Neither creatures of the state nor accidents of geography: The creation of American Public School districts in the twentieth century

University of Chicago Law Review

Volumn 77, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 177-199

  Fischel, William A ^a  

^a DARTMOUTH COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 77955533100     PISSN: 00419494     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. William A. Fischel, Making the Grade: The. Economic Evolution of American School Districts (Chicago 2009).
2. Id at 13-66,68-69.
3. See Barbara Finkelstein, Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in Popular Primary Schools in Nineteenth-Century United States 42 (Falmer 1989).
4. See Fischel, Making the Grade at 65 (cited in note 1).
5. See, for example, Lawrence W. Kenny and Amy B. Schmidt, The Decline in the Number of School Districts in the U.S.: 1950-1980, 79 Pub Choice 1, 15-16 (1994) (arguing that "state government" was largely responsible for the decrease in the number of the school districts and that the presence of farming families was a factor that tended to lead to less consolidation).
6. David Tyack, Thomas James, and Aaron Benavot. Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785-1954 120-21 (Wisconsin 1987) (arguing that the consolidation of rural schools was the result of a postwar wave of litigation made possible by "enabling legislation and mandatory laws on consolidation" and characterizing locals as opposed to such consolidation).
7. See Wayne E. Fuller, The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West 43-44 (Chicago 1982).
8. id.
9. See Ion C.Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850-1970 76-104 (Johns Hopkins 1979).
10. See US Census Bureau, State and Local Government Special Studies: Public School Systems in 1960 3-5 (showing that the 21 percent decrease in the number of districts since 1957 was due primarily to the closing of elementary schools with small enrollment and focused in five heavily rural states-Iowa, Michigan, Missouri. Nebraska, and Wisconsin).
11. Compare id at 24 (noting that, in 1960, New York had 1,361 school districts, with 49 in Westchester County and 58 in Nassau County) with National Center for Education Statistics, Build a Table, online at https://www.nces.ed. gov/ccd/bat (visited Oct 22, 2009) (allowing the user to build a table showing that in 2000 New York had 779 school districts, with 49 in Westchester County and 58 in Nassau County).
12. Compare US Census Bureau, Special Studies at 18 (cited in note 9) (noting that Illinois had 1.710 school districts in 1960, with 157 in Cook County, 56 in Dupage County, 9 in Kane County, and 40 in Will County) with National Center for Education Statistics, Build a Table, (cited in note 10) (allowing the user to build a table showing that, in 2000, Illinois had 1,055 school districts, with 160 in Cook County, 50 in Dupage County, 13 in Kane County, and 34 in Will County).
13. See Kenny and Schmidt, 79 Pub Choice at 15 (cited in note 5).
14. Lorraine Garkovich, Population and Community in Rural America 98 (Greenwood 1989) (measuring farm population as a proportion of total US population: 39.3 percent in 1900, 15.3 percent in 1950, and 2.7 percent by 1980).
15. Environmental Protection Agency. Ag 101 Demographics, online at http://epa.gov/oecaagct/agl01/demographics.html (visited Oct 21, 2009) (noting that less than 1 percent of Americans claim farming as an occupation).
16. See Garkovich. Population and Community at 48 (cited in note 13).
17. Id at 191,193.
18. Deborah K. Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture 102,186 (Yale 2003).
19. See George H. Reavis, Factors Controlling Attendance in Rural Schools 12-13 (Teachers College 1920) (reporting that, in 1920, children living more than two miles from school attended only half as many days as children living within a quarter of a mile of school).
20. See, for example, David R. Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa 61 (Iowa 1999) (noting that Iowa school districts sometimes maintained roads to facilitate access to schools).
21. Clayton E. Ellsworth, The Coming of Rural Consolidated Schools to the Ohio Valley, 1892-1912. 30 Ag Hist 119. 122 (1956) (insisting that improved roads had an "inseparable connection" with school consolidation).
22. See Fuller, The Old Country School 234-37 (cited in note 6) (documenting the objections of farmers to consolidation, including their loss of control over curriculum and cost, the length of school terms, the perception that city children were not made of the same moral fabric as "good country boys," and the greater distance their children would be forced to travel).
