size are not confined to the Howley team from Ohio University. Researchers from across the country have found indistinguishable results in different locales with identical SES levels. Note Huang and Howley’s findings in Alaska as reported by John Alspaugh:
In a study of individual student achievement, Huang and Howley (1993) also found that small elementary schools in Alaska benefited disadvantaged students more than high SES students. Howley (1996) also reported similar findings for both elementary and high school students in West Virginia (Alspaugh, 2003, p.6).
As well as Alspaugh’s own findings:
With socioeconomic status held constant, the findings of this study imply that small schools appear to have an academic achievement advantage. This was more evident for schools in relatively impoverished areas than for schools form affluent areas (Alspaugh, 2003, p.17).
A Rural School and Community Trust found that the SES level and schools size phenomenon was found to be constant over multiple states. Its findings:
A series of studies in seven states (Alaska, California, Georgia, Montana, Ohio, Texas, and West Virginia) indicates that smaller schools reduce the harmful effects of poverty on student achievement and help students from less affluent communities narrow the academic achievement gap between them and students from wealthier communities. The implication is that the less affluent a community, the smaller the school and school district serving that community should be in order to maximize student achievement (A Rural School and Community Trust, 2002, p.5)
It generalizes by saying: “In more affluent communities, the impact of school and district size is quite small, but the poorer the community, the stronger the influence†(A Rural School and Community Trust, 2002, p.5), as well as “The achievement gap between children from more affluent and those from less affluent communities is narrowed in smaller schools and smaller districts, and widened in larger schools and larger districts (A Rural School and Community Trust, 2002, p.5). Overbay finds the same correlation in his studies: “This evidence suggests that smaller school size may have a positive impact on student achievement, but may be especially important for populations most at risk for school failure†(Overbay, 2003, p.5).
Fowler and Walberg conducted a study in 1991 of school size and student outcomes using 23 variables. Of these 23 they actually found that “the one most consistently associated with student achievement was district socioeconomic status†(Overbay, 2003, p.6). In other words, the financial welfare of all families in the district was the biggest deciding factor of effectiveness in these small districts. The second, according to the study, was the “percentage of students from low-income families in the school†(Fowler and Walberg,1991).
Cox states another general truth: "Behavior problems are so much greater in larger schools that any possible virtue of larger size is canceled out be the difficulties of maintaining an orderly learning environment." (Cox, 2002, p.10). This difficulty is consistent with teachers’ gripe about having too many students in any given class; it’s impossible to keep behavior to an acceptable level because you can’t keep all of the students engaged all of the time.
Financial Arguments for the Smaller School
The ever-present “economies of scale†was evoked – and is still evoked – as the clear, first priority indicator of the need to consolidate. This concept states that “a production process in which an increase in the number of units produced causes a decrease in the average cost of each unit†(Wikipedia, 2007). Economy of scale clearly rationalizes schools as businesses and students as “product.†This business-comparison of public schooling leads many to believe that decisions for adminstrating school districts can be made using business criteria. Consider:
The concept of economies of scale implies that it costs more per pupil to educate pupils in small school districts than in large school districts. Several studies have documented the relatively high per pupil costs in small districts, especially those caused by pupil-teacher ratios, fixed overhead, or purchasing. However, not all researchers agree that bigger districts are more cost-efficient; some also support the idea that diseconomies of scale may cause per pupil costs to increase again as the size of the school district increases beyond an optimal point (School District Size Factors, 1999, p.2)
The insistence on larger schools being more cost-efficient seems to be lost on more people than one might think, especially at the research level. Consider:
Big districts have failed to deliver. Up to a certain size districts can save costs by consolidating, but districts above that size begin to experience "diseconomies of scale," including misallocation of funds toward bureaucracy rather than instruction. While they deliver a wide range of academic courses and extracurricular activities, large districts don’t seem to measure up when it comes to teaching basic skills. When their standardized test scores are examined in light of the socioeconomic situation of the students, on average large districts’ test scores fall in the lower end of their expected ranges, while on average smaller districts’ test scores fall in the upper end of their ranges (Cox, 2002, p.2)
Cox states that there actually exists definitive proof that smaller districts are more cost-efficient as he cites Web and Ohm: “Webb & Ohm (1984) found smaller districts ‘more efficient than larger ones in both dollars per student and numbers of administrators per student’ †(Cox, 2002, p.7)†Antonucci provides explanation on what states like Colorado have already discovered when he says: “Paradoxically, the larger a school district gets, the more resources it devotes to secondary or even non-essential activities.†Mary Anne Raywid concluded that, “When viewed on a cost-per-student basis, they (small schools) are somewhat more expensive. But when examined on the basis of the number of students they graduate, they are less expensive than either medium-sized or large high schools.†(1999, p.2, EDO-RC-98-8). Funk et al. (1999) indicated that dropouts are three times more likely to be unemployed; two and a half more likely to receive welfare benefits, and over three times more likely to be in prison than high school graduates with no college. Therefore, “small schools help increase the number of economically productive adults and cut government costs.†(The Rural School and Community Trust, 2004).
