8 ms·

America’s School Districts Are Too Big

44 points by lxm 4y ago

maxerickson 4y ago
Pretty sure the author means that big school districts are too big. My county, total population less than the proposed 40,000 student line, has at least 5 school districts (and this is typical in most of Michigan). I imagine the underlying idea is that people shouldn't have to pay taxes for kids that are a little further away. Or maybe that crank parents arguing crank causes is super productive and they should have lots of forums to do it in. (we have relatively consistent standards for education, working towards attaining those standards is going to happen administratively, not by having more school boards to air grievances in front of)
- maxsilver 4y ago
  > Or maybe that crank parents arguing crank causes is super productive and they should have lots of forums to do it in. Yep, it's that. The author is not arguing in good faith (IMHO), and is mad that crank causes can't easily subvert a school district, if the school district is sufficiently large enough to resist it. The big tell is that the author won't actually list what "community values" or "will of citizens" they think are missing in these democratically-elected school district boards (because if they admitted it honestly, it would be immediately obvious why districts resist it) And this isn't just a thought-piece, this is a real battle happening at the local level in Michigan right now, during the past election, something like 60% of the candidates for each random district are that district's crazy cranks from school board meetings, intentionally running in bad faith, just to push minority-held crazy religious/political-extremist beliefs onto children via the school board). Districts can't kick them out of the meetings, if they are on the board themselves.
  - logicchains 4y ago
    > The author is not arguing in good faith (IMHO), and is mad that crank causes can't easily subvert a school district And you're not arguing in good faith, by referring to the values of people you disagree with as "crank causes".
    - maxsilver 4y ago
      Sure, that's fair. I should have labeled them as people who are "deeply concerned about their entirely-imagined usages of cat litter boxes in classrooms". (source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litter-boxes-schools-became-gop-talking-point-rcna51439 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litte... ) I apologize for referring to concerns like these as "crank causes"
redorb 4y ago
Too many high paid super intendents who have very little impact education. At least in Oklahoma. Yukon, Piedmont and Atoka (smallish towns) have SIs making 180k which is absurd salary for this state. https://sde.ok.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/FY20%20SuptSalaries%20111520.pdf https://sde.ok.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/FY20%...
- themitigating 4y ago
  So this salary being higher than normal, which I'm not refuting, is casuing what educational problems?
  - redorb 4y ago
    Salary available for those who actually teach.
- lokar 4y ago
  Is 180k high for people I assume have a masters degree and 10+ years of experience?
  - logicchains 4y ago
    It is high if they don't have any skills that people would willingly pay them that much for with their own money.
  - redorb 4y ago
    In Oklahoma and with tax payer dollars? yes.
duxup 4y ago
I wonder how this would impact services for learning disabilities and other things. A small district is going to have fewer resources.
- CivBase 4y ago
  A small district is also going to be incentivized to spend those resources more wisely. And even large districts with the best intentions end up choked by bureaucracy. Better to have many small districts than a few big ones IMO. EDIT: When I say "small" I mean relative to huge, metropolitan school districts with many thousand students per grade. I'm not advocating for all districts to be reduced to rural midwestern town sizes.
  - axlee 4y ago
    What are the redistribution methods that should be put in place to avoid poorer districts to be at even a worse disadvantage than when they're mixed up with other level of income?
    - kodyo 4y ago
      Those will be determined during a summit of commissars right after the proletariat seize the means of production.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      Tax at the state level and provide aid. The gotcha is you need social services at the poor schools and programs that actually help sustain families.
  - duxup 4y ago
    What resources if they don’t have staff who can work with things like occupational therapy, etc?
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      Maybe a small (organizationally speaking), specialized school district for students who need this special accomodation? Physcially, this could overlap the districts that provide services for normal students. I'm unconvinced that mainstreaming special-needs students in regular classrooms is the best thing for them.
jeffbee 4y ago
This is just classic right-wing propaganda. Larger districts are more redistributive, smaller districts mean rich neighborhoods keep their own money. 100% on-brand for WSJ opinion page, and Manhattan Institute. "School choice", vouchers, etc are all core Manhattan Institute goals.
- zubiaur 4y ago
  What’s the problem with school choice?
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    There’s no inherent problem. Usually opponents create hypothetical scenarios in which corrupt entities funnel money away from public schools, which is a valid concern, but isn’t an inherent property of school choice.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Hard to ”choose” a good school if you’re in an area with no good schools? Drive your kid across town, when you’re already poor?
    - zubiaur 4y ago
      Been there, was worth it
      - duxup 4y ago
        Not an option for everyone.
        zubiaur 4y ago
        Exactly! Not even for those who want it, and wold be willing to make the effort.
        imgabe 4y ago
        Nothing is an option for everyone. Must we always deny opportunities to everyone because there’s some person who can’t take advantage of it?
endisneigh 4y ago
