Accountability on the Backs of Rural Children

Abstract

SCHOOLS THAT feature lots of parent involvement; schools that people consider to be community centers; schools with personalized learning environments where principals and teachers know every child in the school by name; schools that use the neighborhood as a laboratory for applied learning; schools that offer many ways for students to be engaged in the life of the school; schools whose teachers most often live in the same area as the school; schools that offer true accountability for the money received because there is so little of it and so much to do. Only those who judge schools strictly by high scores on college entrance exams or by the number of science labs in the building would be disdainful of schools that feature such positive elements as those listed above. Yet in spite of offering learning environments now considered desirable for all students and in spite of considerable effort by foundations, charter networks, and district policies to create such small, personalized schools, many of them are fighting for their existence. Their problem is that they are in rural areas. Since the beginning of the 1950s, spurts of consolidation have reduced the number of school districts in the United States from 84,000 to fewer than 14,000 operating districts today. While school enrollments have mushroomed, the number of people who serve on school boards, advisory committees, and parent planning groups or who are involved directly in any other ways with their local schools has fallen drastically. Now, a combination of state budget crises and the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are likely to reduce even further the involvement of citizens in rural communities with their local schools. In terms of simple numbers, rural schools are a major factor on the education scene. Because of changes in the way the National Center for Education Statistics counts rural schools (for example, by place, not mailing address), the number of schools now considered rural comes to more than 30% of the total. This figure, compiled by the Rural School and Community Trust, covers only regular schools, leaving out vocational, alternative, and charter schools (see Why Rural Matters 2003, www.ruraledu.org). Moreover, schools in communities with 2,500 citizens or less enroll at least 20% of the K-12 students in the country. And if we calculate rural schools as those based in communities of 25,000 or less, then rural communities enroll one-third of the students in the country. There are many misconceptions about rural schools. Not all of them are underperforming, poor, hayseed places. An Iowa corn belt community does not face the same issues as a ski resort in Colorado or an island in Maine or a mostly minority hamlet in the Mississippi Delta. More than half of the rural population of the U.S. lives in just 13 states, among them some of the most urbanized ones (e.g., California, Michigan, New York, and Ohio). Rural populations account for a majority of the population in only four states: Maine, Mississippi, Vermont, and West Virginia. Only one in 20 residents of New Jersey lives in a rural area, but that figure adds up to more rural people than South Dakota's rural population. Still, some things bind these disparate places and schools together: isolation, typically small enrollments, low pay for teachers, and school buses that seldom have to wait at red lights. When a school in an urban district closes, the disruption, while inconvenient at first, usually resolves itself, and life goes on as usual. Close a school in a rural area, and the community effectively closes, too. Despite low pay for teachers, the frequent assignment of high school teachers to subjects outside their majors, and the lack of a smorgasbord of courses, rural students in most states do as well as - if not better than - their suburban and urban peers on college entrance exams, on state tests, and on other measures. …