The Rural School and Community Trust concludes effectively:
“School consolidation produces less fiscal benefit and greater fiscal cost than it promises. While some costs, particularly administrative costs may decline in the short run, they are replaced by other expenditures, especially transportation and more specialized staff. The loss of a school also negatively affects the tax base and fiscal capacity of the district. These costs are often borne disproportionately by low-income and minority communities.â€
Transportation Arguments for the Smaller School
For many larger schools – both individual buildings and entire districts – transporting students to and from campuses daily can have great impact. Often, students in larger districts, specifically those with one school building serving many students, must travel long distances morning and evening for their education. This voyage may not hamper the child. However, rural schools having larger populations usually indicate long distances between students on the outer edges of the district and the school buildings. This long commute can prove harmful to students’ ability to function both during school and afterwards.
A study performed in a Hocking County, Ohio county-wide school district by Dr. Aimee Howley and Elementary Principal Rod Ramage shows many of the detrimental effects of busing long distances:
Several of the reports provided to these researchers suggested that children who experienced long bus rides tended to participate in fewer after school activities. Children with the longest rides also reported little time to do homework, especially when compared with children who walked or had short rides. Furthermore, children who experienced the longest rides over rural roads described the physical exhaustion that resulted from those rides (Spence, 2000a; Spence, 2000b; Zars, 1998) (Ramage, Howley, 2005, p.2)
They continued elsewhere with the concerns of the length of the bus commute:
Parents reported ride length as another significant concern. In fact, in the interviews with those parents who commented on ride length, this concern was always the first mentioned. According to one parent, the "roads take too much time in bad weather. [Children are] getting home late ... after dark." Another noted that "the too-long ride hinders [the child's] performance. He is worn out and sleeps a lot in class." Several other parents also voiced concerns about early departure times (e.g., a 6 am pick up time when school didn't start until 8 am) and late arrival times after school (e.g., a 5 pm arrival time when school ended at 2:55 pm). In addition, parents commented that long rides were boring. As one parent noted, "it's too long. [My children] do not like assigned seats." Another said, "They get restless." According to another, children were expected to read during the long bus ride, but her child "hates to read." (Ramage, Howley, 2005, p.18).
Hylden speaks extensively of the deregatory impact of longer bus rides in this study from 2004:
…transportation costs, for example, are often prohibitive in large rural school districts. Rising fuel costs has made busing students highly expensive for many schools, sometimes to the point where consolidating two or more small rural schools actually becomes a more expensive proposition than leaving them as is. Studies have shown, too, that long bus rides often have the effect of negatively impacting students’ academic performance and discouraging involvement in extracurricular activities, simply due to the large chunks of time that bus rides remove from each day (Hylden, 2004, p.31).
Bussing students to and from schools adds another dimension to the consolidation issue. Lu and Tweeten (1973) found that achievement scores were reduced by 2.6 points for fourth-grade students for every hour spent riding a bus. High school students were not affected as adversely as students in elementary school, losing only0.5 points per hour spent riding a bus.
Eyre and Finn (2002) tell the story of a 4 year-old preschooler who rides the bus for 1 hour and 20 minutes each way-a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes a day. The child leaves home at 6:30 and gets home at 4:40 in the afternoon. In the winter the students are leaving their homes in the dark and returning in the dark.
As one can see, even a staple of American public school education like the school bus can hold hidden, detrimental characteristics. Bussing, for larger districts that might be spread out physically, can actually cause financial loss for school districts. More importantly, bussing can be harmful to academic success if experienced in the extreme.
Relationships
“Ernest Boyer in High School: A report on Secondary Education in America, John Goddard in A Place Called School, and Theodore Sizer in Horace’s Compromise all described the “too-large†size of many high schools as creating an impersonal and uncaring atmosphere which was detrimental to a positive learning environment (Toch, p. 11).