I can’t read the article but it makes sense that the school districts are too big as they’re a function of county and city level bureaucracy, proportional to size. One fact about schools is that special Ed kids require far more money per student than so called regular kids. You combine this with the fact that those who have kids with needs will correctly advocate for their kids vocally and the issue is very salient, you get more politics around the issue resulting in more people and larger districts. Your particular concern about this “issue” will likely align with whether or not you think cities should be large and have commensurately large governments.
8bitsrule 4y ago
Everyone's got an opinion about education. Those are free. Evidence? We don't need no steenkin' evidence! "A movement to standardize and professionalize K-12 education began in the Progressive Era. Consolidation may have accomplished some of its goals, but America’s largest districts today tend to be among the lowest-performing." Especially never mind The Journal of Educational Research [https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/vjer20 https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/vjer20] The experts at the Wall Street Journal will be fair and balanced. This year, size is the problem. "I been to school myself and I don't need them pointy-heads to tell me what's wrong."
- heyda 4y ago
  The size is the problem when your a private/charter shill, this dude has written books about it lol "The Urban School System of the Future: Applying the Principles and Lessons of Chartering (2012)." Step 1. break up large school districts, Step 2. open up charter/private schools, Step 3. collect tax money for 2-3 years while providing no educational value and shut down before any mandatory education minimums kick in. Step 4. Repeat steps 2-3 It's big brain.
  - 8bitsrule 4y ago
    After getting a degree in Ed., I taught 9-12 science and math (5 preps each day) for 3 years (those poor kids) before I ran away screaming. Of course, YMMV. The background of 'my' district superintendant (an elected position) was that he had been a Colonel in the Army. He made damn sure I arrived by 7:30 a.m. each day.
    - klooney 4y ago
      5 preps is like a second part time job.
ryandrake 4y ago
At first I could not figure out from the article what's so inherently bad about large school districts. The author is pretty vague about it, concerned about "bureaucracy" and some nebulous feeling from parents: "parents and taxpayers feel they have no ability to influence them." But what exactly are these supposedly disenfranchised parents trying unsuccessfully to achieve? These voices that aren't being heard: what are they saying? The author doesn't even hint at it until deep within the text: > Public schools are valuable not only because they teach young people reading or job skills but because they enable communities to pass their values on to the next generation. Uh oh.. Here we go... I'm not going to put words in the author's mouth, and he deftly avoids actually talking in specifics about what these guys want, but we've all heard it before. All you have to do is go to Youtube and search "school board meeting argument" and you'll get to hear rant after rant from that side's best and brightest. This is a pretty sneaky submarine article for vouchers, pubic funding for religious schools, religious homeschooling, and the sugar-coated, more marketable "School Choice" label they're using these days. Large school districts are accountable to a broader, more diverse population, and subsequently aren't as vulnerable to being captured by a small local enclave of fundies.
- hamster77 4y ago
  What exactly is wrong with school choice and religious schooling? I went to a private religious school for K-12… no violence, no teenage pregnancies, and I ended up at a top research university and in solid career. My parents weren’t wealthy and used whatever money they could find to keep me out of a failing public school system and I am grateful (although not religious, which they don’t appreciate too much :) Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to take their child’s portion of the property taxes we all pay to go to the school of their choice? Why is choice acceptable in almost every other aspect of society, but not when it comes to K-12 education? The answer is entrenched interests - teachers unions wanting to protect their earnings, time off and pensions… bureaucrats protecting their power and pensions… and of course the anointed who think they know better than everyone else how other people’s children should be educated. Vouchers are the answer. Convert all public schools to parent-teacher coops and let them compete in an open market with charters and private schools… some will be selective, others will be lottery, others still may give preference to locals… the goal would be for the failures to be removed from the system so something better can take its place. Have states set standards, but then let the people roam free.
woodruffw 4y ago
To pick on just a single thing: this article highlights a handful of eye-popping figures for per-student spending in larger districts, but it never actually establishes that these comparisons are meaningful. NYC, for example, spends an extraordinary amount per-student on paper. But a lot of that is pension obligations and other spending that (1) can't be cut, and (2) costs less in overhead in larger districts. It's not clear that other districts uniformly include their pension contributions in their student funding numbers. Edit: To qualify: from casual searching, it seems like a lot of municipalities include teachers as a bucket in their larger civil service pension budget line.
- htag 4y ago
  Is anyone actually surprised that the city with the highest cost of living also spends more per-student than any other city.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    That too! It's not even remotely surprising that higher costs in NYC (in payroll, materiel, etc.) translates to higher per-student costs!
JohnTHaller 4y ago
Reminder that the Wall Street Journal is part of the Fox News conglomerate News Corp.
jcranmer 4y ago
