Previous – and future – “Is Bigger Better” posts review research showing that smaller schools produce better student outcomes, often even if opportunities appear to be more limited. Why? Because smaller school place more value on each individual.

Anyone with experience with large and small schools knows that smaller schools simply have a different feel; an ethos that values, protects, and nurtures every individual, no matter how charismatic, talented, or remarkable that individual is. The three research studies cited below clearly show that smaller schools, schools that have not given in to the pressure to merge, provide a level of individual attention that empowers each student with more effective and impactful opportunities even when the overall theoretical availability of options may appear greater in a larger school.

The first study is the often cited research of David Morgan on the phenomenon he calls “manning.” This is a way of expressing the available options open to individual students. He writes “we find that the extracurricular behavior settings in small schools are “under-manned,” and in large schools these settings are “over-manned.” The result of this “manning” phenomenon is a strong negative relationship of school size to rates of participation. In other words: “in the data we analyze on a representative sample of high schools, size has consistently strong negative effects on rates of participation.” (1) This means that, in smaller schools, a far greater percentage of the student body is able to participate in school activities because the competition for those positions is lower. The result: smaller schools offer a friendlier environment and more real options for students.

And that friendlier environment has impacts on student attitudes in general. A study done in England examined the attitudes of over 4,500 students.  Students attending schools with fewer than 60 pupils were identified as attending small schools.  The results “clearly indicate that small schools are likely to be educating fourth-year junior pupils who feel more positively about their school as a whole.  If pupil attitude can be understood as a significant contributor to and indicator of school ethos, this finding indicates that small schools may be generally happier places.(2)

Finally, friendlier, happier places, with less unnecessary competition among students, become places with fewer behavioral problems. A study in Texas begins with the premise that “many educators and policy-makers have argued that large schools cannot provide for the human aspect of schooling as can smaller schools (Lay, 2007) because they create an environment of impersonality and anonymity.” (p159) The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the incidents of school violence, specifically fighting, assaults, and aggravated assaults, and the size of middle schools in the state of Texas for 3 school years. All 842 middle schools in Texas were included in this study. Compared to small schools, medium schools, and large schools, very small schools had a statistically significantly lower proportion of students involved in assaults, proportion of students involved in aggravated assaults, proportion of incidents of assaults, and proportion of incidents of aggravated assaults. Further, very small schools had a statistically significantly lower proportion of students involved in fights and proportion of incidents of fights than did large schools.” (p152) The final conclusion: “Overwhelming evidence exists to support the claim that incidents of school violence are much less likely to occur in small schools than in large schools.” (p160)(3)

What kind of schools do we want for our students? The options are clear. The smaller, un-merged schools we have now are friendlier and more inviting for all, are more encouraging for students, and provide a less violent environment than the larger schools that will result from a school merger.