Deborah Meier, author of such titles as The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem , talks candidly on the topic of school size and its effects: “Large schools neither nourish the spirit nor educate the mind…What big schools do is remind most of us that we don’t count for a lot†(Meier, p.30). “Perhaps the most important element…is simply the fact that students and teachers know one another: instead of being cogs in a large, impersonal, bureaucratic machine, teachers and students at Meier’s schools know each other by name, and often form close relationships with one another†(Meier, p. 26).
Meier continues: “Small schools mean we can get to know a student’s work, the way he or she thinks…This close knowledge helps us demand more of them; we can be tougher without being insensitive and humiliating. It also means we know their moods and styles - whom to touch in a comforting way and whom to offer distance and space in times of stress. It means that every school feels responsible for every kid and has insights that when shared can open up a seemingly intractable situation to new possibilities†(Meier, p.111)
“Knowing one’s students matters, including, and perhaps especially, those who are hardest to know†(Meier, p.11).
Perhaps the single most important factor in the success of small schools is the degree of personalized attention that they make possible….But in large schools, Meier points out, such personal interaction is all too often impossible. In most large public high schools, with enrollments in the thousands, and in which each teacher is responsible for as many as 150 or even 200 students per day, it is simply not possible for teachers to know their students personally. Students who stand out for one reason or another-for high academic ability or athletic talent, as well as for severe academic and disciplinary problems-will receive some form of personalized attention, but the vast majority of “average†students will not. This means, among other things, that most student (likely as many as 70-80 percent) in large schools are deprived of meaningful communities of learning which include adults as vital, influential members (Hylden, 2004, p. 19).
Small school/learning unit proponents typically declare that a major reason these schools are safer and more successful than large schools is that staff members are much more likely to know all of their students well. When teachers and students are able to build relationships, both are motivated to work and to make a success of the schooling enterprise. Teachers, moreover, can become knowledgeable about students’ learning strengths and needs and identify ways to respond to them in a way that is not possible in the typical large high school (Cotton).
Significantly, this level of personalized attention often allows teachers to give extra help to the students who need it most. Students in large schools, since they usually do not form meaningful relationships with their teachers, are always in danger of “falling through the cracks†of the system. In small schools, teachers will be more able to know their students’ needs, and thus will be better able to respond to problems that may go unnoticed in a large school. In light of this, it is not surprising that disadvantaged students are found to respond particularly well to small-school environments. Personalized attention may directly benefit students in many ways. Students are likely to have higher levels of academic achievement when teachers are able to meet their specific academic and personal needs, and are in turn more likely to graduate. Numerous studies have shown that the relationships made in small schools enable adults to positively influence students’ post-high school choices, particularly with regard to college attendance (Raywid, p. 34-39).
Small schools, as a direct result of their smallness, are far less likely to allow vast numbers of students to fall through the cracks of the system. Small schools, with their cohesive and purposeful learning communities, in which all students receive personalized attention, and in which teachers, parents, and community members are heavily invested, are more likely to be characterized by high levels of expectation for every student. (Toch, p.14)
Another significant aspect of the normative climate of small schools, even if somewhat intangible, is the sense of belonging that many students feel. In large schools, most students, if they are not star quarterbacks or academic standouts, have trouble fitting into any sort of positive community. As a result, many students, simply to survive, form their own communities in which to belong, which are often directed towards negative ends (Hylden, 2004, p. 30)
“Small schools, on the other hand, do a much better job of including all of their students in a positive, learning-based culture. It is impossible to abolish cliques among teenagers, small schools force students of different backgrounds and interests to get to know one another, if only because there are fewer people to know…Teachers are better able to influence students in such environments, as both students and teachers feel themselves to belong to the same community: the school itself†(Hylden, 2004, p. 30, 31).
Personalized attention, effective governance, teacher collaboration, parent and community involvement, high expectations, low rates of violence, mutual respect—all of these are made easier in communities which are truly communities; where people truly feel bound together by their mutual effort towards a common goal (Hylden, 2004, p. 31). “The majority of the studies indicate that smaller schools promote educational attainment through creating a cohesive sense of community and facilitate the bonding of students with their schools†(Alspaugh, 1994, p. 4).
The time is ripe for educators to make the case for what research suggests and what our own experience has been telling us for years: Students do best in places where they can’t slip through the cracks, where they are known by their teachers, and where their improved learning becomes the collective mission of a number of trusted adults (Wasley, Fine, 2000, p.3).
