One of the most remarkable yet least remarked upon accomplishments in American public education in the twentieth century is the success of the school consolidation movement. Between 1930 and 1970, nine out of every ten school districts were eliminated through consolidation. Nearly two-thirds of schools that existed in 1930 were gone by 1970. These and related reforms transformed the small, informal, community-controlled schools of the nineteenth century into centralized, professionally run educational bureaucracies. While school consolidation represents what may be the most profound reform movement in twentieth-century education, almost nothing is known about its consequences for students. This paper investigates the relationship between changes in school and district size and variation in student outcomes, as measured by adult wage inequality. This paper is organized as follows. The first section provides background information on the consolidation movement and related trends in the organization of public education. The second reviews the related literature about the effect of school and district size on student outcomes and about the contribution of education to wage inequality. The third describes the estimation strategy and data. The fourth section presents the results of the analysis, and the final section the conclusions. (Contains 5 figures, 9 tables, and 34 notes.)