High school achievement, operating costs, and student socioeconomic status in Maine: A comparison by school size

High schools enrolling fewer than 300 students are increasingly pressured to consolidate with other school administrative units in an effort to achieve efficiencies. The assumption of policymakers, community members, and educators who advocate for regionalization and consolidation is that bigger schools and school systems provide a better education at a lower cost. A growing literature that documents the educational quality benefits and manageable costs of small schools calls into question this assumption.; The goal of this study was to examine whether quality, cost, and level of affluence varied systematically with size of enrollment in Maine high schools. Further, the effect of the interaction of school size and socioeconomic status on achievement was calculated in an effort to determine if school size mitigated the negative effect of poverty on achievement. Correlational and multiple regression analyses, including tests for curvilinearity, were used to determine the effects of school size on the 118 public high schools in Maine.; This study indicated that, when simple bivariate analyses were used, students in small high schools achieved at somewhat lower levels than students in larger schools, per pupil operating costs were somewhat higher, and more economically disadvantaged students were enrolled in smaller schools. Regression analyses, however, revealed that the relationships between size and cost and size and SES were curvilinear. Both costs and proportions of disadvantaged students were higher in schools enrolling under 300 students; likewise, they rose proportionally in schools enrolling over approximately 900 students.; When size, SES, and cost were considered together, only SES was found to significantly predict academic achievement, explaining 45% of the variability. Unlike studies in other states, this study found that school size did not mitigate the negative effect of poverty on achievement.; This study suggests that closing Maine's small high schools is, alone, unlikely either to yield the cost savings or achievement gains expected by advocates. Policy initiatives and changes in practice aimed at both improving quality and containing costs in secondary education must encompass strategies to address the effects of the socioeconomic variables used in this study: adult educational and occupational attainment and community and family income levels.