Dear god no. The proposed cap is on 10k students, which is roughly the size of one high school with its feeder schools (we're talking about breaking up large school districts, so individual schools are going to be on the larger side). That's not something on the level of "this is going to create inefficiencies" so much as "this is going to utterly destroy things." The problem with hyperlocalism is that, since the number of constituents is so small, one angry person with a megaphone can throw a race, letting them act as a petty dictator. There's already too many petty wannabe dictators running around school board meetings right now, and encouraging more isn't going to help things. Of course, I assume this is entirely the point, which makes me wonder what the author's failed crusade against his large school district was about. Transgender bathrooms? Critical race theory? Litter boxes? Teaching evolution? (Also, I take issue with the characterization that the largest school districts tend to be the lowest-performing--my experience, looking at the list of largest school districts, is that they tend to be, well, average.)
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  > so much as "this is going to utterly destroy things." There are people actively trying to destroy public education. So, you are spot on.
- ticviking 4y ago
  Perhaps the problem is more our lack of engagement in civil society and local government such that those single loud voices are so powerful?
- supertrope 4y ago
  New Jersey has a zillion small townships. Each jurisdiction needs their own bureaucracy and politicians and sometimes own police department. This is a big part of why property taxes are usually >$10,000/yr over there. What local government is going to vote to dissolve themselves and merge to deliver more efficient shared services?
  - RhysU 4y ago
    Being able to deal mostly with first-line managers because a township is small is worth a premium. I can call my mayor-- he met with our cub scout den last fall. I can find the police chief if I want. I can speak to the deciders on the school board or in the administration. Yes, it's expensive but there's delightful responsiveness and accountability in exchange for the sticker price.
jollofricepeas 4y ago
But… Isn’t the bigger problem minority rule? Specifically, large school districts in blue cities are underfunded by red state legislatures controlled by rural areas? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-minority-rule-doom-loop/618536/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-m...
- cplusplusfellow 4y ago
  I’m pretty sure if you gave Camden NJ ISD more money they wouldn’t be any better.
jm20 4y ago
One thing not getting mentioned here is the outsized influence large districts have on the broader education market. A contract with a huge district like LAUSD or CPS can be worth millions, and often these go to large incumbents because they have the resources to basically lobby these districts to accept them. Their motivations for choosing a product then become largely political as opposed focused on efficacy. Smaller districts often look (erroneously in my opinion) to these large districts to set an example of the “right” approach and adopt the same products. This is how you end up with monoliths like Pearson and McGraw Hill making shitty products that teachers hate but schools continue to pay gobs of money for. And innovation is stifled because that money doesn’t go to better products from companies that can’t afford a giant lobbying arm/don’t have a 20yr relationship with the superintendent.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > Smaller districts often look (erroneously in my opinion) to these large districts to set an example of the “right” approach and adopt the same products. When they have teachers driving Teslas and BMWs, it probably looks quite appealing.
htag 4y ago
The author makes no argument that educational outcomes would improve or costs would decrease with his plan, and brushes off such concerns as secondary. My priorities and the author's priorities for public schools are different. Furthermore I find it ironic that the author cites bureaucracy as a problem with large school districts but the purposed plan would produce a larger overall number of school administrations and bureaucrats as more school districts are created.
sillypuddy 4y ago
NYC Charter stats: 15% of NYC public school students attend public charter schools. 9% of the students are multilingual learners, 18% have IEPs, 80% of students are economically disadvantaged.
1letterunixname 4y ago
It makes sense to have roughly sized but limited district, school, and classroom to optimize between the collective economies-of-scale on one side and the maximum number of students any classroom or district can administer in an effective manner on the other. Too few: it's too expensive per pupil; too many (~ 24+) in a classroom, the quality of education suffers and too many in a district also leads to inefficiencies and scaling issues. Los Angeles is the worst, by far: 560k students. Ridiculous. That's the population of a large city. Good luck forming a local hobby club for the kids with other parents and with the school's blessing. Scale investment by managing fewer students and give school administrators best practices and benchmarks. It's far easier for large districts to use large piles of money inefficiently than for districts managing fewer pupils. The other thing is to mandate parental involvement. Without this, there is unlikely to be a good outcome. It also implies that parents need some sort of paid leave and/or scheduling to be involved in their kids' education.
cafard 4y ago
Seriously? In Maryland and Virginia, school districts tend to go by county or by county-equivalent city. Fairfax County, Virginia, and Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland have many excellent schools. If you drive a couple of hours north to Pennsylvania, the school districts tend to be much smaller, sometimes just an elementary school or two, a middle school, and a high school. I don't think that most of those high schools are competitive with (for example) TJ in Fairfax or Blair, Wootton or Richard Montgomery in Maryland. There is no reason you can't have a top-notch small school district, but I'll bet that it is in a very prosperous end of the state. (New Jersey has the same mania for multiplication of local government, including school districts; some of those districts must be outstanding.)

