Peter Gordon writes,

Just surfing the U.S. Statistical Abstracts, which are now available through www.census.gov for many years back, reveals the dimensions of the most auspicious government consolidation project in U.S. history: the consolidation of school districts. Sixty years ago, when there were about half as many school-age children, there were over 100,000 local school districts. There are now roughly 13,500.

In my opinion, both the intent and the result of these consolidations was to reduce the power of parents and increase the power of unions and bureaucrats. The contrary hypothesis, that these mergers increased efficiency, has a difficult time confronting the data.

For Discussion. Is the consolidation of U.S. intelligence gathering likely to achieve the desired results?