Making robust and reliable information about schools accessible is one of the most powerful ways to foster engagement and promote informed decisions that will shape our communities. Though education data is frequently collected and aggregated at the state level, data is rarely synthesized across cities. This report provides comparable information…

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…

Legislative mandates for improving student achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act have increased the need for student assessment, curriculum development and staff development in public schools. In order to meet these demands, schools must have the capacity necessary for improvement. Minnesota's small districts and their schools face…

This document is the 26th in a series that presents data on school districts in Minnesota in the areas of enrollment, staffing, and finance. Since 1994-1995, data has been presented as per average daily membership, but before that, weighted average daily membership was used. Increases in student enrollment in Minnesota began with the 1985-1986…

With the purpose of supplying information on school district reorganization to school districts in Minnesota, this report begins with an overview of reorganization, including a definition of terms, an investigation of the impetus for reorganization, and a discussion of the manner in which school district reorganization legislation is usually…

This policy brief summarizes the full report [ED468840], which describes a study that evaluated whether smaller school districts, as a result of their higher costs per pupil, experienced greater hardship in the areas of infrastructure, resources, and staffing. The policy brief reports on the results of a survey that was administered to the…

The State of Minnesota funds its public schools primarily through a funding formula that provides school districts the same amount of revenue per pupil regardless of the size of their enrollment. An earlier study demonstrated that larger school districts incur less cost per pupil due to increased efficiency derived from economies of scale. This…

This study of the school board agenda-setting role among 30 Minnesota superintendents interprets their perceptions in relation to environmental contexts, group demands, issues control, and district enrollment size. A microperspective of David Easton's political systems model provided the guiding conceptual framework. Respondents were interviewed…

Through what seems to be a very wise adaptation of methods of support and administration to schools of different kinds and to schools working under varying conditions in different parts of the State, but still preserving a high degree of correlation and unity of purpose, and by a commendable degree of liberality in expenditures for education, the…

This publication provides descriptive information about the 100 largest school districts in the United States. Almost one in every four public school students in this nation is served by one of these large districts. They are distinguished from the average district by characteristics, in addition to sheer size, such as pupil-teacher ratios, high…