School district consolidation is one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century, but surprisingly little research has directly investigated its effectiveness. To examine the impact of consolidation on student achievement, this study takes advantage of a policy that requires the consolidation of all Arkansas school districts with…

As schools have been required to provide more and more services and as more and more people have left rural areas, school consolidation has become the answer. During the 1990s, it was ruled that the state of public school funding was unconstitutional. To solve this problem the state legislature passed Act 60 of 2003. Act 60 set the minimum…

School district consolidation is one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century, but surprisingly little research has directly investigated its effectiveness. To examine the impact of consolidation on student achievement, this study takes advantage of a policy that requires the consolidation of all Arkansas school districts with…

Over the past fifty years, school districts have consolidated in an effort to achieve economies of scale. While the determinants and effects of district mergers on operations have been studied (Gordon and Knight 2006; Duncombe and Yinger 2007; Jones et al 2008), the impact on communities has not. In small towns, schools not only educate, but also…

The current study seeks to identify a possible connection between the consolidation and reorganization of public school districts and schools and state-level legislation throughout the United States from 1993 through 2012. A mixed methods approach was utilized. Quantitative analysis of statewide public school district data identified states…

The consolidation of schools and districts has been one of the most widespread education reforms of the last century; however, surprisingly little research has directly investigated the effectiveness of consolidation as a reform strategy. We provide new evidence on this topic by taking advantage of a natural experiment in Arkansas that occurred…

For decades, people questioned the sense of having two school districts, each with its own superintendent, central office and high school, operating in the same small town of The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia River in north-central Oregon. But election campaigns to consolidate repeatedly failed because each community had strong emotional…

This study is an investigation of how school consolidation between 2003 and 2006 affected the lived experience of students and educators in four Arkansas high schools. We present findings from twenty-three interviews with students, teachers, and school administrators who moved to a new high school because of consolidation, as well as those who…

This phenomenological study of school consolidation is an investigation of how education policy that dictates the reorganization of schools and districts impacts educational choices, learning environments, and school culture. Although quality studies of optimal school size for promoting student achievement and cutting costs have emerged in the…

Consolidations come in all shapes and sizes, including mergers, annexations and dissolutions. They do not all take place under state mandate, however. A handful of districts consolidate every year in some states like Illinois that have large numbers of small districts, many of them dual districts that serve K-8 or 9-12 in the same geographic area.…

A study examined how Arkansas students' achievement is related to poverty, school and district size, and the interaction between these factors. Achievement test scores from grades 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 in all Arkansas schools were supplied by the Arkansas Department of Education. Poverty levels were determined by percentage of students receiving…

This report provides the first detailed picture of the features of the rural school bus ride. Data were provided by principals in 696 rural elementary schools in Arkansas, Georgia, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington--states chosen to represent diversity in region, locale, and ethnic composition. The literature commonly cites 30 minutes as…

This study investigated school district size, the consolidation of small school districts to make larger ones, and the linear relationships of school district size to expense per average daily attendance (ADA), basic and composite scores on the MAT6 standard achievement test, and secondary school dropout rate. Correlational analysis revealed that…

This paper describes school consolidation in six small towns in South Nevada County, Arkansas. None of the six schools had the resources to meet the requirements of advanced programs set by the Arkansas Educational Standards Act. School boards met with each community to gather support for consolidation, discussing increased taxes to pay for a new…

Of 238 small K-12 rural public school districts (enrollments under 900) identified in the Arkansas study, 40 were chosen for use in gathering information to assist educators in understanding and improving education of rural residents. An 80% response rate to the 123-item questionnaire mailed to superintendents provided information on district…