School Consolidation Research Articles

Model for Optimization of Locations of Schools and Student Transportation in Rural Areas

Low population densities make it difficult to design efficient networks of schools in rural areas. The most common solution is to operate small schools with children in multiple grades in each classroom, even though this solution may not be the least expensive. School consolidation proposals are difficult to implement because communities may have emotional bonds with their local schools and the impacts on secondary services, such as student transportation, are difficult to evaluate. In rural areas, particularly in Brazil, reductions in the costs associated with school operations and student transportation could allow boards of education to allocate more resources to improve educational practices and teaching materials. This paper presents a methodology for optimizing the location of schools and student transportation in rural areas. This methodology is based on two mixed-integer programming models, which are used sequentially. The first one deals with the school location and sizing problem, and the second one deals with the school bus routing and shift programming problem. The methodology was applied with data from Barao de Grajaú, which is in the northeast region of Brazil, and provided savings in operating costs of 10% to 17%.

Assessment of school closures in urban areas by simple accessibility measures

The demographic processes in the eastern regions of Germany have yielded a dramatic decline in student numbers for the time period 1992–2002. This in turn implicates a remarkable school consolidation. In application scenarios, simple measures of the assessment of school closures are needed. In this paper we discuss simple measures of schoolaccessibility based on public transport travel-times. Moreover, an efficient network flow model to determine the travel-times is presented. Furthermore, a guidance of how a network graph might be constructed is given. As a result of the accessibility analysis, we find that proximate areas are affected by increased travel-times. However, outskirt districts are affected as well. This finding is not obvious, though. The easy-to-understand measures of accessibility presented in this paper might be implemented in the educational planning process. The case study of Dresden is exemplary for other (western) regions in Germany with comparable demographic processes.

Some economic guidelines for design of a charter school district

As the number of charter schools has grown nationally, there is increasing discussion of the consolidation of such schools into charter districts in which all schools would be charter schools from which parents would have the freedom to choose the school that they wished their student to attend. A major question is how such a charter school district would be organized to support its schools and who would perform the different functions required. It is argued that three economic guidelines need to be an important determinant of the solution to this question: the presence of economies of scale; transaction costs; and externalities. The article describes the application of these guidelines to the formation of a charter school district and suggests the different possibilities for addressing a range of important roles by schools, their districts and intermediate organizations and markets.

School Consolidation in Nebraska: Economic Efficiency vs. Rural Community Life

We examine the factors driving rural school consolidations, focusing our analysis on Nebraska. We consider statutory and case law, the school financing formulas that drive consolidation and the efforts by rural citizens to challenge those financing formulas in courts. We analyze how rural school consolidations have been framed in newspaper coverage, in order to see the dominant understandings of the cost-benefit tradeoffs in consolidating rural schools. Finally, we study three cases of rural Nebraska school districts for the insights these cases provide as to the challenges of sustaining rural community schools and the effects of consolidation on the students and the communities. Our conclusion is that schools play a vital role in sustaining rural community life, although the costs to the community when schools are consolidated are more difficult to quantify than the economies of scale that motivate those consolidations.

Scale Economies Can Offset the Benefits of Competition: Evidence from a School Consolidation Reform in a Universal Voucher System

A large school consolidation reform in the Netherlands changed minimum school size rules underlying public funding. The supply of schools decreased by 15 percent, but this varied considerably across municipalities. We find that reducing the number of schools by 10 percent increases pupils’ achievement by 3 percent of a standard deviation. A reduction in the supply of schools implies, for a given number of pupils, an increase in average school size. We present evidence that in our context scale economies dominated the effects of choice and competition. This points to an often ignored trade-off between scale and competition.

