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