School-mergers study finds several positives
Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/221411/
When people ask Ann Webb about school-district consolidation, she points to the success of the basketball team.
In 2004, the Newark and Cord-Charlotte districts consolidated. The result: the new Cedar Ridge School District.
Webb, the superintendent, said the boys basketball team made it into the state 2 A tournament this year.
“I think that if the schools had stayed apart, neither one of them would probably have gone [to the tournament ].”
She said of the players: “They’ve had time to bond, and they played like a team.”
Now into the fourth year as a consolidated district, about 800 students from the different communities have blended together, as have faculty members and the communities, said Webb, a former Newark Elementary School principal.
“Overall, I’d have to say it’s been a pretty positive experience for our district,” she said.
The experiences reported by the Cedar Ridge chief executive are similar to some of the findings in a new study on school-district mergers done by researchers from three University of Arkansas campuses.
“The Phenomenological Study of School District Consolidation” is the result of comparing experiences of students, teachers and administrators in four recently consolidated Arkansas school districts with the assertions — both positive and negative — made about consolidation.
Frequently cited advantages include a broader curriculum, more extracurricular activities, better facilities and bettertrained teachers.
Disadvantages cited include longer bus rides, severed ties between schools and parents, larger teacher-to-pupil ratios and more teacher stress.
“We were able to confirm some of the positive things that are associated with consolidation and some of the negative things associated with consolidation,” said Marc Holley, a co-author of the study and a doctoral student in the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s College of Education and Health Professions.
He said the researchers didn’t find evidence in Arkansas of some of the experiences documented in other states.
The study’s authors interviewed 25 high school students, teachers and administrators in four districts in central Arkansas, the Ozark Mountain region, the Mississippi River Delta region and southern Arkansas.
The researchers promised anonymity to the people they interviewed. Also, the researchers did not identify the districts in the study. Webb did not know whether Cedar Ridge was included in the UA study, but she has responded to survey questions in the past and did not recall the source.
Nearly all students and educators acknowledged a broadened range of higher-level courses and extracurricular activities, the study said.
In some cases, courses that had been offered in the preconsolidated districts through distance learning were taught by teachers on campuses in consolidated high schools.
However, there was disagreement regarding the conditions of school facilities and instructional technology.
The researchers also didn’t find a consensus on whether larger class sizes resulting from consolidation are a benefit.
The larger classes, people in the districts said, mean less individual attention to students. It also means that teachers have fewer courses to prepare for and teach in a day. As a result, teachers can specialize in one or two courses.
In the four districts studied, the researchers expected to hear about conflicts between students from the different schools — but didn’t.
Though they did find that consolidation created longer bus rides for students assigned to new schools, the rides were five to 15 minutes longer and did not affect academic achievement.
“We had two original findings, two new themes emerge,” Holley said about the study.
“The experiences are different for students and educators who move into a new school as compared to students and educators who are in the receiving school. And what was most interesting is that the experiences for adults were different from those for children.”
In the studied districts — where the mergers were relatively successful — some of the parents and some of the teachers had persistent misgivings, Holley said.
That was not the case for most of the students.
“You often hear in the rhetoric that, ‘Oh, it is going to be difficult for the kids.’ We didn’t find that to be as much of a problem. They seem to acclimate and find their way in the new community. They seemed to be more flexible.”
The study quoted one educator who compared the consolidation and move to a new school to the death of her mother and the destruction of a family business but later concluded that the school change was satisfactory.
Another school employee is quoted in the study as saying, “The kids are fine... but their parents aren’t.”
Another employee, when asked if there was tension among parents, responded: “Gosh, yes. They haven’t gotten over it yet.”
The 30-page study was done in the wake of Act 60 of the second special legislative session in 2003.
The law required school districts to maintain enrollment of at least 350 to remain in existence. Since then, 57 districts have had to merge. Some of the small districts found their own merger partners. Other districts were consolidated involuntarily by the state Board of Education.
Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James said he is not surprised by the findings.
“All of us in this business clearly understand that the young people adjust much better than adults often times when there is a change,” said James, who had not yet read the report.
“Our feedback on the consolidations is that they have gone fairly smoothly,” James said. “But we have had some issues and still have issues that are surfacing.”
Holley and co-authors Keith Nitta of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and Sharon Wrobel of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said their evaluation is limited because of the small number of districts that agreed to participate.
The authors wanted to evaluate at least six consolidated districts but were turned down by some districts.
“It is likely that these schools had different, and more negative, experiences with consolidation than those who agreed to participate,” the study said.
Holley said he hoped that leaders in such districts would reconsider their position in the future.
The study’s purpose, he said, was to inform policymakers in Arkansas.
“If we can get a fuller picture of what is going on — then policymakers can make better informed decisions. Including the experiences of people who lived through it is essential,” he said.