The Virtues and Vices of School District Consolidation

School district consolidation and the centralization of American public school finance and administration were not peculiar to the 20th century countryside. Consolidation and centralization in American public schooling started first from nineteenth century cities. This historical background offers a chance to test theories on the effect of consolidation on the provision oflocal public schooling using 1880 and 1912 city-level data from federal censuses and reports. Two views gain support from the difference-in-difference estimation results: Consolidation induced economies of scale, but also discouraged local taxpaying effort and limited the growth of public school funding.