Research on Community-Sized Districts
Big Trouble: Solving Education Problems Means Rethinking Super-Sized Schools and Districts
By David 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 not always. When it comes to schools and school districts, we as a nation have typically consolidated districts to make them larger under the assumption that bigger was better, specifically, more cost-effective with better academics. Yet several decades of super-size districts have called that notion into question for quality of services and even cost efficiency. Some districts might be too big, and might do better to DE-consolidate. Read More…
Large School Districts: What Does the Research Say?
By Seth Cox
Many people will ask what are the benefits of smaller school districts. Frequently, they bring up arguments for large districts and/or district consolidation like economies of scale. But a deeper analysis reveals that large school districts are not good for students or communities. Read More…
Smaller Districts
By David Cox
The main reason taxpayers have not passed more bond elections for more and smaller schools is that our districts are too large. Their suspicions say that their money is going to benefit some other part of the district. The district is no longer their community, but it is rather a larger government entity. Read More…
The Public Choice of Educational Choice
The very small literature explaining (i) how citizens have voted in two California voucher referenda, (ii) how legislators have voted on voucher bills in the State of Florida and the US Congress, and (iii) the variation across states in charter school provisions is summarized. New empirical evidence documenting the cross-state variation in the success of voucher referenda and voucher bills is examined. Voucher bill characteristics and state characteristics play important roles. Voucher bills have been passed only in the more conservative Republican states, and almost all of the successful voucher programs have been targeted at large, struggling school districts. Read More…
Deregulation of Public Education Proposal
By David Cox
A Public Education Deregulation Proposal to the Utah Legislature in 2004 Read More…
Does School District Size Determine Administrative Costs?
Historical data demonstrating that administrative costs bear little, if any, correlation to size of districts over 10,000 students. Read More…
Smaller Schools and Districts 