Keeping it Local
Small communities are characterized by taxpayers who are invested in their communities because they own real estate and demand accountability. Their taxes provide for tangible services with observable outcomes, such as the number of teachers and police officers, the condition of roads, and emergency response times. When taxes are collected and spent locally, as is the case with property taxes, a local government may feel a heightened sense of accountability.
If there is a greater sense of accountability in small towns and cities, then all else equal, locally provided services should perform better in smaller towns and cities. If this is the case, then schools in smaller towns should perform better than schools in larger towns and cities.
Measuring Performance
School performance is measured using 15 years of achievement testing data from 11th graders across more than 3,000 cities and towns in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. There is nearly 100% participation in the exam in all three states, and all use the same exam. To observe the impact of population size on scores, certain variables are controlled for, including household income, school size, student-teacher ratio, and testing year. As one might expect, household income is strongly positively correlated with performance. School enrollment size, which is distinct from the size of a town, is strongly negatively correlated with performance. Higher student-teacher ratios, meaning larger classroom sizes, are positively correlated with performance, which is a somewhat counterintuitive finding. The testing year has a highly statistically significant negative correlation and is an important control variable because test scores have declined over time.
Size Matters
For each 10,000-person increase in town population, there is up to a 2 percent drop in test scores. The impact of population size is greatest in Connecticut, with a 25-point decline in test score, which is about 2% of an average point score of 1,100, for every 10,000-person increase in population. The impact of a town’s population size in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania is smaller than it is in Connecticut, but for all three states, town size is highly statistically significant at the 99.9% significance level.
For the three states, the analysis was run with and without each state’s largest cities because these states are characterized by having mostly small and mid-sized towns and cities, plus just a few larger cities. No material impact was associated with the inclusion or exclusion of the largest cities. The impact of school regionalization was also observed, and all else equal, regional schools scored better than non-regional schools.
These results suggest that the accountability associated with smaller towns may help explain better school outcomes and, by extension, may also promote better performance in other town-provided public services. Other factors beyond accountability may contribute to the results, such as the larger presence schools may have in the social fabric of smaller towns. While regionalization is positively correlated with performance, the more numerous the cities and towns participating in a regional school district, the worse the outcome. With more cities and towns participating in one district, regional schools may not feel the same heightened sense of accountability for school performance. This finding is consistent with the finding that smaller cities and towns produce better school outcomes.
This analysis highlights a robust link between town size and school performance.
Written by Joseph Cahill.
Copyright 2023 Pality.
