Completely eliminate the concept of school districts and think about the implications.

The things we can't change and complain so much about are caused by the size.

Wendy Day is fearless when it comes to the MEA, and although a school board member isn't a "politician." She and others here may find this of interest.

School District Consolidation, Size and Spending: an Evaluation by Andrew Coulson

Executive Summary

This study empirically tests the notion that consolidating smaller public school districts will save taxpayers money. Multiple regression analyses are employed to analyze the relationship between district size and per-pupil expenditures in the state of Michigan, focusing on the five most recent school years for which data are available.

Based on the model developed for this paper, the most cost-effective size for school districts in Michigan is roughly 2,900 students. Both smaller and larger districts are likely to spend more per pupil, other things being equal. In light of this finding, it is correct to surmise that some Michigan public school districts are probably too small, and others too large, to operate with optimal cost efficiency.

But district size has a more nuanced and less important impact on spending that is often assumed, and the current political emphasis on consolidation of small districts is misplaced. The author estimates that the potential savings from consolidating excessively small districts is about 12 times smaller than the potential savings from breaking up excessively large ones. The maximum total annual savings due to district breakups would be approximately $363 million, while consolidations could save state and local governments at most $31 million annually (note that these are only rough, ballpark figures).

To realize these maxima, it would be necessary to break up every excessively large district into a multiplicity of optimally sized 2,900-student districts and to consolidate all tiny districts into optimally sized districts as well. Some such mergers and breakups would be impractical or impossible. Truly optimal mergers, for instance, could be achieved only in those cases where two 1,450-student districts were adjacent; three 933-student districts were adjacent; and so on. It would actually be counterproductive to merge two 2,000-student districts, because a 4,000-student district would typically spend more per student, other things being equal, than a 2,000-student district.

As a result, the actual savings from pursuing either mergers or breakups is apt to be much smaller than the theoretical maxima given above. It is fair to say, therefore, that neither mergers nor consolidations are likely to bring about dramatic reductions in the roughly $17 billion per year spent on Michigan's public schools.

If legislators and the governor wish to address the spiraling cost of public schooling, this study points to a far more important factor than district size: the incentive structure of the system itself. The model developed here indicates that public school districts generally endeavor to spend -- and succeed in spending -- as much as they can.

Specifically, this study compared two alternative theories of school district behavior: that districts spend only as much as they need to in order to fulfill the public trust (the "demand-driven" thesis), or that they spend as much as they can (the "public choice" thesis). Both the ultimately positive relationship between district size and per-pupil spending[*] and the positive relationship between total household income per pupil squared and per-pupil spending compellingly support public choice theory.[†]

In short, public schooling's incentive structure appears to encourage district officials to maximize their budgets. To improve the efficiency of Michigan's education system, this problematic incentive structure would have to be replaced with one in which school officials are instead rewarded for simultaneously controlling costs and maintaining or improving quality. This, in turn, suggests the need for incentives similar to those prevailing in the private sector, in which service providers thrive only if they meet their clients' needs at competitive prices.

1. As it is, some kids don't live close enough to the school to walk, so bussing is a necessity.  So, how are you going to transport kids in a timely manner to a school that isn't in their neighborhood (per se).  Metro Detroit is a lot different than Paw Paw or Lawton (for instance).  And what about counties in the UP?  

2. People already take the initative and drive their kids to their "school of choice", if they aren't happy with their local schools.  What would happen to that option if schools were run county-wide, not local?  

3. Also, what about areas that already service a large geographic area?  

4. Part of the problem with the schools is that a lot of students are homeschooled now, so they just aren't getting the dollars for the kids that projectors thought would be there.  

I also spent some time down South, where I did my student teaching and taught for six years.  County-wide school districts are common there (if I remember right, the entire state of SC has only 25 school disricts).  Their per-pupil spending isn't substantially different than other similar states.  

You will be giving your schools and your input to the control of the largest city in the county.

I'm sure that someone living in rural Washtenaw would probably not want to be dictated to by Ann Arbor... or Genesee County by Flint, or Wayne by Detroit, and so on.

The voucher program in D.C. that Obama just killed was so effective that the Obama administration had to sit on the data for 6 months, going back to before the inauguration. It was just damning. The D.C. kids that went to private schools got a better education, and they got it at 25% of the cost of the failing public school district. That's not a typo - each voucher had a corresponding 75% cost savings in addition to the better education.