RSEQ 4th Retrospective Issue Introduction

As I have read the introductions to the three previous RSEQ retrospective issues, I have enjoyed the personal reflections in each. Each introduction serves as a testimonial to the professional and personal meaning of the American Council on Rural Special Education (ACRES). In keeping with this spirit, I would like to share the profound importance of ACRES on my professional development. I came to post-secondary education after 20 years in the public schools. I was introduced to ACRES by the first dean with whom I worked at Eastern Montana College. He advised me to join the organization, knowing it would enhance my position as coordinator of a special education personnel preparation grant project. He had no idea how ACRES would enhance my career. I attended my first ACRES conference in Nashville, TN. I met Dolly Parton on the elevator in the Peabody Vanderbilt Hotel and Dr. Terry Berkeley at the bar. I have returned to every conference but one since in the hopes of seeing Dolly again; I have seen Terry lots but never Dolly! Because our institution, now MSU Billings, was a month away from a joint NCATE-Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) accreditation review, I did not attend this year's 2010 conference in Memphis. (I might have run into Dolly!!) Having been a public school teacher and administrator, I came late to the publish or perish game. ACRES provided me with a safe and nurturing environment for launching into professional conference presentations and journal publications. There were mentors ready and willing to guide my progress with encouragement and sage advice. Not the least of these was Dr. Berkeley. Approximately one-third of the professional presentations and nearly half of the publications listed in my curriculum vita are with ACRES. ACRES also provided professional opportunities for organizational involvement. At an early conference, I volunteered to help at the registration table. Since that time, I have been totally immersed working on the initial and following revisions of the ACRES' By-laws, serving multiple terms on the National Board of Directors, chairing the board for two consecutive terms, serving as an RSEQEditon?a Board member and manuscript reviewer, currendy serving as the ACRES Historian, and ending a 5 -year contract with ACRES for MSU-Billings and the Montana Center on Disabilities hosting the National Headquarters. In the 20 years of my involvement with ACRES, I ask, have we learned as special educators? In the previous retrospective issues in both the introductions and commentaries, audiors have spoken to ACRES leadership and futures, thinking as tliey have contemplated the included retrospective articles. This journey in time lets me know the core of issues does not seem to change. In the beginning of ACRES, over 30 years ago, issues addressed included the following: * Defining rural * Recruitment and retention of fully qualified special educators for schools * Funding, lack thereof, or lack of a stable funding source * Consolidation of small schools for efficiency and economy What are the issues today? In Montana, they include the following: * Defining rural - While Arfstrom (2001) provided updated definitions, Montana is currently classified as frontier with Billings (the largest metropolitan area with a population of approximately 100,000) classified as rural. * Recruitment and retention of fully qualified special educators for schools - the Office of Public Instruction Special Education Endorsement Project (Burdge, Fishbaugh & Christensen, 2003; Fishbaugh, 2002; and Fishbaugh, Christensen & Burdge, 1999), begun in 1987, is flourishing today. The purpose of this project is recruiting and retaining special educators in the small, remote, schools scattered throughout the state. Participants have 3 years to complete requirements for earning the special education endorsement on a Montana educator license. …