44 points by lxm 4y ago

Pretty sure the author means that big school districts are too big. My county, total population less than the proposed 40,000 student line, has at least 5 school districts (and this is typical in most of Michigan). I imagine the underlying idea is that people shouldn't have to pay taxes for kids that are a little further away. Or maybe that crank parents arguing crank causes is super productive and they should have lots of forums to do it in. (we have relatively consistent standards for education, working towards attaining those standards is going to happen administratively, not by having more school boards to air grievances in front of)

maxsilver 4y ago
> Or maybe that crank parents arguing crank causes is super productive and they should have lots of forums to do it in. Yep, it's that. The author is not arguing in good faith (IMHO), and is mad that crank causes can't easily subvert a school district, if the school district is sufficiently large enough to resist it. The big tell is that the author won't actually list what "community values" or "will of citizens" they think are missing in these democratically-elected school district boards (because if they admitted it honestly, it would be immediately obvious why districts resist it) And this isn't just a thought-piece, this is a real battle happening at the local level in Michigan right now, during the past election, something like 60% of the candidates for each random district are that district's crazy cranks from school board meetings, intentionally running in bad faith, just to push minority-held crazy religious/political-extremist beliefs onto children via the school board). Districts can't kick them out of the meetings, if they are on the board themselves.
- logicchains 4y ago
  > The author is not arguing in good faith (IMHO), and is mad that crank causes can't easily subvert a school district And you're not arguing in good faith, by referring to the values of people you disagree with as "crank causes".
  - maxsilver 4y ago
    Sure, that's fair. I should have labeled them as people who are "deeply concerned about their entirely-imagined usages of cat litter boxes in classrooms". (source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litter-boxes-schools-became-gop-talking-point-rcna51439 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/urban-myth-litte... ) I apologize for referring to concerns like these as "crank causes"

redorb 4y ago

Too many high paid super intendents who have very little impact education. At least in Oklahoma. Yukon, Piedmont and Atoka (smallish towns) have SIs making 180k which is absurd salary for this state. https://sde.ok.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/FY20%20SuptSalaries%20111520.pdf https://sde.ok.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files/FY20%...

