Is Bigger Better? A Comparison of Rural School Districts

This project was sponsored by a grant from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a legislative agency of the Pennsyl-vania General Assembly. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania is a bipartisan, bicameral legislative agency that serves as a resource for rural policy within the Pennsylvania General Assembly. It was created in 1987 under Act 16, the Rural Revitalization Act, to promote and sustain the vitality of Pennsylvania's rural and small communities. Information contained in this report does not necessarily reflect the views of individual board members or the Center Can school district consolidation improve academic programs, increase student achievement and improve cost efficiency in Pennsylvania schools? This question has drawn the attention of policymakers and state and local educational agencies alike for decades. Since the 1950s, many school districts have been restructured into larger, centralized school districts. And many rural school districts followed the trend, typically set by urban districts, as transportation became available to students in remote areas. More recently, advocates of large school districts have cited the advantages of concentrated resources and the efficiency of centralized offices. To determine if the size of Pennsylvania's rural school districts affect student academic performance and administrative and financial efficiency, in 2003, the researcher examined rural countywide school districts, rural non-countywide school districts and mixed rural-urban school districts. The researcher looked at various indicators of the districts, such as background characteristics, fiscal management, administrative capacity and student academic achievement, to determine if significant differences exist. With respect to background characteristics, rural countywide school districts and rural non-countywide school districts had higher percentages of students from low-income families than mixed rural-urban districts. Rural countywide school districts also had higher total district expenditures and more total staff than the other two district types. None of these differences, however, was statistically significant. While there were differences among rural countywide school districts and the other two district types in the number of program offerings and educational resources available to students, the differences were not statistically significant. A comparison of student academic achievement found that most of the statistically significant differences were between rural non-countywide and mixed rural-urban school districts, which indicated that mixed rural-urban school districts have overall significantly higher test scores in most of the Pennsylva-nia System of School Assessment (PSSA) and SAT exams. The results also indicated that a smaller percentage of rural countywide school district graduates planned to go to degree-granting and non-degree-granting institutions than …