Last year South Dakota's Department of Education notified nine
districts that under a new state law they would have to
consolidate, in part at least, because they had schools with
fewer than 100 students. This caught my attention because I've
been telling my friends how great it was that my daughter went
to a small school. Our family experienced so many benefits - due
largely to the fact that the school was small - that I thought
it time someone proposed that no school have more than 100
students. Yet a multi-decade trend in school consolidation -
with no sign of abating - promotes "minimum enrollment
requirements" and seemingly fails to act on an accumulation of
evidence that small is better. Just the Facts The statistics on
school district and school consolidation are startling. When the
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began tracking
the number of districts and schools 70 years ago, it found that
the United States had more than 117,000 school districts,
collectively operating about 250,000 s