23. See id at 232 (noting consolidation advocates' claim that after one Ohio school consolidation, the cost of tuition per pupil had decreased from $16.00 to $10.48).
24. See Larry Cuban. How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms 1880-1990 24-25 (Teachers College 1993).
25. See David B. Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform 7-9 (Harvard 1995) (defining a "real school" as one that follows the "grammar of schooling," which includes the age grading of students, the division of curriculum into separate subjects, and the self-contained classroom with a single teacher).
26. See Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1918 15 (Wiley 1974) (noting that in rural schools the sessions were usually only two or three months, and older children often only attended during the winter).
27. William J. Reese, America's Public Schools: From the Common School to "No Child Left Behind" 69 (Johns Hopkins 2005).
28. See Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, The Race between Education and Technology 195 (Harvard 2008).
29. See, for example, Frederick D. McClusky, Introduction of Grading into the Public Schools of New England, 21 Elementary Sch J 34.37-38 (1920) (arguing that American schools adopted the idea of age-graded schooling from the European system).
30. Ellwood P. Cubberley. Public Education in the United States: A Study and Interpretation of American Educational History 226-28 (Houghton Mifflin 1914) (arguing that the emergence of age-graded schooling was largely the result of school districts constructing new buildings to accommodate growing student bodies and using the new space to divide students based on age, and began in Rhode Island in 1800).
31. See William J. Reese, The Origins of American High School 56 (Yale 1995).
32. David L. Angus, Jeffrey E. Mirel, and Maris A, Vinovskis, Historical Development of Age-Stratification in Schooling, 90 Teachers Coll Rec 211,231-32 (1988).
33. See McClusky. Introduction of Grading at 37 (cited in note 25).
34. See Garrett E. Rickard, Establishment of Graded Schools in American Cities, Part II: The Primary School, 48 Elementary Sch J 326,333 (1948).
35. See id at 326.
36. See Cuban. How Teachers Taught at 31 (cited in note 21).
37. See William H. Wells. The Graded School 7-8 (Barnes & Burr 1870) (noting, in the introduction to his proposed curriculum, the necessity of a course of study in which there are "certain stand-points ⋯ at which the pupils shall be required to reach a given standard of attainment in the parallel branches" before moving on to the next grade).
38. See also Mary J. Herrick. The Chicago Schools: A Social and Political History 41-43 (Sage 1971) (describing Wells's system and the logical progression of coursework through the different grades).
39. See Stephen Lassonde, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven's Working Class, 1870-1940 29-31 (Yale 2005).
40. See Rickard, 48 Elementary Sch J at 331 (cited in note 28).
41. *7-8 (Northwestern University Department ot Economics Working Paper, July 1997). online at http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/-fe2r/papers/ munich.pdf (visited Oct 18,2009).
42. See Rickard. 48 Elementary Sch J at 326 (cited in note 28).
43. See Reese, America's Public Schools at 109 (cited in note 23) (noting the disruption caused in the graded classrooms of larger towns by "ill-prepared rural youth").
44. Charles Nelson Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, A History of Urban America 136 (Macmillan 1967).
45. See Cuban. How Teachers Taught at 123 (cited in note 21).
46. Leo F. Schnore and Gene B. Petersen. Urban and Metropolitan Development in the United States and Canada, 316 Annals Am Acad Polit & Soc Sci 60, 61 (1958) (showing an increase in the proportion of Americans living in urban areas from 45.7 percent in 1910 to 51.2 percent in 1920).
47. See, for example, David B. Tyack, ed. Turning Points in American Educational History 121 (Blaisdell 1967).
48. See Goldin and Katz, The Race at 1-2 (cited in note 24).
49. See Bruce Leslie, Where Have All the Academies Gone? 41 Hist Educ Q 262,269 (2001).
50. See Patricia Albjerg Graham, Community & Class in American Education, 1865-1918 38 (Wiley 1974).
51. See Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood, at 64 (cited in note 18).
52. See James L. Leloudis, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920 22-23 (North Carolina 1996) (explaining that Wilmington and Greensboro established the state's first graded schools in 1868 and 1870, respectively, and that graded schools subsequently spread across the state).
