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The study examined four different rural charter schools in New Mexico, Minnesota, Florida and Arizona and described the factors that contributed to their success.

According to the researchers, a close connection to the community and the ability to fill an academic need was critical to the success of the charter schools they studied. For example, the Glacial Hills Elementary charter school in Minnesota started up after the local district school closed in 2005 due to issues with finances and declining enrollment. Opening a charter school meant that students had a local educational option instead of having to travel an hour each day to the nearest school.

In a rural community in Florida, families were quickly moving out of the local school system or enrolling in private schools for a quality education, so Crossroads Academy opened to provide a local, rigorous public education for students.

I bet there are Missouri families who would like to shorten their child’s daily commute to school or have a quality academic option nearby. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 61 percent of Missouri’s rural school districts have experienced a decline in enrollment from 2010 to 2016. This is part of a larger migration trend in Missouri, but those who remain in rural areas still deserve a quality education. The Minnesota and Florida schools mentioned above show how charter schools can thrive in rural areas with declining enrollment.

The researchers also produced a website that has more in-depth analysis on their findings, and it’s worth a look for more information on each charter school.

Other states are leading the way in providing quality options for rural students. Why doesn’t Missouri do the same?  

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KIPP Gaston College Prep opened in 2005. Six years after graduation, 61 percent of graduates from the 2009 class had earned college degrees. The degree-earning rate after six years was 48 percent for the class of 2010, and 62 percent for the class of 2011. The graduating class sizes are small, with 48 graduates in 2009 and 568 alumni so far, but the early returns are very encouraging. These rates are impressive considering only 11 percent of children raised in the lowest-income quartile (annual family income of $37,564 or less) earn bachelor’s degrees within six years. Gaston KIPP families mostly fall toward the bottom end of that lowest quartile.

In the 2016–17 school year, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that over 225,600 Missouri students that attended a public school in a rural or township area qualified for free and reduced-price lunch (representative of a low family income but not necessarily the lowest income quartile)—roughly a quarter of all Missouri public school students. As the achievement gap between high- and low-income students persists, successful efforts to support rural, low-income students should be encouraged.

KIPP Gaston College Prep is just one example of how educational choice can benefit students beyond urban areas. Isn’t it time Missouri expands charter schools to better serve its low-income, rural students?

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While it’s true that over half of all charter schools are in urban districts, in the 2015–16 school year there were nearly 1,800 suburban charter schools and over 1,200 in small towns and rural communities.

It turns out that curriculum really matters to middle-income parents, and many gravitate to charter schools because they offer educational models that aren’t available in traditional public schools. Some of these models are more rigorous, some are more open and creative, and some offer unique programs. There are hundreds of examples of outstanding suburban and rural charter schools, but I’ll offer just a few to ponder.

Take the BASIS charter schools: In the 2017 US News rankings of the top 10 public high schools, nine were charter schools and five of these were BASIS charter schools. BASIS currently operates 20 charter schools in Arizona, Texas, and Washington, DC. Most of them are suburban, and they serve populations that reflect their communities. Like all charter schools, BASIS schools don’t have admissions tests—students are admitted by lottery. But once they’re in, it’s not easy. In this preschool through grade 12 program, students take biology, chemistry, and physics before they start high school and all high school students are expected to pass at least 6 AP exams. The key to success in BASIS schools is having highly professional teachers who are subject matter experts. Teachers are given considerable autonomy in their classrooms, but all of them, even kindergarten math teachers, must have a college degree in the subject they teach.

Or, what about the NYOS (Not Your Ordinary School) charter school in Austin, Texas? This school was founded twenty years ago and offers smaller class sizes, year-round school and “looping” (in which a student stays with the same teachers for several years). NYOS serves 950 students in grades K through 12, but they have 3,000 more students on a waiting list for a spot.

But many small towns are taking advantage of charter schools also. Graysville, Indiana opened Rural Community Academy in 2004 when their local school was slated to close. Since then, the school has grown to 150 students and some credit it with reinvigorating the community, saving the post office, and bringing several new businesses to the area.

Rural charters aren’t always opened to save a school, though. The Upper Carmen Public Charter School in Idaho was founded in 2005 “to complement the existing public school system by providing an alternative learning environment to enable more students from Lemhi County to be successful.” This school serves no more than 90 students and emphasizes personalized learning that allows students to progress at their own pace, rather than be grouped by age. Upper Carmen Charter School has consistently ranked among the top ten percent of schools in Idaho.

Asking if there are any good charter schools outside of major cities is like asking if there are any good restaurants outside of major cities. Of course there are. Teachers, parents, and community leaders with great ideas for educating kids are everywhere. Charter schools aren’t a perfect fit for every student, but they’re a great fit for the students they serve.

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There is nothing wrong with a business manipulating its prices and practices when it is confronted with a budgetary dilemma. But there is something wrong when it fails to adequately serve customers while the state prohibits competition. In the private sector, businesses compete to provide the best for the least. In the case of the USPS, however, customer satisfaction can simply be sacrificed for financial health. After all, why worry about quality customer service when a competitor cannot put you out of business?

