Reductions in administrative prices had been offset by increased transportation and staffing prices.
Mother and father in Houston protest in opposition to faculty consolidation in Houston, Texas, in February 2026.
(Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle through Getty Pictures)
When Mike Huckabee was the Arkansas governor in 2004, he wished authorities to be extra environment friendly. He signed a regulation to close down tiny faculty districts with fewer than 350 college students.
Over the subsequent decade, 85 faculty districts merged with others, triggering the closure of 105 colleges, most of them excessive colleges.
Households and academics protested. Some college students had bus rides so lengthy that they couldn’t take part in sports activities and different after-school actions. A 2022 examine discovered that the mergers had accelerated depopulation in rural communities and depressed property values; that very same yr one other examine discovered nearly no academic gains.
At the very least there was one potential payoff: saving taxpayers cash.
What financial sense does it make to keep up a superintendent and a district workplace to serve only a couple hundred college students? Consolidating tiny districts appeared like an apparent method to eradicate administrative overhead.
However a stunning new evaluation by researchers on the College of Arkansas finds that the financial savings by no means materialized. Reductions in administrative overhead had been offset by rising prices for transportation and tutorial employees.
The examine, introduced Sept. 26 on the annual convention of the Society for Analysis on Academic Effectiveness in Baltimore, adopted the funds of Arkansas faculty districts for twenty years. It discovered no total price financial savings from consolidation — not instantly after districts merged and no more than a decade later.
“I believe we must be cautious about recommending faculty consolidation,” mentioned Josh McGee, an economist on the College of Arkansas and a co-author of each the brand new price evaluation and the sooner examine of educational outcomes. “I believe the potential advantages haven’t materialized as envisioned and there are actual potential harms.”
The brand new examine has not but been printed in a peer-reviewed journal.
Arkansas is a perfect place to check faculty district consolidation due to that statewide consolidation regulation. However McGee mentioned there’s nothing uncommon concerning the state’s faculty funding or prices, and he would anticipate related outcomes elsewhere. That issues as faculty districts across the nation confront shrinking enrollments. Start charges have been falling since 2008, and Okay-12 enrollment is forecast to say no by 6 percent between 2020 and 2030. Because the variety of college students declines, strain to consolidate districts — and shut colleges — might develop.
So the place did the financial savings go?
Administrative prices did fall. The researchers estimate that consolidation diminished administrative spending by as a lot as $138 per pupil, on common, based on their preliminary, unpublished calculations. Some tutorial prices, together with spending on schooling expertise and textbooks, additionally declined, by as a lot as $92 per pupil.
However these financial savings had been eaten up by increased prices elsewhere.
Transportation prices rose $24 per pupil initially and continued climbing over time, rising to a further $63 per pupil every year. Educational employees prices — together with academics and aides, in addition to math and studying coaches — rose by as a lot as $179 per pupil. Pupil-support prices, together with steering counselors and social employees, rose by as a lot as $61 per pupil.
The essential downside is that merging two districts doesn’t eradicate the necessity to educate the identical variety of kids. And bigger districts might create new layers of administration or add extra help employees, comparable to tutorial coaches, counselors and aides.
“You continue to should run colleges, and people colleges nonetheless want academics,” McGee mentioned. “You may suppose there’s going to be some efficiencies on the district degree as a result of we’re not going to want two superintendents. However everytime you get bigger faculty districts, you have a tendency to rent folks. You get assistant superintendents. You don’t essentially lower the full variety of positions.”
One Arkansas district that was pressured to merge had simply 81 college students. However the examine can’t inform us whether or not 81 college students is just too few to maintain a district economically.
The scale of the district earlier than consolidation might matter lower than the kind of merger, mentioned the examine’s co-author Md. Juwel Ahmed Sarker, a researcher on the College of Arkansas who introduced the examine in Baltimore. He mentioned he detected extra situations of price financial savings when a big district absorbed a small one than when two small districts merged.
There’s one more reason the financial savings might not have materialized. Arkansas’s faculty funding method is predicated on the variety of college students. Consolidation reduces the variety of districts, however it doesn’t scale back the variety of kids who must be educated or present a monetary incentive to spend much less.
“You get your allotment by means of the state funding method, and also you’re going to seek out methods to spend it,” McGee mentioned. “Hopefully, you’re spending it in methods which might be going to be helpful for teenagers.”
The analysis doesn’t show that each faculty district merger is a nasty thought. A big district absorbing a tiny one might have completely different economies of scale than two small districts becoming a member of collectively. However the Arkansas expertise reveals {that a} easy discount of the variety of districts received’t make public schooling cheaper.
In the meantime, Arkansas itself appears to be backing away from faculty district consolidation. The state usually waives the requirement even after district enrollment falls beneath 350. And three districts have finished the alternative: They’ve damaged up into smaller districts.
The supposed tradeoff was that consolidation can be disruptive, however a minimum of it might lower your expenses and maybe enhance effectivity. Twenty years of Arkansas knowledge recommend that the primary a part of that cut price got here with out the second.
Contact employees author Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Sign, or [email protected].
This story about school district consolidation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group that covers schooling. Join Proof Points and different Hechinger newsletters.