The Atlee School Question: The Effects Of School Consolidation In Rural Alberta

In the mid-1960s, a bitter dispute broke out between parents in the Atlee-Jenner School District in Southern Alberta Canada, and the Medicine Hat School Board over the bussing of children for the first time to a new school a long distance away. The move was precipitated by the consolidation of several smaller school districts and the subsequent closing of the local school. The parents’ argument was that the road by which the bus was to travel was in an unfinished state and was dangerous. However, the conflict is illustrative of a much deeper issue. An argument might be made that this dispute illuminated a much larger crisis in rural life on the prairies. It may represent, as a case study, the problems and difficulties involved in a shift from rural life, with its unique sorts of interpersonal relationships built on the strength of local community and co-operative spirit, to a much more urbanized and structured existence. As the Great Depression had shown, the myth that you could always go back to the farm for some measure of economic security had been dispelled. However, one’s control over the education of one’s children, and thus the inculcation of appropriate values and beliefs, after having been first of all, institutionalized with universal public schooling (both Protestant and Roman Catholic), had been, at least up to this point, largely a local concern, under a central authority (Ministry of Education). School divisions on the prairies had been relatively small and numerous, for practical reasons, such as transport and regular attendance. Gradually, these small divisions came to be replaced by larger administrative units, thus threatening the perceived control and familiarity of local communities. The other half of the equation in this dispute was the reaction of the Deputy Minister at the time, W.H. Swift. Swift could empathize with the basic issues in play, having strong rural roots himself. Deputy Minister of Education, W.H. Swift was also one of the last to hold that position rising up through the ranks of the education system, from teacher to school inspector to academic. Swift had earned a Ph.D. at an early age, and rose quickly through the ranks of the civil service, learning his job under the tutelage of G. F. McNally. Swift and McNally represented a tradition in the Department, having earned their positions through experience and hard work. As such, they might be viewed as self-made moral exemplars, leaders who could be viewed as role models by the rank and file. This article seeks not only to illustrate how Swift actually functioned in his role as Deputy Minister in times of crisis and high public visibility, but also to show how he reacted when confronted with moral decisions. The Atlee case, taking place between the years 1955 and 1965, serves as an example of the controversy which had developed in many areas as small rural schools were closed as a result of the divisional amalgamations begun by the Social Credit Government before the Second World War. On a wider scale the issues embodied in the dispute also reflect a changing rural landscape. Just as the small family farm was under corporate pressure, so it was with the local school. These economic and administrative transformations brought with them social and cultural changes as well. Although the case was one of the last examples of this kind, it was certainly one of the most bitterly contested.

A follow-up study on student's consciousness change during junior high school consolidation

A follow-up study on student's consciousness change during junior high school consolidation

Factories: Getting Rid Of Learning

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has been the main focus of educational debate since we entered the 21st Century. It has left educators in dispute about the reasonableness of federally-ordered reforms and the necessity for holding all students to the same academic standards. The 2001 legislation expanded the federal government’s role in public education and required greater school accountability and teacher qualifications with little concern for mandate funding. The NCLB requirements have resulted in larger public schools and rural school consolidation. This development has placed unnecessary burden on public schools and has forced many districts to eliminate educational programming. This article will discuss the ramifications of NCLB in public school settings, as well as the specific problems of schools in rural areas.

Examining Economies of Scale in School Consolidation: Assessment of Indiana School Districts

This article examines the potential for reducing costs through school district consolidation by employing economies of scale. Utilizing Indiana school district data primarily from 2004 through 2006, we find evidence for scale economies with optimal enrollment being 1,942 students, with a per pupil estimated cost at $9,414. The 95% confidence interval of the optimal enrollment is 1,300 to 2,903 students. The study examines several hypotheses discussed in this line of literature. Transportation does not appear to hold significant scale economies potential, while salary data provides mixed results. Finally, attendance is shown to be negatively influenced by school district enrollment levels, with the impact of attendance on student performance being examined in a subsequent study.

Hard Choices in School Consolidation

Educational leaders face difficult decisions in ensuring that all students learn despite ongoing scarcity of resources. School communities play an important role in establishing positive learning environments and supplying the resources for student learning. Declining community conditions often present school leaders with tough choices between facilities management and instructional needs. This case illustrates how school districts maintain a focus on the best interest of students in the face of economic decline in surrounding communities. How does a district address school consolidation? How can two communities focus on their children’s futures rather than grieving over past distinctions in community identity?

