Smaller Schools Blog

The Alpine School District Board has begun a study to explore possible reconfigurations. Here are some of the latest articles about this effort: May 9, 2023 - KUTV - Alpine School District ... (View)
 
KSL published an article: Bill could address major concern of Orem splitting from Alpine School District that addresses one of the main concerns about splitting Orem into it's own district - ... (View)
 
The Utah Taxpayers Association released this statement about the proposed Orem School District: "With the proper taxable property values in the proposed district and conservative estimates of ... (View)
 
https://www.oremcityschooldistrict.com... (View)
 
Perhaps most importantly, Rogers says the one consistency she has found among K–8 schools is that "kids tend to say they feel safer, so there is less of a Lord of the Flies environment" at a ... (View)
 

Smaller Schools Research

More studies show how smaller schools can make a difference - especially in neighborhoods with higher minority demographics : "New smaller high schools, typically in black or Hispanic ... (View)
Patricia A. Wasley writes a very insightful look at the relationship between small classes and small schools. Of course, research shows that small schools are mostly found in smaller school districts... (View)
"If it is believed that... elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund or any other general authority of the government than by the ... (View)
(formerly entitled: For Further Discussion On School Size ) by Representative David Cox The discussion about school size, both with school boards and in the general public, will not be complete ... (View)
America's urban high schools are struggling by Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner Dr. Kappner has been president of Bank Street College in New York City since 1995, and was the assistant ... (View)
By Karen Irmsher There is a natural predeliction in American education toward enormity," said William Fowler (1992), "and it does not serve schools well." During the last forty years, schools ... (View)
List member Keith Look is a researcher with the Philadelphia Education Fund. In this note to the MiddleWeb List (07/02), Keith shared some findings from his own experience and his dissertation ... (View)
by David N. Cox We Utahns love to have everything from our fast-food meals to our trucks "super-sized"; you might even say our families are "super-sized"! In many cases bigger is better, but ... (View)

Community-sized Districts Research

These most recent statistics compiled from the Utah Taxpayers Association " School Spending Report: Fiscal Year 2013-2014 ," April 2015 verifies the conclusions of my previous study comparing ... (View)
Mike Antonucci, director of the Education Intelligence Agency (EIA), gives more information about how reducing school district size can solve many of the problems in education. His first bullet point ... (View)
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, recently posted about the problems that large school districts are prone to have. Read more from the original ... (View)
The following 6 videos were made to highlight the history, reasoning, progress, and issues of dividing large school districts during the 2007 campaign to divide Utah's largest school district at that ... (View)
California published a study on whether to consolidate its smaller school districts it did in 2011. It looked at costs and benefits. There were some interesting findings. They found among ... (View)
PUBLIC EDUCATION DEREGULATION A PROPOSAL TO THE UTAH STATE LEGISLATURE by Representative David N. Cox This proposal was written in 2004 and presented to the Utah legislature that year. ... (View)
Administrative costs bear little, if any, correlation to size of districts over 1,000 students. Fiscal Year 1998-1999 Fiscal Year 1999-2000 Fiscal Year 2000-2001 District ... (View)
1997 to 2000 Average Fifth Grade SAT Scores of All Utah School Districts The yellow bars represent the range within which each group are expected to score based on socio-economic factors. In ... (View)
by David N. Cox " School district size has a consistent negative relation to student performance and is highly significant in three out of four tests ." -W. Niskanen & M. Levy, ... (View)
To: Lawrence W. Kenny Department of Economics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-7140 Accepted: 1 March 2005 Abstract: The very small literature explaining (i) how citizens have ... (View)
by David N. Cox We Utahns love to have everything from our fast-food meals to our trucks "super-sized"; you might even say our families are "super-sized"! In many cases bigger is better, but ... (View)

Noteworthy Quotes

"The best way to prevent a political faction or any small group of people from capturing control of the nation's educational system is to keep it decentralized into small local units , each with its... (View)
"Men ... should do their actual living and working in communities ... small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in... (View)
"The way to have good and safe government is not trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent ... [more] ... It ... (View)