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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Economic Issues In School District Consolidation In Nebraska, Bree L. Dority, Eric C. Thompson
Economic Issues In School District Consolidation In Nebraska, Bree L. Dority, Eric C. Thompson
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
This research article examines how per-pupil spending on public primary and secondary education in Nebraska varies by school district size, and whether expenditures are expected to rise or fall after districts consolidate. We find a U-shaped relationship between per-pupil spending and the number of students per school district in Nebraska. We also find a similar relationship between property tax base and the number of students per school district. However, our analysis of perpupil spending before and after consolidation fails to find consistent evidence that consolidation lowered per-pupil spending, in either rural or non-rural districts. The gains from consolidation become even …
The Importance Of Being Emily Lessons From Legislative Battles Over Forced School Consolidation, Marty Strange
The Importance Of Being Emily Lessons From Legislative Battles Over Forced School Consolidation, Marty Strange
Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences
Pressure to force or induce the consolidation of rural schools through legislation is common across the United States. Whereas consolidation was once chiefly about school improvement, today it is more likely to be about fiscal savings. Legislative battles have produced many lessons for rural school advocates which are discussed here. Consolidation is also on the agenda of many of the school reform movements at work in the United States, many of which see rural schools as too numerous, too attached to the communities they serve, and too democratically managed to reform from without. As reformers grapple with the resistance to …