Rightsizing Facts

Part 3 of 5

Research Doesn't Show Small Schools Hurt Students. Thin Staffing Does.

Published

The heart of Portland Public Schools' rightsizing plan is a claim about size: that too many schools have become too small to serve students well. The district's target is 360 students for a K-5 and 500 for a K-8 or middle school.

It's worth separating two very different versions of that claim. One is about how small schools operate. The other is about how students in small schools actually do. The first has real support. The second mostly doesn't.

The operational problem is real

PPS's own rightsizing presentation illustrates the problem with three schools of 200–350 students each, all within a five-mile radius: two K-5s and a K-8. It lists what the district calls the "pinch of shrinking resources":

Middle grades show the widest spread. PPS serves grades 6–8 at 28 different sites, ranging from about 75 middle-grade students at the smallest to about 700 at the largest. A K-8 with 25 kids per grade really can't offer much in the way of electives.

These aren't invented problems. Families and staff at small schools describe them, and the district's own equity audit of past boundary changes shows staff worried about blended classrooms.

But size isn't the cause; the staffing formula is

Here's the catch. A 250-student school isn't understaffed because it has 250 students. It's understaffed because of how the district allocates staff per student. The district's formula already guarantees every school a principal, office support and a counselor. Everything else follows enrollment: teachers, specialists, library time, coaching. A small school keeps its principal but loses the rest.

That's a policy choice. Some districts handle it by giving small schools extra support. Minneapolis Public Schools, for example, has provided a per-student subsidy to schools under 250 students, explicitly acknowledging that small schools may otherwise be unable to offer adequate resources.

Vernon K-8 shows the pattern. It enrolled 541 students in 2025–26, above the district's own K-8 target (the district projects 494 by 2027–28), yet the proposed 2026–27 budget allocates it 32.75 school positions, down from 37.1, including cuts to teachers (26.1 to 23.05), counseling (2.0 to 1.6) and library services (1.0 to 0.6). That's the pinch, at a school that isn't small.

If the pinch comes from the formula, then changing the formula is a direct fix. Closing buildings is an indirect one, with much larger side effects.

What the research says about school size and outcomes

When researchers look at how students actually do, small elementary schools don't come out behind.

There are important caveats. Much of the older research compares small schools to much larger ones. The review above suggests about 500 students for most schools, which matches PPS's K-8 and middle school target, but about 300 or fewer for elementary schools serving mainly disadvantaged students, below PPS's 360 for a K-5. So the research doesn't say PPS's targets are harmful in general, but it doesn't support pushing high-poverty elementary schools past 300.

What it does undercut is the idea that a school of 250 is educationally broken because of its size. The evidence suggests small schools can work well, especially for the students the district says it most wants to help, as long as they're adequately staffed.

The middle-grades exception, and its limits

The district's strongest case is in grades 6–8, where very small cohorts really do limit electives and course options. That's why the plan would convert seven K-8s, including Vernon, Sunnyside, Faubion, and César Chávez, into K-5s that feed separate middle schools.

But even here the research is mixed. A well-known New York City study by Rockoff and Lockwood found that students who moved to separate middle schools saw achievement drop in the year they moved, relative to students who stayed in K-8 schools, and the gap persisted through 8th grade. Some newer studies find the K-8 advantage less consistent. Portland itself experimented heavily with K-8s and has been debating their merits since the mid-2000s, when it created 26 K-8s on the east side.

Alternatives worth putting on the table

If the goal is well-resourced schools, the board should at least weigh options that address the pinch without closing buildings:

Each has costs. But each targets the actual problem more directly than closures do.

The bottom line

Small schools in Portland face a real resourcing squeeze. But the squeeze comes mainly from how the district allocates staff, and the research doesn't show that school size itself is hurting kids at the sizes PPS is talking about. Before closing schools to solve a size problem, the district should show that size, rather than the formula, is the thing standing between students and a good education.

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