themitigating 4y ago
So this salary being higher than normal, which I'm not refuting, is casuing what educational problems?
- redorb 4y ago
  Salary available for those who actually teach.
lokar 4y ago
Is 180k high for people I assume have a masters degree and 10+ years of experience?
- logicchains 4y ago
  It is high if they don't have any skills that people would willingly pay them that much for with their own money.
- redorb 4y ago
  In Oklahoma and with tax payer dollars? yes.

duxup 4y ago

I wonder how this would impact services for learning disabilities and other things. A small district is going to have fewer resources.

CivBase 4y ago
A small district is also going to be incentivized to spend those resources more wisely. And even large districts with the best intentions end up choked by bureaucracy. Better to have many small districts than a few big ones IMO. EDIT: When I say "small" I mean relative to huge, metropolitan school districts with many thousand students per grade. I'm not advocating for all districts to be reduced to rural midwestern town sizes.
- axlee 4y ago
  What are the redistribution methods that should be put in place to avoid poorer districts to be at even a worse disadvantage than when they're mixed up with other level of income?
  - kodyo 4y ago
    Those will be determined during a summit of commissars right after the proletariat seize the means of production.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Tax at the state level and provide aid. The gotcha is you need social services at the poor schools and programs that actually help sustain families.
- duxup 4y ago
  What resources if they don’t have staff who can work with things like occupational therapy, etc?
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Maybe a small (organizationally speaking), specialized school district for students who need this special accomodation? Physcially, this could overlap the districts that provide services for normal students. I'm unconvinced that mainstreaming special-needs students in regular classrooms is the best thing for them.

jeffbee 4y ago

This is just classic right-wing propaganda. Larger districts are more redistributive, smaller districts mean rich neighborhoods keep their own money. 100% on-brand for WSJ opinion page, and Manhattan Institute. "School choice", vouchers, etc are all core Manhattan Institute goals.

zubiaur 4y ago
What’s the problem with school choice?
- endisneigh 4y ago
  There’s no inherent problem. Usually opponents create hypothetical scenarios in which corrupt entities funnel money away from public schools, which is a valid concern, but isn’t an inherent property of school choice.
- duxup 4y ago
  Hard to ”choose” a good school if you’re in an area with no good schools? Drive your kid across town, when you’re already poor?
  - zubiaur 4y ago
    Been there, was worth it
    - duxup 4y ago
      Not an option for everyone.
      - zubiaur 4y ago
        Exactly! Not even for those who want it, and wold be willing to make the effort.
      - imgabe 4y ago
        Nothing is an option for everyone. Must we always deny opportunities to everyone because there’s some person who can’t take advantage of it?

endisneigh 4y ago

I can’t read the article but it makes sense that the school districts are too big as they’re a function of county and city level bureaucracy, proportional to size. One fact about schools is that special Ed kids require far more money per student than so called regular kids. You combine this with the fact that those who have kids with needs will correctly advocate for their kids vocally and the issue is very salient, you get more politics around the issue resulting in more people and larger districts. Your particular concern about this “issue” will likely align with whether or not you think cities should be large and have commensurately large governments.

8bitsrule 4y ago

Everyone's got an opinion about education. Those are free. Evidence? We don't need no steenkin' evidence! "A movement to standardize and professionalize K-12 education began in the Progressive Era. Consolidation may have accomplished some of its goals, but America’s largest districts today tend to be among the lowest-performing." Especially never mind The Journal of Educational Research [https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/vjer20 https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/vjer20] The experts at the Wall Street Journal will be fair and balanced. This year, size is the problem. "I been to school myself and I don't need them pointy-heads to tell me what's wrong."

heyda 4y ago
The size is the problem when your a private/charter shill, this dude has written books about it lol "The Urban School System of the Future: Applying the Principles and Lessons of Chartering (2012)." Step 1. break up large school districts, Step 2. open up charter/private schools, Step 3. collect tax money for 2-3 years while providing no educational value and shut down before any mandatory education minimums kick in. Step 4. Repeat steps 2-3 It's big brain.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  After getting a degree in Ed., I taught 9-12 science and math (5 preps each day) for 3 years (those poor kids) before I ran away screaming. Of course, YMMV. The background of 'my' district superintendant (an elected position) was that he had been a Colonel in the Army. He made damn sure I arrived by 7:30 a.m. each day.
  - klooney 4y ago
    5 preps is like a second part time job.