Like a Mountain: Performing Collaborative Research with Youth in Rural Appalachia

Like a Mountain:Performing Collaborative Research with Youth in Rural Appalachia Linda Spatig (bio), Shelley Gaines (bio), Ric MacDowell (bio), Betty Sias (bio), Leanne Olson (bio), and Cassi Adkins (bio) "I don't want to say that," Billy announced without elaboration. "Okay," Linda responded, not sure how to proceed. "Would anyone else like to do that part?" she asked. No response-just some nervous chuckling and horsing around as Jordon gave Wesley a friendly shove and Ronnie tossed a small beanbag across the room where Anthony and Billy started struggling with each other to get it. "That's enough," scolded Greg, trying to settle the boys down and refocus them on the task at hand. Sensing that the ball was in her court, Linda said, "Okay, maybe we'll take that line out. Billy, just skip over that and go on to the next part." Apparently finding that solution agreeable, Billy read on. Such was the nature of some of our collaborations between high school students, local community adults who work with youth, and a professor and graduate students from a state university working primarily in the field of education. The scenario described took place as we rehearsed for a public presentation of our research. The objectionable words, "I am an outcast who doesn't belong to any group," were in a poem we wrote about students' experiences with school consolidation. Billy's expression of resistance, and most likely of his emotional and social vulnerability, illustrates a lesson we learned from our collaboration [End Page 177] on this project-that young people appreciate the challenge of high expectations, whether social, academic, or physical, but only if those expectations are experienced in the context of caring, supportive, respectful relationships with adults and peers. More recently some of us also realized that collaborative research and performance can themselves be forms of positive youth development. Our research presentation was the culmination of the year-long collaborative experiences of seventeen high school students, four university-based researchers, and five adults who worked with a rural youth development program. As a public, performative event, it became a driving force for our work together on the project. As we worked throughout the year the fact that we would be publicly presenting our research was always in the back of our minds. The presentation itself-especially in the sense that it was a performance-became a central feature of our collaboration and, as will be evident later in the essay, of the youth development work as well. In the act of speaking aloud, first to each other in practice sessions and then to a larger live audience during the university presentation, the young people engaged in what Luttrell (2003) calls "showing and telling" their stories. Just as the pregnant girls Luttrell studied were drawn to performing scenes from their life experiences, the young people in our project, while eager to participate in other activities, were especially enthused about being on stage to speak publicly. Perhaps as important as speaking about their lives and viewpoints, the presentation enabled the youth to experience others listening and responding to what they had to say. Like the girls Luttrell studied, our youth used the presentation preparation and performance to make connections with, and seek recognition and support from, others. This essay about our year-long collaboration features excerpts from the public presentation we made at Marshall University in the spring of 2007, titled "Like a Mountain: Youth Development in Rural America."1 The excerpts present the voices of individuals from the Marshall University- based part of the research team, including a professor and two graduate students; the voices of adults affiliated with the Appalachian Women's Leadership Project (AWLP)-a former board member as well as the organization's founder and past director; and the voices of high school students who were participants in the AWLP's youth resiliency programs. [End Page 178] Also in this essay we draw on post-presentation reflections to explore what we learned from and about the collaborative research. In the reflections, we wrote-individually-about our perceptions and experiences. We frankly addressed satisfactions and successes as well as disappointments and concerns about the research-including...

Growing Pains: The School Consolidation Movement and Student Outcomes

Between 1930 and 1970, average school size in the United States increased from 87 to 440 students and average district size increased from 170 to 2300 students, as over 120,000 schools and 100,000 districts were eliminated through consolidation. We exploit variation in the timing of consolidation across states to estimate the effects of changing school and district size on student outcomes using data from the Public-Use Micro-Sample of the 1980 US census. Students educated in states with smaller schools obtained higher returns to education and completed more years of schooling. Reduced form estimates confirm that students from states with larger schools earned significantly lower wages later in life. Although larger districts were associated with modestly higher returns to education and increased educational attainment in most specifications, any gains from the consolidation of districts were far outweighed by the harmful effects of larger schools. (JEL I2, H7, H4) The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

School Consolidations and Teacher Incentive Contracts

We construct an agency-based model of incentive contracting within the education system. We use this framework to evaluate first-best, second-best, and pooling contracts under a variety of assumptions germane to the consolidation of elementary and secondary schools. By introducing a monitoring technology, an auditor, which serves as liaison between the principal (superintendent) and the agent (teacher), information constraints induced by school consolidations can be alleviated. Using this framework, we consider various policy issues such as how and where teacher incentive contracts might succeed, what may cause incentive contracts to fail, and how to determine optimal school size.