53. See, for example, Kenneth A. Rasinski and Susan M. Rosenbaum. Predicting Citizen Support of Tax Increases for Education: A Comparison of Two Social Psychological Perspectives, 17 J Applied Soc Psych 990,1002 (1987) (concluding that in a large Illinois school district concern about property values had a "consistent[] and substantial impact" on attitudes toward tax support of the school system).
54. Jon C. Sonstelie and Paul R. Portney, Take the Money and Run: A Theory of Voting in Local Referenda, 8 J Urban Econ 187,187 (1980) (noting the confirmed hypothesis that the price of houses reflects the quality and cost of public services in the community).
55. William A. Fischel. The Homevoter Hypothesis 151 (Harvard 2001) (summarizing the findings of several scholars to the effect that even childless homeowners will support school spending when they believe that it will increase the value of their homes).
56. See Ellsworth, 30 Ag Hist at 124 (cited in note 18).
57. William A. Link. A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920 146-47 (North Carolina 1986).
58. New Hampshire State Board ot Education. Fifty-first Annual Report 272 (1900).
59. See, tor example. Fuller, The Old Country School at 62 (cited in note 6) (detailing the founding ot Uphoff School in Dunn. Wisconsin, built after Cristian Uphoff, a local farmer, agreed to give up his land for "virtually nothing").
60. New Hampshire Board of Education. Annual Report at 272 (cited in note 49).
61. See Wallace E. Oates, The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypothesis. 77 J Polit Econ 957.968 (1969).
62. See Joel Perlmann and Robert A. Margo, Women's Work? American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920 127 (Chicago 2001).
63. See, for example. F.M. Thrun. Rural School Organization in Michigan 5-22 (Michigan State 1933) (detailing the author's evaluation of area schooling by surveying the location of the school, the location of the students, and a physical inventory of the school building and education equipment).
64. See Reese, The Origins of the American High School at 143 (cited in note 26). Urban students in graded schools were also subject to exams, but their preparation was more systematic and geared towards the high-school curriculum, and pass rates were correspondingly high.
65. Id at 141-13 (noting that the admissions tests were deliberately made difficult in order to give credibility to the public schools, with, for example, nearly half of pupils failing the first entrance exam for Boston's English Classical School). See also Robert L. Leight and Alice Duffy Rinehart, Country School Memories: An Oral History of One-Room Schooling 87-91 (Greenwood 1999).
66. Avis Carlson. Small World ⋯ Long Gone 178 (Curley 1979).
67. Id at 179-81.
68. See, for example. David Strang, The Administrative Transformation of American Education: School District Consolidation, 1938-1980. 32 Admin Sci Q 352, 352 (1987) (arguing that school district consolidation was the product of the state's "penetration and organization of the local arena").
69. Jonathan P. Sher and Stuart A. Rosenfeld, Public Education in Sparsely Populated Areas of the United States 28-29 (National Institute of Education 1977) (describing the rural school consolidation movement as led by "liberal reformers, professional education associations, state education agencies, urban-oriented business organization, and leading management experts" and resisted by rural residents).
70. Edwin G. West, The Political Economy of American Public School Legislation, 10 J L & Econ 101,104 (1967).
71. See John W. Myer, et al, Public Education as Nation-Building in America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States, 1870-1930,85 Am J Soc 591,596 (1979).
72. Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Education Innovation in MidNineteenth Century Massachusetts 19 (Harvard 1968).
73. See id at 20-21 ("The wealth of the town was clearly on the side of the high school." while "[m]ost of the men who favored abolition lived in the outlying districts, which were sparsely populated.").
74. See id at 86. But see Maris Vinovskis, The Origins of Public High Schools: A Reexamination of the Beverley High School Controversy 104 (Wisconsin 1985) (finding that the opposition to high school was more from residents of remote areas of the town who did not want to pay for a school their children could not conveniently attend). My own reaction to Katz's hypothesis was to wonder what other mischief capitalists were up to when they were not setting up free high schools.
75. See James H. Madison, John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board and the Rural School Problem in the Midwest, 1900-1930, 24 Hist Educ Q 181, 184-85 (1984).
