The answer is still no! Educational research, going back decades, shows that smaller schools, not just smaller class sizes, give more opportunities, and better results, for students.

We are being told that a bigger, merged school will provide more opportunities for students, We are not being told what those opportunities are, or how they will manifest. So, is there a good reason to believe the unsubstantiated claims that new opportunities are a natural consequence of a merged school? Educational research has consistently said no.

Data collected between 2002 and 2008 in New York City was analyzed and published in 2014. The study focused on a deliberate effort to move to smaller high schools. The results: “This paper provides rigorous evidence… that a large-scale high school reform initiative can markedly and consistently increase high school graduation rates (by 9.5 percentage points overall and for many different student subgroups) for a large population of educationally and economically disadvantaged students of color without increasing annual school operating costs. These findings are directly relevant to current debates by policymakers and practitioners about how to improve the educational prospects of disadvantaged students in the United States”. (1)

Much more recent research, published in 2024, further validates the dozens of studies that have similar results. To quote the 2024 study: “The growing body of research suggesting that larger school and class sizes harm student achievement requires a thorough reassessment of educational systems. When class and school sizes become too large, the amount of attention given to each student decreases, which can hinder customized instruction and result in a decrease in academic performance (Blatchford, 2003; Hattie, 2006). This issue highlights the necessity for policymakers to adopt initiatives focused on maintaining or decreasing class and school sizes to cultivate more efficient learning environments.” (sec. 4.1) (2)

Urban or rural, 2014 or 2024, the results are the same: smaller schools provide better opportunities and more impressive results for students. Separate, smaller schools, rather than a merged district, are better for students.