District Size

Scholars such as David Strang have documented that, historically, schooling in what is now the United States began as small, local operations. But as the nation developed, these local schools consolidated to form larger schools and districts as part of a trend toward greater professionalization and bureaucratization of the American educational enterprise. This trend continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. School districts can be characterized in many different ways, such as broad categorizations based on district locale (i.e., urban, suburban, rural) and quantitative measures of varying means of calculations and precision. An example of the latter of these is district size, which can vary greatly. Districts in some states can be as small as having one all-encompassing PreK-12 grade facility to county school districts ...