Alex Haley: Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1989: Angels, Legends, and Grace

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Alex Haley's legacy is forever tied to his legendary works--The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots: The Saga of an American Family, two of the most influential books on the black experience in the twentieth century. When his Autobiography of Malcolm X appeared in 1964, it transformed America's understanding of black life and culture, and Haley's work on Malcolm X quickly became essential reading in the sixties for students in the Civil Rights Movement. Alex Haley, 1990, courtesy of the William R. Ferris Collection in the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina. Alex Haley's legacy is forever tied to his legendary works--The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots: The Saga of an American Family, two of the most influential books on the black experience in the twentieth century. When his Autobiography of Malcolm X appeared in 1964, it transformed America's understanding of black life and culture. The book moved readers, just as Richard Wright's Native Son did when it was first published in 1940. Twenty-four years apart, Haley and Wright each parted the veil of race in America and exposed, with unvarnished clarity, angry black rage. Haley's work on Malcolm X quickly became essential reading in the 1960s for students in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1976--twelve years after The Autobiography of Malcolm X--the release of Alex Haley's book and television miniseries Roots marked a historic moment in publishing and media history. hundred and thirty million Americans watched the miniseries over eight nights, and the book sold six million copies during its first year of publication. The Roots television series featured LeVar Burton (Kunta Kinte), Leslie Uggams (Kizzy), and Ben Vereen (Chicken George), as well as a musical score by Quincy Jones. The series won nine Emmys and a Peabody, and the book won the Pulitzer Prize. Alex Haley's two books reflect the Janus-faced, complex person who created them. Haley is completely absent from the pages of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. With consummate skill, he shapes his interviews with Malcolm X into a powerful, first-person narrative driven by the voice of the speaker. Roots, in contrast, wraps its story around Haley's own voice and uses his personal life as its anchor. Haley's story becomes everyman's story and achieves a rare universality in which the viewer reflects, There, but for the grace of God, go I. During the sixties and seventies, I felt a special kinship with Alex Haley, and in the eighties he called and invited me to spend a weekend with him on his beautiful farm in Norris, Tennessee. Alex hosted my family and friends from throughout the country for three days of conversation, music, and meals. My brother Grey Ferris and his wife Jann were among the guests that Alex hosted. During the weekend, Grey spoke with Alex about his effort to consolidate county and city schools in our home of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grey explained that he felt their recently completed consolidation would prevent the creation of a predominantly black city and white county school system. The process had been difficult, and Grey invited Alex to visit Vicksburg and spend time with teachers and students who were part of this change. Alex graciously accepted. His coming to Vicksburg in 1989 was a major event for the city and assured that the school consolidation was successful. In 1990, Alex was a featured speaker on our Center for the Study of Southern Culture's historic College on the Mississippi Delta Queen trip. He was joined by Mose Allison, Eli Evans, Shelby Foote, B.B. King, and Jeff MacNelly, all of whom spoke or performed during the week-long trip from Memphis to New Orleans. During his final talk, Alex related the story of Amazing Grace and explained that the hymn was inspired by the suffering of slaves crossing the Atlantic. He said, One of every four enslaved Africans died on the slave ships. …

The Effect of Consolidation on Extracurricular Activity Participation

School reform initiatives have often included the controversial practice of school consolidation in aneffort to limit the cost and improve the quality of the educational process. While there are both benefitsand liabilities in consolidating schools, there are few studies that have determined the impact ofconsolidation on certain student behaviors such as participation in extracurricular activities (Blake,2003; Clinchy, 1998; Eisner, 1995; Fanning, 1995; Hawkes, 1992; Hughes, 2003; Jonjak, 2003;Nelson, 1985; Reynolds, 1999; Seal & Harmon, 1995; Self, 2001a, 2001b). Findings are mixed in thatsome studies have indicated that consolidated schools offer a greater number and wider range ofextracurricular activities, while other studies have indicated lower levels of participation amongstudents in larger, consolidated schools (Blake, 2003; Coladarci & Cobb, 1996; Fanning, 1995).Regardless, participation in extracurricular activities has been linked to higher academic achievementamong high school students (Cooper, Valentine, Nye, & Lindsay, 1999; Cosden, Morrison, Gutierrez, &Brown, 2004; Howley & Huang, 1991; Mahoney, Cairns, & Farmer, 2003; Nettles, Mucherah, & Jones,2000).

