|
Mission Creep: AdTI Issue Brief No. 176
Educators are coming to the realization that bigger is not always better. Class size reduction is at the top of their education reform list. More recently, school size reduction has made its way onto the public agenda. U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley toured school districts across the country, banging the drum for smaller schools. "We need to find ways to create small, supportive learning environments that give students a sense of connection to each other," he said. "That's hard to do when we are building high schools the size of shopping malls. Size matters."1 But talk to administrators, teachers and union officials in Los Angeles, Detroit, New York and Philadelphia. Ask whether class size should be reduced (certain answer: yes). Then ask if school size should be reduced (likely answer: yes). Then ask if school district size should be reduced. At this point you are bound to witness a pause from your subject brought on by the realization that he or she has been led down the garden path into a neat little trap. While espousing the virtues of small schools with a community atmosphere, our public school system has monstrously large school districts, mainly in poor urban areas, which are home to the worst problems in education. It wasn’t always like this. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1937-38, there were 119,001 school districts for 247,127 schools. There was a steady decline over the next 30 years until, in 1970-71, it hit 17,995 and the decline slowed somewhat. By 1996-97, there were only 14,841 school districts. But, for decades, now, Americans have accepted the premise that a large city requires one mammoth school district whose boundaries coincide with those of city limits. Urban school administrators are quick to point out the disparities in income and ethnic mix between their schools and those in the suburbs, but rarely do they talk about the vast difference in size between urban and suburban districts. And rarely are they forced to. The relative lack of debate over district size is due to our general application of the principle of economies of scale. In many human endeavors, one large organization avoids the duplication of effort and administration that is present when 10 smaller organizations serve the same populace. But evidence suggests that the American public school system suffers from penalties of scale. Paradoxically, the larger a school district gets, the more resources it devotes to secondary or even non-essential activities. This is an overlooked notion, but hardly a controversial one. A number of researchers over the past 10 years have learned that large districts are "off task," in the language of education. A 1989 study found "As specialization in staff grows, program offerings expand, and administrative personnel increase, problems of coordination and control also increase. And in large systems, time and energy are more likely to be shifted away from core service activities."2 A second study in 1992 discovered that increasing school district size increases certain inputs to the production of education, but does not lead to higher output (student achievement).3 And, relevant to Secretary Riley's call for smaller schools, a 1990 study concluded that "school district size is the most significant factor in determining school size with consolidation/reorganization plans generally resulting in larger schools...."4 In other words, large school districts engage in "mission creep." In military circles, this refers to the practice of committing forces to achieve a limited objective, but finding it desirable to expand outward ostensibly to support the original objective. Often the "support" activities lose any connection to the original goal. In public education, mission creep is a common occurrence. Since children learn better when they are well-fed, the schools feed them. In the same way, schools provide transportation, counseling, childcare, health services, security, etc., every one of which may be very worthwhile and important activities. The problem? Soon these "support" functions require support of their own and before long the school district is no longer a school district, but a social services center. Education -- the original mission -- loses primacy. This is not unlike the education "blob" that has grown in Washington. Originally a small group of organizations dedicated to advancing education and representing discrete memberships (e.g., teachers, administrators), it has grown to nearly 40 organizations with more than 3,000 employees and a combined budget of more than $700 million, and a mission that seems simply to be resistance to change. The average American public school district has six schools and approximately 3,600 students -- for an average school size of 600 students. In comparison, the Los Angeles Unified School District averages 1,039 students per school, Dade County (Miami, Florida) averages 1,059, and Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) averages 1,133.5 The differences are even more jarring if you look at individual states, instead of just averages. The entire state of North Dakota enrolled about 120,000 students in 1996. If all those students were placed in one district, it would rank only 19th in the nation in size. But North Dakota doesn't have one district, it has 236. One's expectations would be that as a school district increases in size, its expenditures on various activities would increase as well, and in roughly the same proportions. But, if economies of scale were in effect, we would also expect spending on teachers, books and supplies to increase as a share of the total. In fact, many large districts spend less than the national average on instruction. The average U.S. school district spends 61.7 percent of its budget on instruction, that is, teacher salaries and benefits, textbooks and supplies for the classroom. Large districts often have difficulties matching this percentage. The Orange County (Florida) school district, which encompasses the city of Orlando, spends only 52.2 percent of its budget