There are 590 school districts in New Jersey, and more than 200 of them were involved in a sending-receiving relationship with another district. Although shared services were standard throughout the state, which had a declining student population for several years, consolidation never caught on.
Proponents said consolidation could bring equity to school funding and curriculums, while opponents believed it would drive up taxes for wealthy communities and remove some control from local areas.
Five states, including Arizona and Kansas, weighed proposals in 2020 to reduce the number of school districts by consolidating. All these states pondered financial incentives to encourage school consolidations.
But this pendulum swung both ways; few states were considering proposals to break up large school districts.
In Nevada, plans were presented to break up the huge Clark County (Las Vegas) school district. Wyoming's legislature defeated an attempt at more district consolidation as well.
What are the effects of school consolidation, and how bad is it? The history of public education suggests that district consolidation was generally a bad idea.
Although proponents promised lower costs and more robust student performance, in practice, neither seemed to occur. Consolidation took away power from parents, students, and local influence into more centralized political arrangements, ones where teacher unions and other special interests had even more impact. The result was higher per-pupil costs and worse education.
Besides price escalation, consolidation discouraged competition and educational diversity. Consolidation adversely affected both the cost of education and the performance of students. Experts discovered that deterioration in pupil performance was greatest where the shift in funding from local to state sources was greatest.
Another positive effect of consolidation was that larger schools could provide better instruction. Considerable evidence supported instead that small schools are more conducive to optimum student learning.
Smaller class sizes and close teacher-student relationships were often used as justification for supporting smaller school districts. Students had more opportunities to participate in all aspects of school life in smaller schools. They provided greater social and emotional support for students than larger schools where students could get "lost" in the sheer number of their peers.
