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INTRODUCTION
The Central Staff
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- The Central Staff
- Large Districts: Increased Central Offices -
- Schools keep getting bigger and bigger. Between
1940 and 1990, the total number of elementary and secondary public schools
declined 69 percent—from approximately 200,000 to 62,037—despite a 70
percent increase in the U.S. population (Walberg 1992; Howley 1994).
Consequently, the average school enrollment rose more than five times—from
127 to 653.
- In today's urban and suburban settings, high school
enrollments of 2,000 and 3,000 are commonplace, and New York City has many
schools with enrollments nearing 5,000 (Henderson and Raywid 1994). School
districts, too, have decreased in number and increased in size during this time
period.
- The 117,108 school districts that existed in 1940 have
experienced dramatic consolidation; they have decreased by 87 percent—to
15,367 (Walberg 1992). Not surprisingly, the largest schools can generally be
found within the largest districts (Williams 1990).
- Smith and DeYoung (1988) identify several factors driving
this long-term consolidation trend. One has been the desire of school
administrators to "demonstrate their commitment to the forces of science,
progress, and modernization" by seeking to make schooling "'efficient,' a
notion importantly borrowed from the private sector" (3). Smith and DeYoung
also cite the 1957 launching of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik and the
contemporary belief that catching up with the Soviet Union required bigger
schools that could produce more scientists. Furthermore, they note that
compliance with the school desegregation and special entitlement programs
originating in the 1960s have resulted in additional school mergers. Smith and
DeYoung and many others note that James Conant's 1959 book, The American
High School Today, greatly accelerated the momentum of the school
consolidation movement (Pittman and Haughwout 1987; Stockard and Mayberry 1992;
Walberg 1992; Williams 1990). Conant argued that, in order to be cost effective
and to offer a sufficiently large and varied curriculum, a secondary school had
to have at least 100 students in its graduating class. Conant claimed that the
small high school was the number-one problem in education, and that its
elimination should be a top priority (37-38).1
- Small Districts: Understaffed Central Offices
- Organizational Hierarchy
- Efficiency Ratios
The Principal and the School
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