High Schools on a Human Scale: How Small Schools Can Transform American Education

707 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 17 No. 2 (2007) ISSN: 1546-2250 High Schools on a Human Scale: How Small Schools Can Transform American Education Toch, Thomas (2003). Boston: Beacon Press; 141 pages. $15. ISBN 080703245x. Since 2001, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $700 million in high school reform efforts focused primarily in urban districts around the United States (Miner 2005). With the funding has come much publicity highlighting the merits of small high schools – defined by the Foundation as schools with fewer than 400 students – and emphasizing the inability of the nation’s large, comprehensive public high schools to meet the needs of most students today. What the majority of urban comprehensive high schools lack, the Gates Foundation asserts, is the means to deliver the essential “three R’s” of the 21st Century: rigor, relevance and relationships. In High Schools on a Human Scale, the publication of which was underwritten by the Gates Foundation, education writer Thomas Toch adds his voice to the litany against large high schools, making the case for a more intimate secondary education that connects students with the skills, motivation and support they need to succeed in college and in life. Toch has become a leading proponent of school reform, having written about education policy and trends for U.S. News and World Report throughout the 1990s and served as writer-in-residence at the National Center on Education and the Economy. This is his second book on the subject, and it wholeheartedly supports the Gates Foundation’s mission to replace the nation’s comprehensive high schools with small, specialized schools. It serves to augment the promotional efforts of the Foundation more than to provide a critical, research-based perspective on the high school reform debate. Teachers in training and experienced educators interested in small schools, members of school boards, parents of high school students, school facility designers, and others with an interest in school reform trends will appreciate the book for its emphasis on 708 practice and its clear writing. In his introduction, Toch describes how American high schools ballooned throughout the 20th Century in the name of efficiency, and how isolated small-school reform successes in the 1980s inspired the current effort that has gained widespread support, thanks to an influx of funding and research. The heart of the book is comprised of separate profiles of small high schools that have received Gates Foundation funding: Julia Richman Education Complex in New York City; Urban Academy, located within the Julia Richman complex; High Tech High inSan Diego, California; The Met in Providence, Rhode Island; and Minnesota New Country School in Henderson, Minnesota. The profiles highlight ways in which each individual small school approach has produced results around student and teacher satisfaction, educational achievement and the creation of real-world opportunities that help students find their talents and build relationships with adults in their communities. In an epilogue, Toch reiterates the essential qualities of successful small high schools and makes the case for “Scaling Up” school reform efforts. The appendix lists model high schools nationwide. The case for connecting American high school students with their abilities, their teachers and their communities has been convincingly made by many in recent years, including environmental psychologist Herb Childress (2003), and educator Dennis Littky (2004), whose book, The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business, describes in detail the progressive philosophy and approach of The Met, one of the schools Toch profiles. But the concept that small schools can help students achieve their potential by becoming an indispensable part of a close-knit community is nothing new. In response to the high school consolidation drive of the 1960s, researchers Roger Barker and Paul V. Gump conducted a series of studies in urban and rural areas of the country to find out whether student experiences in large high schools and small high schools differed significantly. They found that students in small schools generally had richer experiences: Good facilities provide good experiences only if they are used. The educational process … thrives on participation, enthusiasm, and responsibility. Our findings and our theory posit a negative relationship between school size and individual student participation. What seems to...