ryandrake 4y ago

At first I could not figure out from the article what's so inherently bad about large school districts. The author is pretty vague about it, concerned about "bureaucracy" and some nebulous feeling from parents: "parents and taxpayers feel they have no ability to influence them." But what exactly are these supposedly disenfranchised parents trying unsuccessfully to achieve? These voices that aren't being heard: what are they saying? The author doesn't even hint at it until deep within the text: > Public schools are valuable not only because they teach young people reading or job skills but because they enable communities to pass their values on to the next generation. Uh oh.. Here we go... I'm not going to put words in the author's mouth, and he deftly avoids actually talking in specifics about what these guys want, but we've all heard it before. All you have to do is go to Youtube and search "school board meeting argument" and you'll get to hear rant after rant from that side's best and brightest. This is a pretty sneaky submarine article for vouchers, pubic funding for religious schools, religious homeschooling, and the sugar-coated, more marketable "School Choice" label they're using these days. Large school districts are accountable to a broader, more diverse population, and subsequently aren't as vulnerable to being captured by a small local enclave of fundies.

hamster77 4y ago
What exactly is wrong with school choice and religious schooling? I went to a private religious school for K-12… no violence, no teenage pregnancies, and I ended up at a top research university and in solid career. My parents weren’t wealthy and used whatever money they could find to keep me out of a failing public school system and I am grateful (although not religious, which they don’t appreciate too much :) Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to take their child’s portion of the property taxes we all pay to go to the school of their choice? Why is choice acceptable in almost every other aspect of society, but not when it comes to K-12 education? The answer is entrenched interests - teachers unions wanting to protect their earnings, time off and pensions… bureaucrats protecting their power and pensions… and of course the anointed who think they know better than everyone else how other people’s children should be educated. Vouchers are the answer. Convert all public schools to parent-teacher coops and let them compete in an open market with charters and private schools… some will be selective, others will be lottery, others still may give preference to locals… the goal would be for the failures to be removed from the system so something better can take its place. Have states set standards, but then let the people roam free.

woodruffw 4y ago

To pick on just a single thing: this article highlights a handful of eye-popping figures for per-student spending in larger districts, but it never actually establishes that these comparisons are meaningful. NYC, for example, spends an extraordinary amount per-student on paper. But a lot of that is pension obligations and other spending that (1) can't be cut, and (2) costs less in overhead in larger districts. It's not clear that other districts uniformly include their pension contributions in their student funding numbers. Edit: To qualify: from casual searching, it seems like a lot of municipalities include teachers as a bucket in their larger civil service pension budget line.

htag 4y ago
Is anyone actually surprised that the city with the highest cost of living also spends more per-student than any other city.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  That too! It's not even remotely surprising that higher costs in NYC (in payroll, materiel, etc.) translates to higher per-student costs!

JohnTHaller 4y ago

Reminder that the Wall Street Journal is part of the Fox News conglomerate News Corp.

jcranmer 4y ago

Dear god no. The proposed cap is on 10k students, which is roughly the size of one high school with its feeder schools (we're talking about breaking up large school districts, so individual schools are going to be on the larger side). That's not something on the level of "this is going to create inefficiencies" so much as "this is going to utterly destroy things." The problem with hyperlocalism is that, since the number of constituents is so small, one angry person with a megaphone can throw a race, letting them act as a petty dictator. There's already too many petty wannabe dictators running around school board meetings right now, and encouraging more isn't going to help things. Of course, I assume this is entirely the point, which makes me wonder what the author's failed crusade against his large school district was about. Transgender bathrooms? Critical race theory? Litter boxes? Teaching evolution? (Also, I take issue with the characterization that the largest school districts tend to be the lowest-performing--my experience, looking at the list of largest school districts, is that they tend to be, well, average.)

