The School Size Issue Comes Full Circle

Thirty years ago Vermont was torn by a passionate debate over small schools. Three progressive commissioners of education, led by A. John Holden (1948-1965), had aggressively forced the closure and consolidation of dozens of Vermont's small schools as possible in the name of "efficiency".

As Commissioner Harvey Scribner put it, following the then-popular education school theory, children learn by being exposed to "learning experiences" facilitated by certified educators. Large schools naturally offer more "learning experiences" than small schools. Therefore, children who attend "efficient" large schools will learn more.

There was no empirical evidence to support this neat and simple proposition. Of the billions of dollars spent on educational research by governments and universities since World War II, not one study could be found comparing the educational achievements of small-school children versus large-school children.

No matter. When progressive educators are gripped by a Great Idea, evidence is not desirable or necessary. When skeptics in the legislature (including myself) persuaded Gov. Deane C. Davis to request a Federally-financed study on the question in 1969, Commissioner Scribner refused to have anything to do with the proposal, and thus killed it. Why take the chance that the facts will undermine a cherished theory?

So the progressive commissioners (on dubious legal authority) forced the closing of small schools all over Vermont. But now, thirty years later, the education establishment has decided that closing small schools may not have been such a Great Idea after all.

Act 60 required the Department of Education to study of the role and value of small schools. That report was released last month. In the words of study chairman Bob McNamara, "small schools do cost more to operate -- the smaller you are the more expensive it is - but they do have a value added because the students in these schools do very well in achievement results." One may quibble about the instrument used to measure the results (the New Standards Assessment), and about the calculation of comparative operating costs, but this is a remarkable reversal of establishment opinion.

The next question is, "Why do small-school students do better?" The teachers union argues that it is because small schools have smaller classes. They have enthusiastically joined President Clinton in demanding a Federally-funded reduction in class sizes in big schools to make them look like small schools. This proposal, which simply adds more employees to do the same thing, has the great virtue (for the union, not anyone else) of producing more dues- paying members to support the Vermont NEA's political agenda..

University of Rochester economist Eric Hanushek has reviewed hundreds of studies on class size, reaching the conclusion that (over the typical range of 15 to 30 students per teacher) there is "little systematic gain from general reduction in class size". Reducing class size is also the single most expensive, and least cost-effective, way of "reforming" education.

An alternative explanation comes from those experienced in small, community schools. Small schools and small communities have a symbiotic effect. The school is the focus of the community, and parents and community people give generously in time and effort to the school as the community's principal activity. This notion was definitely out of fashion in the 1960s, when education "reformers" sought to separate children from parents and community so that they could be molded properly by high-minded experts free of the detracting influence of untrained and often wrong headed parents and pastors.

This small school argument is most obviously true where the school is a faith-based independent school, and the community is the sponsoring congregation. It is a strong argument for the generally smaller independent schools, charter schools, cottage schools, home schooling, and almost any kind of school smaller that what the education establishment once lauded as the "efficient" education factory.

But the most important policy question is this one, which many parents will be asking: "If small schools integrated with community, parents and congregations are best for my child, why is the government forcing me to send my child to a large school based on thirty year old theories which have not worked out so well?" Those parents will increasingly wonder why their children should have to pay the price for the failed theories of the past, and be forced to prop up the institutions, bureaucracies, and interest groups which the government erected on the base of those theories.

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June 1999