What is the effect of school consolidation on student achievement? Theory gives little guidance because possibly positive effects from larger school size can be offset by negative effects from reduced choice and competition. We investigate these issues empirically by analyzing the effects on students’ achievement of a consolidation reform that took place in Dutch primary education in the mid-1990s. The reform was implemented by increasing the minimum required school size, leading to an increase in actual school size and a reduction in the number of schools. For identification, we exploit variation between municipalities. We find that an increase in the minimum required school size of 10% has a small positive effect on student achievement of 0.72% of a standard deviation. Further analysis indicates that this effect can be mainly attributed to the increase in actual school size; reduced competition and choice do not seem to have harmed student achievement. We also find no evidence that the consolidation effect is driven by reduced school segregation or the elimination of small schools that were—given their size—underperforming (JEL I21, I22, H75, D40).

中文翻译：

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学校合并与学生成就

学校合并对学生成绩有何影响？理论上没有什么指导作用，因为较大学校规模可能带来的积极影响可能会因选择和竞争减少而产生的负面影响而抵消。我们通过分析1990年代中期荷兰初等教育对巩固改革对学生成就的影响，以经验方式调查这些问题。通过增加最低要求的学校规模来实施改革，从而导致实际学校规模的增加和学校数量的减少。为了进行识别，我们利用了市政当局之间的差异。我们发现，将最低要求的学校规模增加10％，对学生的成绩（标准偏差的0.72％）产生较小的积极影响。进一步的分析表明，这种影响主要归因于实际学校规模的增加。减少竞争和选择似乎并没有损害学生的成绩。我们也没有发现证据表明，合并效应是由减少的学校隔离或消除规模较小的表现不佳的小学校所驱动的（JEL I21，I22，H75，D40）。