THE DECLINE IN THE NUMBER OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN THE UNITED-STATES - 1950-1980

Between 1950 and 1980 the number of school districts fell from 83,642 to 15,987. Data for the fifty states for 1950, 1960, 1970, and 1980 ar e used to identify the factors that contributed to this decline. The f ocus is on the tradeoff between cost savings through scale economies ( a few large districts) and a diverse population's demand for choice in public schooling (many small districts). We find that much of the dec line in the number of school districts has resulted from: 1) the decli ne in the farm population and increase in population density, which ha s made it easier to take advantage of scale economies; 2) the growing importance of state aid, which reduces quality variation among distric ts within a state; and 3) the increase in the fraction of teachers tha t belong to the National Education Association teacher's union, which may reflect increased political influence used to lower the costs of o rganizing. Several states have laws that require school district and c ounty (or state) boundaries to coincide. In the last section of the pa per we estimate the costs of these laws. First, we compare the predict ed number of districts, using the regression results in the earlier se ction of the paper, to the actual number in these states. Then we esti mated a demand equation that is used to generate the dollar amount of the cost due to diminished interjurisdictional competition.