Stephen L. Bowen: Still time for compromise on education reform
Bangor Daily News, March 21, 2007
(excerpt) The primary flaw that the committee’s plan shares with the governor’s is its ceaseless focus not on the quality or efficiency of Maine’s school districts, but on their size. In both plans, the ultimate goal is to simply increase the size of districts, despite a good deal of research from across the nation showing that larger districts can often be less efficient than smaller ones. According to the Education Department’s own data, size is a far from ideal indicator of administrative efficiency. Fully half the state’s 10 largest school districts dedicate a higher percentage of their total spending to school administration than the state average. Belfast-area SAD 34 spends a smaller percentage of its education dollar on school system administration than six of the top 10 largest districts in the state, despite having more than a thousand fewer students than any of them. My own district, Camden-based SAD 28, with 850 students, devotes 4.39 percent of total spending to school administration, less than all but two of the state’s 10 largest districts.
Under both consolidation proposals, though, efficient and inefficient districts would be merged together. The governor’s plan, for instance, would replace the Bangor area’s many school units with one enormous district serving 15,000 students. In so doing, it would merge efficient Bangor and Old Town, both of which dedicate less than 3 percent of total spending on system administration, with inefficient Brewer and Orono, which both spend almost 6 percent. Hermon spends more than twice as much on system administration, on a percentage basis, than Orrington, which has a third fewer students.
Rather than simply merge districts like these in the hope that savings will result, the focus needs to be on generating efficiency within and between those districts while maintaining quality educational programs.
(excerpt) The primary flaw that the committee’s plan shares with the governor’s is its ceaseless focus not on the quality or efficiency of Maine’s school districts, but on their size. In both plans, the ultimate goal is to simply increase the size of districts, despite a good deal of research from across the nation showing that larger districts can often be less efficient than smaller ones. According to the Education Department’s own data, size is a far from ideal indicator of administrative efficiency. Fully half the state’s 10 largest school districts dedicate a higher percentage of their total spending to school administration than the state average. Belfast-area SAD 34 spends a smaller percentage of its education dollar on school system administration than six of the top 10 largest districts in the state, despite having more than a thousand fewer students than any of them. My own district, Camden-based SAD 28, with 850 students, devotes 4.39 percent of total spending to school administration, less than all but two of the state’s 10 largest districts.
Under both consolidation proposals, though, efficient and inefficient districts would be merged together. The governor’s plan, for instance, would replace the Bangor area’s many school units with one enormous district serving 15,000 students. In so doing, it would merge efficient Bangor and Old Town, both of which dedicate less than 3 percent of total spending on system administration, with inefficient Brewer and Orono, which both spend almost 6 percent. Hermon spends more than twice as much on system administration, on a percentage basis, than Orrington, which has a third fewer students.
Rather than simply merge districts like these in the hope that savings will result, the focus needs to be on generating efficiency within and between those districts while maintaining quality educational programs.
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