District Administration - December 2008 - (Page 74)

Professional oPinion • Donna Van Horn Under attack New Jersey has laid out a plan of attack against small districts. In nEARLY 20 YEARs As A sMALL district administrator, I have participated in two formal regionalization studies, conducted by the boards of education of two or more school districts considering consolidation. In each of these studies data revealed that there would be little if any financial savings for the districts. When weighed against the research supporting the educational benefits of small schools, the districts all opted to maintain the status quo rather than risk negatively impacting student academic achievement. The main concern was that in consolidating districts, local small school’s would close and the students would merge into larger regional schools. Deeply rooted in the tradition of “home rule,” many of new Jersey’s school districts have fewer than 500 students in only one or two schools. Many of these districts serve students in the elementary grades only, then send middle and high school students on a tuition basis to a neighboring district. There are 593 operating school districts in new Jersey—but not for long. smaller Districts under attack Almost 40 years of research and literature indicate that small schools compared to larger schools have higher attendance and graduation rates, fewer dropouts, equal or better levels of academic achievement (standardized test scores, course failure rates, grade point averages), higher levels of extracurricular participation and parent involvement, and fewer incidences of discipline and violence. But new Jersey’s smallest districts are under attack. Daily headlines prove that war has been declared: “new Law: no school, no District”; “school Consolidation in new Jersey: 74 December 2008 Why not Do This? Better schools, Lower Taxes: What This Could Mean to You.” The fiscal accountability, efficiency and budgeting procedures recently signed into law by Gov. Jon s. Corzine promise a new executive county superintendent with expanded powers to promote school consolidation. The Uniform shared services and Consolidation Act Chapter 63, P.L. 2007, was passed to encourage “the financial accountability of local units of government through empowering citizens, reducing waste and duplicative services, clearing legal hurdles to shared services and consolidation, and supplementing, amending, and repealing sections of statutory law.” The perception is that through consolidating small school RESOURCES Big School, Small School: High School Size and Student Behavior, Barker, R., and Gump, P. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964. Education and Urban Society 21/2, “School and School District Size Relationships: Costs, Results, Minorities, and Private School Enrollments.” Jewell, R. S. (February 1989). Educational Researcher 23/5, “Losing Local Control.” Walberg, H.J., and Walberg, H.J., III. (June-July 1994). School Size, School Climate, and Student Performance, Cotton, K. Portland, Ore.: Northwest Regional Education Laboratory, 1996. districts, tax dollars will be saved by reducing administrative and instructional costs. What about academic standards? What about student performance? What about doing what is best for kids? At what point will the political consolidation and regionalization conversation acknowledge the wealth of research supporting small schools and admit that the district structure in new Jersey is meeting the needs of students in the most effective way? new Jersey has laid out a plan of attack against small districts, ignoring overwhelming research, including that of the northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (nREL), which has repeatedly found small schools to be superior to large schools on most measures and equal to them on the rest. nREL researchers found that states with the largest schools and districts have the lowest school achievement, highest dropout rates, and least favorable teacher-student ratios. new Jersey is even disregarding its own research and is ignoring the “Executive summary of Findings” of its own Assembly Task Force on school District Regionalization (1999). This document clearly states that school regionalization does not automatically reap major savings or improve the quality of education. Furthermore, it indicates that small districts can produce excellent results and should not be regionalized simply because their enrollment falls below a certain number. Urban schools Go small Counter to the consolidation movement in new Jersey, large metropolitan districts such as the Chicago Public schools are actively creating small schools as a districtwide school improvement strategy. In their report Small Schools Get Results, they District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - December 2008

District Administration - December 2008
Contents
Editor’s Letter
News Update
College Preparatory
Security
Technology
District Profile
Administrator Profile
DA Web Seminars
Desperately Seeking Special Ed Teachers
Special Education’s Challenges
Building the Best Auditorium
Leading the Way
Righting the Writing Process
Sharpening a District’s Leadership Model
TCEA
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Products
Problem Solution
Professional Opinion
Research Center
Calendar of Events
Online Edge

District Administration - December 2008