JustSomeNobody 4y ago
> so much as "this is going to utterly destroy things." There are people actively trying to destroy public education. So, you are spot on.
ticviking 4y ago
Perhaps the problem is more our lack of engagement in civil society and local government such that those single loud voices are so powerful?
supertrope 4y ago
New Jersey has a zillion small townships. Each jurisdiction needs their own bureaucracy and politicians and sometimes own police department. This is a big part of why property taxes are usually >$10,000/yr over there. What local government is going to vote to dissolve themselves and merge to deliver more efficient shared services?
- RhysU 4y ago
  Being able to deal mostly with first-line managers because a township is small is worth a premium. I can call my mayor-- he met with our cub scout den last fall. I can find the police chief if I want. I can speak to the deciders on the school board or in the administration. Yes, it's expensive but there's delightful responsiveness and accountability in exchange for the sticker price.

jollofricepeas 4y ago

But… Isn’t the bigger problem minority rule? Specifically, large school districts in blue cities are underfunded by red state legislatures controlled by rural areas? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-minority-rule-doom-loop/618536/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/how-stop-m...

cplusplusfellow 4y ago
I’m pretty sure if you gave Camden NJ ISD more money they wouldn’t be any better.

jm20 4y ago

One thing not getting mentioned here is the outsized influence large districts have on the broader education market. A contract with a huge district like LAUSD or CPS can be worth millions, and often these go to large incumbents because they have the resources to basically lobby these districts to accept them. Their motivations for choosing a product then become largely political as opposed focused on efficacy. Smaller districts often look (erroneously in my opinion) to these large districts to set an example of the “right” approach and adopt the same products. This is how you end up with monoliths like Pearson and McGraw Hill making shitty products that teachers hate but schools continue to pay gobs of money for. And innovation is stifled because that money doesn’t go to better products from companies that can’t afford a giant lobbying arm/don’t have a 20yr relationship with the superintendent.

judge2020 4y ago
> Smaller districts often look (erroneously in my opinion) to these large districts to set an example of the “right” approach and adopt the same products. When they have teachers driving Teslas and BMWs, it probably looks quite appealing.

htag 4y ago

The author makes no argument that educational outcomes would improve or costs would decrease with his plan, and brushes off such concerns as secondary. My priorities and the author's priorities for public schools are different. Furthermore I find it ironic that the author cites bureaucracy as a problem with large school districts but the purposed plan would produce a larger overall number of school administrations and bureaucrats as more school districts are created.

sillypuddy 4y ago

NYC Charter stats: 15% of NYC public school students attend public charter schools. 9% of the students are multilingual learners, 18% have IEPs, 80% of students are economically disadvantaged.

1letterunixname 4y ago

It makes sense to have roughly sized but limited district, school, and classroom to optimize between the collective economies-of-scale on one side and the maximum number of students any classroom or district can administer in an effective manner on the other. Too few: it's too expensive per pupil; too many (~ 24+) in a classroom, the quality of education suffers and too many in a district also leads to inefficiencies and scaling issues. Los Angeles is the worst, by far: 560k students. Ridiculous. That's the population of a large city. Good luck forming a local hobby club for the kids with other parents and with the school's blessing. Scale investment by managing fewer students and give school administrators best practices and benchmarks. It's far easier for large districts to use large piles of money inefficiently than for districts managing fewer pupils. The other thing is to mandate parental involvement. Without this, there is unlikely to be a good outcome. It also implies that parents need some sort of paid leave and/or scheduling to be involved in their kids' education.

cafard 4y ago

Seriously? In Maryland and Virginia, school districts tend to go by county or by county-equivalent city. Fairfax County, Virginia, and Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland have many excellent schools. If you drive a couple of hours north to Pennsylvania, the school districts tend to be much smaller, sometimes just an elementary school or two, a middle school, and a high school. I don't think that most of those high schools are competitive with (for example) TJ in Fairfax or Blair, Wootton or Richard Montgomery in Maryland. There is no reason you can't have a top-notch small school district, but I'll bet that it is in a very prosperous end of the state. (New Jersey has the same mania for multiplication of local government, including school districts; some of those districts must be outstanding.)