The Legislative Post Audit report about school consolidation gave two plans, one plan put together any schools with less than 400 students and less than 200 square miles in their district, this would only save $18 million dollars.  The plan that would save more would make every school district in the state have at least 1600 students in the district, this plan would save much more around $128 million.  Let's examine it a little closer.

What business is our business in education:  Student Learning.  With the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation we are evaluated by our Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) and this is evaluated by our scores on the state assessments.  The AYP goes up yearly to insure schools are making honest efforts in regard to student learning.

Since the legislature thinks we all should have 1600 students, and there were 34 districts that did not make AYP lets see how those districts compare with smaller districts:  In class 6A there are 15 school districts making up the 32 schools, 7 of the 15 did not make AYP,              Class 5A there are 20 districts and 4 did not make AYP, 4A 12 of the 59 districts did not make AYP, 3A 4 of the 57 districts did not make AYP, and 2A-1A 4 out of 157 districts did not make AYP.  So of the districts that did not make AYP 88% of them are in 4A-5A-6A.

When you break it down by individual schools, there were 172 that did not make AYP last year and 146 of them came from districts with 1600 or more students.  That figures out to be 85%.  Maybe our leaders in Topeka need to look at making schools smaller not larger to have better student learning.