Redistricting & Consolidation
School & District Management
What the Research Says
Researchers Used AI to Rezone School Districts. Here's What They Found
The experiment created more diverse schools, while cutting students' travel time.
School & District Management
Opinion
How Two Districts Managed to Consolidate During the Pandemic
The trick to being ready when disaster strikes? Be ready well before that.
School & District Management
Why Don't Struggling K-12 Districts Just Dissolve?
Emotions remain raw as educators and residents in a rural Wisconsin district dig for solutions after being denied the option of dissolving.
School & District Management
A School District in Fiscal Free-Fall Scrambles to Avoid Crash Landing
Emotions remain raw as educators and residents in a rural Wisconsin district dig for solutions after being denied the option of dissolving.
Equity & Diversity
Secessions Exacerbate Segregation, Study Finds
Court-ordered school desegregation has been more successful in the South than in any other region of the country, but researchers have noted a new threat: the growing number of communities that are seceding from larger school districts to form their own.
Equity & Diversity
Wealthier Enclaves Breaking Away From School Districts
Over two years, 27 communities have split from their home districts, and the new districts are mostly wealthier, whiter, and more property-rich than the ones left behind.
Education
In District Consolidations, States Leave Poor Residents Adrift, Study Says
As wealthy, white communities split their schools off from their poor, black and Latino neighbors, few states have legal recourse to intervene, the advocacy group EdBuild says.
Equity & Diversity
A Quest to Give Minority Voters a Bigger Voice on School Boards
Across California, school districts are shifting from at-large elections to single-member districts to make it easier for Latinos and other minority communities to elect candidates to local offices.
School & District Management
When a Community Loses Its Schools
School closures often affect poor students, African-American students, and rural communities like Hughes, Ark.
School & District Management
New Plan Would Keep Nevada’s Sprawling Clark Co. District Intact
A year after state lawmakers moved to break up the nation’s fifth-largest school district, a new plan instead would reorganize and decentralize it.
School & District Management
Video
Merging Small School Districts: Showdown in Vermont
With a plummeting student enrollment and skyrocketing education costs, Vermont lawmakers decided last year to begin an ambitious and controversial experiment to consolidate its vast system of public schools. The law, Act 46, intends to dramatically reduce the number of districts in the mostly rural state-there are currently 280 of them-by 2020 using a series of tax incentives.
Supporters argue that by sharing resources more efficiently, the state will save millions of dollars and give students access to academically rigorous programs and more electives like the arts.
But opponents say the initiative stabs at the very heart of Vermont, with its hundreds of tiny school houses and, more importantly, Vermonters' deeply-felt sense of local control.
In this report, John Tulenko of Education Week profiles a northern region of Vermont where residents are sharply divided on whether to combine its five school districts.
Read more about this issue on edweek.org. This video aired on PBS NewsHour on May 31, 2016.
Federal
Consolidation Push Roils Vermont Landscape
A state law aimed at encouraging—or prodding—small, rural districts to merge has hit some speed bumps on the road to implementation.
Every Student Succeeds Act
Education Department Begins to Assess ESSA-Era Role
The new K-12 law contains checks on the U.S. secretary's authority, but the agency still has policy tools in its shed, especially in the areas of civil rights and data resources.
School & District Management
School Facilities Fuel State-Local Tensions in W.Va. District
A consolidation plan for Fayette County schools pushed by the state schools chief that aims to shutter dilapidated facilities and open a new one has proved divisive.