School Consolidation

In the 1930's the cost to educate one child was around $400 per year. Now, its around $8000 per year. Ya ya, times have changed, we all know that. But that doesn't deter us from asking if school consolidation has really returned good benefits, or if there might have been a different approach to educating children.
Recent studies on school consolidation--its been happening since the 1920's---have suggested that the drivers for school consolidation were two: efficiency and quality of education. So, how have each faired. This report goes on to say that at first, efficiency was gained by consolidation, but then lost as large districts got to be more bureaucratic and government loaded them up with new requirements. So far, that does not intersect with the quality of education---get to that later.
Efficiency improvement might have been achieved by a different route: Some parts can be consolidated into central management, like purchasing, but that would not mean that local control has to be lost. (more on this later)

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