Meredith Sue Willis: Writing Her Own Dispatch

FEATURED AUTHOR—MEREDITH SUE WILLIS Meredith Sue Willis: Writing Her Own Dispatch Phyllis Wilson Moore Meredith Sue Willis—editor, teacher, community activist, wife and mother—is first and foremost a writer. She is the author of five novels for adults, two collections of short stories, three children's books, a young adult science fiction novel, essays, three books on writing and more. South Orange, New Jersey, population 16,000 plus, is her residence. It is a loved place, as is nearby New York. However, Shinnston, West Virginia, population less than 2,500, is the place she calls home and the place she returns to in person as well as in her imagination. Located 35 miles below the Mason Dixon line and an equal distance from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Sago, West Virginia, it is a bustling town straddling the West Fork River. A town where folks still plant gardens out back and a nearby electricity power station generates plumes of smoke, its tall gray towers as much a part of the environment as the river or surrounding hills. The town has changed since Willis's birth on May 31, 1946. Shinnston High School, her beloved alma mater, is no more. School consolidation resulted in the new Lincoln High School, where she has served as a consultant in creative writing. Blazing Pencils: a Guide to Writing Fiction and Essays (Teachers and Writers Collaborative, 1990) incorporates Lincoln students' examples of how to write from life's experiences. Shinnston High School played a significant role in Willis's life. An honor student, Willis completed two years of French and Latin, three years of higher level math, attended journalism camp at West Virginia University, published a story in a national publication, The Student Writer, and earned the Bausch & Lomb Science Award. She was sophomore Homecoming Princess, and the class of 1964 voted her Most Likely to Succeed and Best Leader. It might surprise classmates to learn she, too, experienced angst and was not all that comfortable trying to fit in. 10 Reared with her younger sister, Christine, in a modesthome on East Avenue, she was keenly aware of the town's religious, ethnic and socioeconomic mix and polyglot of languages. The town's early residents were of English/Welsh/Scotch-Irish parentage or German farmers and cattle ranchers, with a few Irish railroad workers and descendants of slaves in the lot. Shinnston experienced an influx of European immigrants from early 1900 to 1930. The new arrivals reacted to derogatory nicknames by retaliating with their own version of an ethnic-epithet, perhaps unique to Shinnston, and called their antagonists "Snuffies." It is likely this name came from Snuffy Smith, a do-less moonshine-making mountain man in a syndicated comic strip that is still in print. The Shinnston Snuffies and the immigrants labored together in the oil fields, zinc plants, coal mines and glass industries of the county while their children developed friendships and romances. It was a town of problems and promises. "My Father's Stories: An Essay," introduces Willis's short story collection, In the Mountains of America (Mercury House, 1994) and illustrates the point: "To my father, Shinnston, West Virginia, represented grand new vistas. This was the great world to him in a way city people can hardly imagine. Shinnston had folks from Syria and Spain and Yugoslavia. Shinnston had a mansion on a hill built by an Italian immigrant and a dark little shop in town where an elderly Jew repaired shoes. My father says the first day he was in Shinnston he met Dave Hardesty, who told him: "We have a real tall man here in town named Short, and we have a little short man named Long. There's a black man named White and a white man named Black.' A town of wonder: everything was possible." Her father, Glenn Willis, earned an undergraduate degree from nearby Fairmont State College (now a university) and a Master of Arts from West Virginia University by working in the mines between semesters. He managed a Shinnston Dairy King during the summer with Meredith Sue as his helper. According to Meredith Sue, "he was my teacher and my boss and my dad." He was the...

