This digest reviews recent evidence of the positive effects of small-scale schooling on student achievement. Historically, larger school size has been viewed as an important educational reform producing cost-effectiveness and educational efficiency. Today, small-scale schooling is found primarily in rural areas and small towns. A 1964 study…

Because larger schools offer advantages such as a greater variety of activities, economic efficiency, and a sense of identity in the community, schools are often combined. Beyond these positive effects, however, school consolidation has some negative aspects. These liabilities include less human contact, less input from teachers in…

Defining the concept "rural" to the satisfaction of demographers, policymakers, educational researchers, sociologists, journalists, and legislators is an ongoing and complex problem. As a sampling of definitions used by different researchers/agencies illustrates, the two categories of definitions of rural--qualitative and…

School reorganization has been used extensively as a strategy to deal with the problems of small and rural schools. However, there is no comprehensive evidence to prove that consolidation has met the problems of finance, staff, facilities, and curriculum for which it has been advocated, nor are consolidation's disadvantages and ill-effects of the…