Recently, larger schools have received a substantial amount of criticism, including charges of greater bureaucracy and lack of intimacy (Oxley, 1997), and lack of student engagement (Cotton, 1996), so proponents of smaller schools consistently cite evidence that the more intimate environment of smaller schools increases student engagement. In one of the earliest studies of the differences between large and small-school environments, Barker and Gump (1964) indicated that smaller schools offer students more opportunities for involvement and interaction. Studies conducted over the past two decades tend to affirm Barker and Gump’s argument, suggesting that students in smaller schools have better attendance, feel safer, experience fewer behavior problems, and participate more often in extracurricular activities (Fowler, 1995; Lee & Smith, 1993, 1997; Rutter, 1988, Overbay, 2003, p.5).
Small school advocates argue that there is a strong relationship between smaller schools and better interpersonal relations, as seen in the “evidence of increases in social bonding to teachers and school, self-esteem, academic self-concept, locus of control, and sociocentric reasoning†associated with smaller schools (Rutter, 1988, p. 31) (Overbay, 2003, p.5).
During the same decade, Columbia University research showed that small schools had “strengths of smallness†not evident in large schools (Nachtigal, 1982). The thought was that not only were small schools necessary, their strengths included a higher number of students involved in extra curricular activities, higher numbers of students taking academic courses, more attention by teachers due to lower pupil teacher ratio, and students who had a close connection to their communities (Bard, Gardener, Wieland, 2006, p.42).
Jim Lewis (2004) writing for Challenge West Virginia reported that students and parents observed that consolidated schools, with their larger enrollment, caused some students to feel anonymous resulting in students getting lost, falling behind and dropping out. Those students who are not particularly outgoing, who don’t cause discipline problems or are particularly outstanding in some area seem to disappear and fall through the cracks. Others, because of the autonomy, become anxious, unsure about themselves because of the separation from family and friends, often do not do well academically, become discipline problems, which causes them to give up on school and drop out (Bard, Gardener, Wieland, 2006, p.44).
“Smallness reportedly nurtured close and supportive relationships that in turn nurtured a shared sense of responsibility among school participants†(Howley and Howley, 2006, p.9). According to interviewees, the smallness of the district enabled all staff members to know all children and to intervene on their behalf, both with respect to academics and with respect to discipline. It allowed staff to take direct action to solve problems rather than entangling them in bureaucratic “red tape.†And it enabled the district to maintain a web of cross-generational connections that enriched relationships and perpetuated symbolic practices supporting those relationships (Howley and Howley, 2006, p.9).
Meier summarizes: “Students and teachers in schools of thousands cannot know one another well; and if we do not know one another, we may mishear one another. Families, teachers, staff, and students may assume disrespect where none was intended. The more diverse our students’ backgrounds, and the greater the gap between our faculty’s and kids’ cultures, the greater the misunderstanding may be…A culture of respect rests on mutual knowledge, and even then it’s hardly automatic. Small schools make such knowledge a possibility†(Meier).
Statistics
According to Hylden (2004), 60% of high school students in America attend high schools that serve more than 1,000 students.
We have closed nearly 70% of the schools in the United States since 1940 in a misguided effort to save money thorough consolidation. One result is that schools have swollen to the point that 28.8% have more than 1,000students. In some states, the percentage exceeds 30% and even 40%, and in Florida, more than half the students attend such schools (Lawrence, p. 1).
This statistic has not gone unnoticed. Even the richest person in the world has made a commitment to act upon the abundant research findings. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $350 million dollars towards transforming large, comprehensive high schools into smaller ones.
Small schools, in many studies, have been shown to have markedly fewer incidences of violence: a 1999 report of the U.S. Department of Education found that large schools have 875 percent more crime, 270 percent more vandalism, 378 percent more theft, 394 percent more physical attacks, 3,200 percent more robbery, and 1,000 percent more weapons incidents than small schools (The Rural Community and Trust, 2002).
The list of quantitative and qualitative findings reads as a who’s-who of educational research; uncovering similar findings:
- Increasing a state’s average school size was associated with a decline of one-third of a standard deviation in the rate of return to education for students educated there. In plain English… a 3.7 percent decline in earnings for a high school graduate (Berry, p.56-58).
- The large-scale quantitative studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s… firmly established small schools as more productive and effective than large ones (Raywid, 1999)
- Researchers at NYU have discovered that small high schools actually spend less money per graduate than large high schools, making them more economically efficient (Toch, p.10).
- In 1987, a study found that students in small schools report greater satisfaction than those in large schools, and drop out with less frequency (Pittman and Haughwout).