on instruction. Baltimore County (Maryland) spends 55.3 percent and Broward County (Florida) spends 55.7 percent. Instructional spending alone is not enough to evaluate a district's allocation of resources. If teachers are poorly paid relative to support personnel and administrators, it will naturally reduce the instructional percentage. So we need to examine the mix of human beings as well as spending, and here there are some real eye-openers. About 52 percent of the employees of the average U.S. school district are classroom teachers. The rest are administrators, principals, librarians, aides, secretaries, bus drivers, et al. But in Philadelphia only 48 percent of district employees are classroom teachers. Teachers in Detroit, whose recent one-week strike dominated national headlines, make up only 40 percent of the Detroit school work force. Is such an outcome inevitable? Not necessarily. The state of Rhode Island has 152,000 students and is small enough in area to place them all in one district if it chose to (which would make it only the 12th largest district in America). Instead, students are enrolled in 36 districts. Rhode Island spends two-thirds of its education budget on instruction, has a teacher for every 14.2 students (one the lowest ratios in the nation), and over 63 percent of its education employees are classroom teachers -- the highest ratio in the nation. Who are all these other education employees? It would be unfair to refer to them as "administration," since janitors and librarians serve no administrative function. On the other hand, school officials often use such essential employees to divert examination of their labor allocation policies. Researchers can bury you in statistics on class size and pupil-teacher ratios. How many can give you good comparative statistics on the number of bus drivers, teaching assistants, counselors, school security officers, and the hordes of bureaucrats who make up the public school system? How many coordinators are too many? There are school districts in America where the superintendent, assisted only by a secretary, is also the principal of the school and teaches fifth grade. In the Philadelphia School District, the superintendent supervises over 25,000 employees and 261 schools. He has a staff of 10. The school board has a support staff of six. The general counsel has a legal staff of 27. These staffers evidently can't speak with the public or the legislature on their own, so there is a communications and government relations staff, which consists of 13 people. Then there is transportation, school safety, human resources, leadership and learning, purchasing and warehouse, print shop, etc. According to the district, the total administrative staff for 1997-98 was 1,474. But "administration" is a term open to interpretation, and we should make no rash assumptions. The district defines the following personnel as "providing direct services to students." They include 12,005 classroom teachers, 3,750 assistant teachers and classroom assistants, and 413 principals and assistant principals. After that, some job titles are self-explanatory and others, well, see for yourself.
This list raises a lot of questions, but I'll highlight only one. The Philadelphia School District has 2,895 custodians, building engineers and maintenance people, plus 121 staffers to oversee them. That's an average of 11.5 people per school site whose jobs are merely to service the buildings. Perhaps each and every one of them is vitally necessary. But it is obvious that so many custodians equals fewer teachers, or less pay for those you have. Why is this important? For one reason, because we tend to think of bloat as something that happens to education only at the state or county level. For another, because these bloated districts are home to overwhelming percentages of the nation's minority students. Philadelphia alone enrolls 47.6 percent of the minority students in the entire state of Pennsylvania. The average American school district has a enrollment consisting of 35.8 percent ethnic and racial minorities. Of the 25 largest districts, 22 have a higher percentage than that. In some districts the ratios are extreme: Houston 88.9 percent minority; Los Angeles and Dallas 89 percent; Chicago 89.5 percent; Detroit 94.8 percent. Minority students in large urban districts bear a double burden. They are stuck in school districts that do not have the tax base to compare to surrounding suburban districts, plus the available funding gets diverted to areas unrelated to the district's primary mission: educating students. Sure, suburban schools may spend more per-pupil, but how many, like Philadelphia, have two bus attendants, three non-teaching assistants, four noon-time aides, and nine custodians for every school. And let's not forget the labor implications. Which district is more likely to have difficult contract negotiations or work stoppages? The district with 15 bus drivers, or the one with 677 bus drivers? As school systems across the country struggle with the questions of testing, quality and accountability, they need to look at school district size as a variable. Walter Haney of the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy at Boston College testified in a federal court case that minority students are not destined for scholastic failure, they simply need more and better opportunities. "Black and Hispanic students do not receive anywhere near the educational opportunities [of white students]," he said, adding that test scores in suburban districts suggest minority students perform better there than in large urban districts.6 New schools are being built to accommodate new students, but very few new school districts are being created. America now has 24 districts with more than 100,000 students. With enrollment growing at about 2 percent annually, the problem will only get worse. If large school districts are unable to refocus on their primary mission, the solution is obvious, if politically tricky. Break 'em up. Mike Antonucci is director of the Education Intelligence Agency, an education research firm based in California.
|