76. Hal S. Barron. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930 75 (North Carolina 1997).
77. See Fuller. The Old Country School at 119 (cited in note 6).
78. See Tyack and Cuban, Tinkering toward. Utopia at 91 (cited in note 22) (asserting that there has been no successful attempt to dislodge the Carnegie unit, save for in peripheral programs, such as vocational training).
79. Id at 107-08.
80. William A. Fischel, Will I See You in September? An Economic Explanation for the Standard School Calendar. 5 J Urban Econ 236.248-49 (2006).
81. See Keyes v School District No I, Denver, Colorado, 413 US 189, 227 (1973).
82. Mabra Glenn Abernathy and Barbara Ann Perry, Civil Liberties under the Constitution 355 (South Carolina 6th ed 1993).
83. See also Roald F. Campbell, et al, The Organization and Control of American Schools 90 (Macmillan 6th ed 1990).
84. Reese, The Origins of American High School at 69 (cited in note 26).
85. See David Tyack and Thomas James, State Government and American Public Education: Exploring the "Primeval Forest," 26 Hist Educ Q 39.68-69 (1986).
86. Clifford P. Hooker and Van D. Mueller, The Relationship of School District Reorganization to State Aid Distribution Systems 1 (Minnesota 1970).
87. See Gray v Sanders, 372 US 368, 381 (1963) ("The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing-one person, one vote.").
88. Baker v Can, 369 US 186.208-37 (1962) (Douglas concurring).
89. Paul T. David and Ralph Eisenberg, Devaluation of the Urban and Suburban Vote: A Statistical Investigation of Long-Term Trends in State Legislative Representation 10 (Virginia 1961).
90. See Tyack, James, and Benavot, Law and the Shaping of Education at 121-22 (cited in note 5).
91. See Scott Allard, Nancy Burns, and Gerald Gamm, Representing Urban Interests: The Local Politics of State Legislatures, 12 Stud Am Polit Dev 267,294-97 (1998).
92. See Myer, et al, 85 Am J Soc at 596 (cited in note 61).
93. See Myron Lieberman, The Teacher Unions: How the NEA and AFT Sabotage Reform and Hold Students, Parents, Teachers, and Taxpayers Hostage to Bureaucracy 10-28 (Free Press 1997).
94. See West, 10 J L & Econ at 110 (cited in note 60) (quoting Mann's questionnaire to teachers: "how much improvement, in the upright conduct and good morals of the community, might we reasonably hope and expect, if all our Common Schools were what they should be").
95. See Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic at 112-13 (cited in note 23).
96. Hooker and Mueller, The Relationship of School District Organization at 154 (cited in note 72) (finding that by 1960 the number of districts in Illinois had dropped to 1,689 from 2,212 in 1956).
97. See Barron, Mixed Harvest at 45-49 (cited in note 65) (noting the failure of Mann's approach-allowing the "enlightened few" in each community to convince voters of the wisdom of consolidation).
98. See id at 49.
99. See id at 66-67.
100. National Commission on School District Reorganization, Your School District 13 (Department of Rural Education 1948) (arguing that "[a] proper reorganization of local school districts is one of the most important needs for the provision of adequate public elementary and secondary schools in practically all states of the Union").
101. See Barron, Mixed Harvest at 49-56 (cited in note 65).
102. See John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness: Enlrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century 9-45 (North Carolina 1991).
103. See National Commission, Your School District at 113 (cited in note 85).
104. See id at 112-13. See also Land Ordinance of 1785, reprinted in Henry S. Commager, ed. Documents of American History 123-24 (Vail-Ballou 1940) ("There shall be reserved for every township the lot No. 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools within the said township.").
105. See National Commission, Your School District at 113-14 (cited in note 85).
106. I would like to thank Sarah Battersby, Department of Geography. University of South Carolina, for preparing these maps.
107. See National Commission, Your School District at 125 (cited in note 85).
108. See id at 108-25.
109. See Ellwood P. Cubberley. Rural Life and Education: A Study of the Rural-School Problem as a Phase of the Rural-Life Problem 246-49 (Houghton Mifflin 1914).
110. Id.
111. Id at 248.
112. Fitzgerald. Every Farm a Factory at 30 (cited in note 16).