School size, as one researcher noted, “exerts a unique influence on students’ academic achievement, with a strong negative relationship linking the two: the larger the school, the lower the students’ achievement levels (Howley, 1994)
Conclusion
The disagreement over proper school size still echoes through Appalachia. These echoes are often shouted by the communitarians of West Virginia, many whose community schools have long since left to the theft of legislative consolidation. The echoes are felt in other regions of Appalachia, as well, and often in the name of monetary gains and larger curriculums. Even after abundant research showing the effects of such consolidation, many Appalachian states have continued to place their low socio-economic students at a disadvantage by throwing them in the deep end of mega-schools. One can only ponder how low this subgroup’s academic achievement must plummet before the mountain of research of the power of the Almighty Small School is appreciated and its advice followed.
References
- Alspaugh, J.W. 1998. The relationship of school and community characteristics to high school drop out rates. Retrieved July, 2006 from Academic Search Elite.
- Antonucci, Mike, “Mission Creep: How Large School Districts Lose Sight of the Objective -- Student Learning†Alexis de Tocqueville Institution Brief #176, November 17, 1999.
- Bard, Joe, Gardener, Clark, & Wieland, Regi. (2005). Rural School Consolidation Report. Prepared for the National Rural Education Association Executive Board.
- Berry, Christopher. “School Inflation,†Education Next, fall 2004, p. 56-58.
- Conant, James (1959). The American high school today: A first report to interested citizens. New York: McGraw Hill.
- Cox, David N. (January 2002). Big trouble: Solving education problems means rethinking super-size districts and schools. Retrieved may, 2006 from the Sutherland Institute. Web site: http://sutherlandinstitute.org/Publicat ... tricts.htm
- Cubberly, Elwood P. (1914). State and county educational reorganization. New York: Macmillan.
- Fine, M. & Wasley, P. A., (2000). Small schools and the issue of scale. New York: Bank Street College of Education.
- Fitzwater, C.O. (1953). Educational change in reorganized school districts. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
- Howley, Craig (2000). School district size and school performance. Rural Education Issue Digest. Retrieved August 2006 from AEL Web site: http://www.ael.org/rel/rural/pdf/digest3.pdf
- Howley, Craig & Bickel, Robert. (2001). Smaller districts: Closing the gap for poor kids. Retrieved March 2006. http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~howleyc/asbj2.htm
- Lee, V., & Smith, J. (1997). High school size: Which works best, and for whom? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19(3), 205-227.
- Lu, Y. & Tweeten, L. (1973). “The impact of busing on student achievement.†Growth and Change, 4(4), pp. 44-46.
- Meier, Deborah. The Power of Their Ideas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
- Overbay, A. (2003). School Size: A Review of the Literature. (Evaluation and Research Rpt. No. 03.03). Raleigh, NC: Wake County Public Schools.
- Pittman, R. B., and Haughwout, P. "Influence of High School Size on Dropout Rate." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 9/4 (Winter 1987): 337-343.
- Raywid, Mary Anne. “Small Schools: A Reform That Works,†Educational Leadership, 55 (4), p. 34-39.
- Ramage, W.R., & Howley, A. (2003). Children's experiences of long bus rides: Parents' perspectives. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
- The Rural School and Community Trust. Dollars and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools. Washington: KnowledgeWorks Foundation, 2002. http://www.ruraledu.org/docs/dollars.pdf
- Toch, Thomas. High Schools on a Human Scale. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.
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EasternDspy
- SEOPS Mr. Ohio
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
The new Gov.was in Marietta and was talking a lot about this.He was talking about using some of the old schools buildings for Jr highs and using the bigger school as a high school or a 10-12.He talked about consolidating Belpre and Warren,Fort Frye and Waterford,and Frontier and Marietta.With some New Mat kids going to River.
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I drain 3's
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
I'd say it's only a matter of time before Caldwell/Shenandoah are consolidated.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
Can't find any info on a transcript from his visit in Marietta. It would be odd, though, that he has any plans for schools near Marietta already but has barely talked about consolidation any where else.
All I can find is this small section in a blog from Ted Strickland, so it may contain political bias. According to the blog, Kasich has changed his mind a couple of times:
http://www.tedstrickland.com/blog/entry ... _consolid/
I would be volcanically surprised if he really means physical consolidation. Not sure if that's the right political path to take.
