Small
Schools Work Better, Cost Less, Studies Find
For the last
decade, it has been conventional wisdom in education circles
that while small schools work better for children, and especially
for children in poverty, small schools are expensive to maintain,
often prohibitively so. Dollars
and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools,
a report released in September, has shown, however, that investing
tax dollars in small schools often saves money in the long run.
The study was conducted by three organizations: the KnowledgeWorks
Foundation, the Rural
School and Community Trust, and Concordia,
Inc. The collaboration brought together nine school-facilities
experts, who concluded that while large schools may appear to
have a lower per-student cost, they have a much higher per-graduate
cost, since most of the problems that tend to accompany large
schools, such as alienation, student and teacher apathy, and
violence, are obstacles to graduation. The study further said
that it makes more sense to measure cost per-graduate than per-student
because the long-term cost to society of dropouts is even higher,
as those who do not graduate have lower earning power and higher
arrest rates than their counterparts who have finished high
school.
The Rural
Trust's study is the first that has examined the true cost
of small schools in rural areas, and the three groups commissioned
it because of the increased rates of school consolidation
in rural America in recent years. Research showing higher
benefits and lower overall costs from urban small schools,
by contrast, is not new. A study by New York University's
Institute on
Education Policy, The Effects of Size of Student Body
on School Costs and Performance in New York City High Schools,
which analyzed data from 1995-1996, concluded that "size of
student body is an important factor in relation to costs and
outputs and that small academic and articulated alternative
high schools cost among the least per graduate of all New
York City High Schools." Unlike rural communities, who strive
to keep existing small facilities open, urban areas have to
create small schools, or "schools within schools." Despite
the differences in venue, both studies showed that children
in poverty and the societies to which they belong did better
with small schools.
Prepared
October 4, 2002
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