The Politics of Educational Change: What Can We Learn from the School Consolidation Acts of 1961 and 1963?

Policy Brief | March 2015The Politics of Educational ChangeTemple UniversityCenter on Regional PoliticsCenter on Regional PoliticsPolicy BriefThe Politics of Educational Change: What Can We Learn from the School Consolidation Acts of 1961 and 1963?J. Wesley Leckrone march 2015 As the Pennsylvania General Assembly grapples with the difficult task of reforming the formula for supporting the Commonwealth’s 500 public school districts, a century-old question has arisen: Do we have too many school districts? Could we make better use of limited resources if the legislature were to require, or incentivize, consolidation? Whatever the policy or fiscal merits of school consolidation – and there have been recent studies by legislative service agencies suggesting that savings are possible and other studies arguing the opposite – almost everyone agrees that school consolidation is politically difficult. Yet, in the early 1960s, under two successive governors, Democrat David Lawrence and Republican William Scranton, the Pennsylvania General Assembly dramatically reduced the number of school districts from more than 2,000 to roughly the 500 we have today. How and why did this happen? We could find no good case studies of the politics of school consolidation, so Temple’s Center on Regional Politics (CORP) asked Wes Leckrone, associate professor of political science at Widener University, to produce one. Center on Regional Politicswww.temple.edu/corp1. See for example Governor Edward G. Rendell’s proposal in his 2009 budget message for consolidation to “no more than 100” districts and two recent studies by legislative service agencies: “Is Bigger Better: A Comparison of Rural School Districts,” Center for Rural Pennsylvania, 2006, and “A Study of the Cost Effectiveness of Consolidating Pennsylvania School Districts,” Volumes I and II, Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, 2007. No consolidations resulted from Rendell’s proposal or the two studies. The governor’s budget message and the two legislative reports are acces-sible through Temple University’s Pennsylvania Policy Database (www.temple.edu/papolicy).2. The so-called “little red school house” was then, and remains, a powerful image of the traditional and enduring American commitment to local control of schools (Zimmerman 2009; Atherton 2014).IntroductionOver the course of the 1960s, Pennsylvania saw a pre-cipitous drop in the number of school districts. This was the consequence of consolidation laws passed in 1961 and 1963. Deliberation on school district consolidation was contentious and involved debates over “the central-izing movements of governing bodies and the decentral-izing interests of local communities seeking to retain their identity” (Post and Stambach 1999: 114). This emphasis on local versus state control was considered one of the primary tensions in education policy during the waves of school consolidation in post-World War II America (Bailey, et al. 1962: 5-12). This policy brief examines the impetus for school district consolidation, the policy debates lead-ing to the passage of the two laws in the early 1960s, and lessons that may be learned from these experiences. The topic takes on contemporary importance given recent interest by some state policymakers in considering further consolidations as one means of making more efficient use of limited financial and educational resources.1The Pressing Need for School ConsolidationPennsylvania’s attempts at school consolidation were part of a national trend aimed at improving education in mid-twentieth century America. Demographic and economic changes, combined with Cold War international competi-tion and rapidly rising costs of education, pushed politi-cians to consolidate school districts. Traditionally small, localistic schools symbolized American individualism and governmental decentralization.2 Education experts were able to change the tone of this narrative. They argued that larger school districts offering comprehensive educational services were necessary for the United States to retain its economic and military dominance in the post-World War II international order.Four major trends helped to build a consensus on the need for consolidation of school districts. First, the post- World War II economy required skilled labor to accom-modate new technology and increasingly complex social, political, and business organizations. This necessitated that schools teach a full range of college preparatory classes, particularly in science and math. Second, policymakers were concerned with the ability of the United States to 2Temple UniversityCenter on Regional PoliticsPolicy Brief | March 2015The Politics of Educational Changematch the technological advances of the Soviet Bloc. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 focused attention on the need to produce a new generation of better educated citizens. Third, the educational infrastructure needed to meet these demands required larger, better staffed schools.