All I can find is this small section in a blog from Ted Strickland, so it may contain political bias. According to the blog, Kasich has changed his mind a couple of times:
http://www.tedstrickland.com/blog/entry ... _consolid/
I would be volcanically surprised if he really means physical consolidation. Not sure if that's the right political path to take.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
If consolidation is/was going to happen, it should have happened before all the new schools were built that are barely big enough to handle the kids the school districts have today. Should it happen? Probably, but now is not the time to try and force it. Green, New Boston, East and Clay all need to be consolidated into other districts, but as already mentioned Clay is building a new school now and New Boston is finishing plans to build a new school. That leaves Green and East left to see what is going to be their fate. The most logical choices would be for Sciotoville East to consolidate with New Boston (they already combine kids in the lower grades for baseball and softball to create the Newville all-star teams) and for Green to consolidate into Burg.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
My point exactly, 4th n Goal. The only way to physically consolidate would be to add on to the existing buildings; throwing money at a time when our deficit is dire doesn't seem like the smartest political decision to me.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
O.K. here goes, first Green won't have to send anyone to the Burg! They can stay at Green and the tax payers will have to pay Wheelersburg tax rate. This is because Green dosen't have the money to run the school. Now some Admin's will be cut also Treas., but the same teacher's could be used. This same topic came up in the 80's, and I thought South Webster would be inclued, so I came up with the name SOUTH GREEN BURG
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TribeManiac10
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
The Southburg Bobcats.Big Pete wrote:O.K. here goes, first Green won't have to send anyone to the Burg! They can stay at Green and the tax payers will have to pay Wheelersburg tax rate. This is because Green dosen't have the money to run the school. Now some Admin's will be cut also Treas., but the same teacher's could be used. This same topic came up in the 80's, and I thought South Webster would be inclued, so I came up with the name SOUTH GREEN BURG
Last edited by TribeManiac10 on Sat Jan 22, 2011 11:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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EastBeast06
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
I think East tried to do this a couple of years ago with New Boston, but New Boston didn't want anything to do with it.4th n Goal wrote:If consolidation is/was going to happen, it should have happened before all the new schools were built that are barely big enough to handle the kids the school districts have today. Should it happen? Probably, but now is not the time to try and force it. Green, New Boston, East and Clay all need to be consolidated into other districts, but as already mentioned Clay is building a new school now and New Boston is finishing plans to build a new school. That leaves Green and East left to see what is going to be their fate. The most logical choices would be for Sciotoville East to consolidate with New Boston (they already combine kids in the lower grades for baseball and softball to create the Newville all-star teams) and for Green to consolidate into Burg.
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CharlieHustle
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Re: Burg and Green combining?
East a few years ago (Decamp's final year with East) didn't necessarily try to consolidate with New Boston. While New Boston was preparing to try to put the new school on the ballot, Decamp and East proposed that East be a part of our new school. But the school districts remain seperate entities, basically splitting up the building into two different K-12 districts. New Boston shot down the idea. East wanted this because East was now "Sciotoville Community School" and the elementary was "Sciotoville Elementary Academy", they weren't ging to be getting any money from the state to build new schools. The high school is very old and the elementary is currently in a number of trailors.EastBeast06 wrote:I think East tried to do this a couple of years ago with New Boston, but New Boston didn't want anything to do with it.4th n Goal wrote:If consolidation is/was going to happen, it should have happened before all the new schools were built that are barely big enough to handle the kids the school districts have today. Should it happen? Probably, but now is not the time to try and force it. Green, New Boston, East and Clay all need to be consolidated into other districts, but as already mentioned Clay is building a new school now and New Boston is finishing plans to build a new school. That leaves Green and East left to see what is going to be their fate. The most logical choices would be for Sciotoville East to consolidate with New Boston (they already combine kids in the lower grades for baseball and softball to create the Newville all-star teams) and for Green to consolidate into Burg.
Re: Burg and Green combining?
I really just cant see this happening...Burg just finished building the new school, and right now it is only just big enough for the small amount of students that they have...the new building just couldnt support their students and greens group. Building another new school would be poiltless and an absolute waste of Burg's taxpayers money...Plus since Burg runs a strict system and has the highest academic standards in the area (not to put down the green system), and many of the students from Green would probably transfer out...It just doesnt seem logical to do...
I have not personally heard anything about this from any of the administration, so I find it unlikely to happen...
Plus the consolidation would probably bump the school up in division...and could be devastating come playoff time :122246
I have not personally heard anything about this from any of the administration, so I find it unlikely to happen...
Plus the consolidation would probably bump the school up in division...and could be devastating come playoff time :122246