The Fight for School Consolidation in Arkansas, 1946-1948

FORCED CONSOLIDATION OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS has often been looked upon as the third rail of Arkansas politics: one approaches the subject with considerable caution so as to avoid political electrocution. This issue was again placed on the public agenda, at least indirectly, by an Arkansas Supreme Court decision in November 2002, which held that the state's funding of public schools did not provide children with the general, suitable, and educational system mandated by the Arkansas Constitution. Although the Lake View opinion did not require school consolidation, this method had been proposed in the past to help the achieve a suitable and efficient system.1 The Lake View decision's broad scope seemed to require major changes in policy, utilizing a variety of innovative plans and techniques. Gov. Mike Huckabee in a of the state address to the Arkansas General Assembly on January 14, 2003, offered a bold plan to help satisfy the requirements of Lake View. Huckabee proposed that Arkansas school districts with less than 1,500 students merge with bigger districts. He especially stressed that larger high schools could offer a richer curriculum.2 This proposal aroused great controversy, which remained at fever pitch for the next year. After heated discussions, many downward revisions of the threshold for consolidation, and frequent compromises that often unraveled, the General Assembly passed a bill that required consolidation of districts with fewer than 350 students rather than 1,500. Under the measure, the number of school districts in the was expected to drop from 310 to 254. A companion bill changed the state's school funding formula and increased expenditures for public education.3 While Huckabee's effort accomplished limited consolidation, a similar attempt in 1966 had been completely annihilated. The trigger for consolidation proposed then was 400 students, and voters rejected the measure by a landslide vote of 115,452 (26.41 percent) in favor and 321,733 (73.59 percent) against.4 Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas at the time, opposed the measure as did the two major gubernatorial candidates in that year's general election, Jim Johnson and Winthrop Rockefeller. Despite endorsement by the Arkansas Gazette, the proposed consolidation legislation was even defeated in Pulaski County, where 61 percent of the voters opposed the measure.5 Given the automatically hostile response to any attempt at consolidation in Arkansas, it might seem astonishing that the state's voters in 1948 passed a comprehensive school consolidation act requiring the dissolution of all school districts with fewer than 350 students. Initiated Act 1 was approved in the absence of any court order and with virtually no newspaper advertising, the main method by which campaigns were conducted at that time. And it passed despite the defeat of a very similar proposal just two years earlier. What relevance, if any, does this episode hold for the present? School consolidation had been proposed as early as the 1920s to help districts provide better educational opportunities. In the 1920s, public school education in Arkansas was in a deplorable state, with 5,000 school districts varying enormously in the quality of education they could provide. Gov. Thomas McRae in his inaugural address in 1923 said that the faced an educational crisis in which only a little over half of [Arkansas's] children are in daily attendance, and the average school term is only one hundred and thirty-one days.6 An even harsher indictment had come from a legislative study in 1921 : For thousands upon thousands of children, Arkansas provides absolutely no chance. To these children, to be born in Arkansas is a misfortune and an injustice from which they will never recover and from which they will look back with bitterness when plunged, in adult life, into competition with children born in other states which are providing more liberally for their children. …

School Consolidation and Inequality

One of the most remarkable yet least remarked upon accomplish ments in American public education in the twentieth century is the success of the school consolidation movement. Between 1930 and 1970, nine out of every ten school districts were eliminated through consolidation. Nearly two-thirds of schools that existed in 1930 were gone by 1970. These and related reforms transformed the small, informal, community-controlled schools of the nineteenth century into centralized, professionally run educational bureaucracies. The American public school system as we know it was born dur ing this brief, dynamic period. While school consolidation represents what may be the most profound reform movement in twentieth-century education, almost nothing is known about its consequences for students. In earlier work on the consolidation movement, Martin West and I found that students educated in systems with larger schools earn significantly lower wages as adults.1 Like many others who have studied the relationship between school attributes and student outcomes, we focused our attention on average out comes. However, there is good reason to suspect that school consolidation influenced the variation in student outcomes as well. In particular, by dramat ically cutting the number of schools and districts, consolidation reduced an important source of between-school and between-district variation in educa tional quality. At the same time, however, consolidation was motivated by a desire to increase instructional specialization, which could be achieved by sub stantially increasing the size of schools and districts. Thus within-school and within-district variation in education quality may have risen as schools and dis tricts became larger and instruction more specialized. This paper investigates