The least weak argument in favor of public mail delivery is that private enterprise could not profitably serve rural areas. For example, my grandfather often patronizes the post office in Centertown, Mo., a small town in Cole County. He prefers it to the one in Jefferson City, as there is never a wait. My guess is that the privatization of the USPS would spell the end of the Centertown branch, as well as countless other small town post offices across the state. Or perhaps they would remain, but mail delivery to and from such remote locations would be significantly more expensive.

Public support is likely necessary if many rural areas are to maintain their post offices, but this is not a justification for such support. Many things are relatively expensive for rural dwellers (e.g., Internet, gas to get to the grocery store); others are comparatively cheap (e.g., land).  The reverse is true for urbanites. What sense does it make to subsidize something simply because it is comparatively expensive in a given area?  The bottom line is that living in a particular locale comes with its unique set of costs. The most sensible route to take is to stop artificially reducing the cost of mail service in rural areas; let those who remain in these areas face the commensurate costs.

Privatizing the USPS, in short, makes both practical and moral sense.

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Editor:

The editorial board recently oversimplified our views on rural broadband access (“It’s a wired world, after all,” Aug. 20 issue). We do not oppose the proliferation of broadband into rural areas, merely the government subsidization of such expansion. Greater broadband penetration in rural areas indeed provides social benefits, but we remain skeptical that those benefits will outweigh cost of millions in taxpayer dollars.

Solutions for extending broadband exist in the private sector. I-Land Internet Services, for example, is expanding broadband into rural western Missouri at no cost to taxpayers. Fifty percent of people living in rural areas already have home broadband Internet service, according to a Pew Internet study released earlier this month. Furthermore, of the people who do not have high-speed Internet, only 6 percent cited a lack of access as the primary reason for not subscribing, compared with 48 percent who find the Internet irrelevant and 18 percent who have usability issues. Eighty million dollars is a very high cost to benefit such a small subset of people.

Christine Harbin, research analyst, Show-Me Institute
John Payne, research assistant, Show-Me Institute

Of additional note, contributors to Show-Me Daily have discussed this issue before.

The post Letter to the Editor: Government Subsidy Too High for Broadband Extension appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Some will argue the money could be better spent on education, health care, you name it. Indeed, there are many needs but these federal funds were designated for broadband. The state’s in-kind contribution does not impact the dire budgetary situation or projected $600 million shortfall.

Only the Show-Me Institute, the ultraconservative think tank, finds a reason to object. Research analyst Christine Harbin commented: “If an individual desires faster Internet service, he or she can either pay the market rate for the service or relocate to a larger town in order to access a broadband connection that’s less expensive.”

Of course, we received Ms. Harbin’s remarks via a high-speed Internet connection, and we certainly would not have wanted to miss sharing them with you.

The Business Journal could not have illustrated Christine’s point more succinctly. She, and the Business Journal, have both chosen to locate in the city of St. Louis. This decision entails extra costs, like the earnings tax and a higher cost of living, but it also has some cost-saving benefits, like less-expensive broadband access.

It is more expensive to provide Internet access to rural areas. This does not mean that rural areas should not have Internet access, only that they should shoulder the steeper costs of this service if they want to use it. When Internet access is subsidized, it distorts the market because the lower price leads people to consume more without seeing the true cost. If someone opts for the lower general cost of living in a rural town, she should accept that urban amenities may not be available at as low of a price as they are in more populated urban areas. In the same way that rural areas may be loathe to subsidize an urban area’s mass transit, it is reasonable for urban areas to be loathe to subsidize a rural area’s broadband Internet.

People should be allowed to live where they choose, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else should subsidize them.

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(Headline reference here, which is meant both to celebrate the Rush concert in Saint Louis this Sunday, and to annoy my colleague David Stokes.)

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More to the point, if these people deeply desire faster Internet service, they have the option of moving into a decent-sized town and getting a cable or DSL connection. The fact that they don’t indicates that, for the vast majority of these people, living in a rural area is more important than having extremely fast Internet service. Choices involve trade-offs, and if a person chooses to live in a rural area, he should either be willing to forgo high-speed Internet access or pay the market rate for the service. Because I live in Saint Louis, it is easier for me to attend large, public events like Cardinals games and the upcoming Rush concert than it is for someone from Shannon County, but that does not mean the government should subsidize trips to Saint Louis for people from Shannon County. At the same time, I cannot enjoy Missouri’s outdoors as easily as someone from Shannon County, but the government shouldn’t pay for my float trips on Current River.

A person should be free to live where and however he pleases provided he does not interfere with the equal right of others to do the same. It is not the government’s role to subsidize one way of life over another.

Link via John Combest.

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As state officials have noticed, living in a rural community is different from living in an urban environment. You don’t have all the traffic, noise, and light pollution you’d find in a big city. The flip side is that you don’t have your choice of restaurants just around the corner, or the same opportunities to access the Internet.

The state shouldn’t try to smooth out those differences and give rural residents the benefits of city life. It would be silly to open a state-funded Starbucks on every gravel road so that rural areas would have better access to coffee. Broadband subsidies are an equally bad idea.

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