Many believe that rural districts and students can’t benefit from open enrollment, but the reality is quite the opposite. Rural students often have few school options, and open enrollment can provide them with greater access to educational opportunities—particularly as the four-day school week expands. In states with open enrollment, rural districts have gained students, with many seeing it as a way to sustain their budgets. In Missouri, over 80% of rural high schools are within a 20-mile drive of at least one other high school, making open enrollment a viable option for many families. Instead of focusing on preventing student loss, rural districts can use open enrollment to attract students and strengthen their schools. 

Learn more about the need for Missouri to adopt strong open enrollment policies here.

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Find more on the performance of schools in Missouri at MoSchoolRankings.org

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After graduation, districts and schools follow up with their graduates to see what they’re currently doing, and then DESE compiles the data. I connected the DESE data with the federal data set that labels each district with different locale types, ranging from big cities to remote rural areas. You can see the results in the graph at the top of this post (the data may not add up to 100 percent due to data privacy and inability to contact all students).  

Looking at the 2018 data, 33 percent of rural district students entered employment and 35 percent enrolled in a 2-year college following graduation, both of which were the highest percentages for each category out of all locales. On the other hand, rural schools had 21 percent of its students attend a 4-year college or university, the lowest percentage out of all locales.

Workforce preparation for rural communities, thus, should have a strong focus on preparing students for high-demand, well-paying jobs they can enter soon after graduation. This could mean students taking the proper classes and having access to the credentials and skills training they need to be set up for a successful career immediately. Taking job-specific courses or earning college credit during high school should also be an option to help bridge students from high school to technical school.

Missouri needs to consider the data when planning for workforce development. There are good jobs available to Missourians, and the state needs to make sure students are ready to fill them.

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In these districts, there is only one school that serves each grade. The schools also serve as community centers, gyms, and local concert venues. The students may travel long distances on the bus each day. The superintendent probably knows every student and their family. These districts, I’m told, don’t need charter schools or private school choice. For the students in these schools, the same system and curriculum that served their parents and grandparents is fine.

But is it? The world is changing very quickly. Today’s high school graduates need sophisticated skills just to pursue a trade or a career in agriculture. College coursework requires a solid foundation in English and math. Yet many rural high schools don’t offer upper-level coursework in either. 

Choice takes many forms for those who are open to it. In Texas, for example, three remote rural districts have decided to collaborate and form a “Rural Schools Innovation Zone.” Like rural districts in Missouri, the superintendents in these districts don’t want to hear more about consolidation. Rather, they want to give their students the best chance at success. The schools in the zone will share resources and ideas, and students in the zone will have access to any of the pathway programs offered by the three districts, all while remaining separate and distinct school districts. These school districts are innovating by acknowledging the benefit of choices that go beyond what each of the districts offers individually. And, fortunately, they have the support of their school boards.

If we consider the past to be prologue, then we can find confidence that a statement like “That won’t work here” will eventually motivate those who don’t believe it to prove it wrong. In Missouri, that’s going to require finding communities that are open to innovation. I know they’re out there.

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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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But just up the road from my hometown in central Kansas, many parents and students are throwing a fit after two school districts rolled out a new, web-based curriculum from Silicon Valley. The New York Times recently profiled the Kansas towns of McPherson and Wellington and their school districts’ adoption of Summit Learning, a personalized learning platform where students go at their own pace on their computers and teachers act more like mentors.

While personalized learning has been embraced in some parts of the country as a great innovation, the reception in Kansas has been mixed—some love it, but some hate it enough that they are looking for other options for their kids. Leaving aside the merits of the program, the problem is not every student is well-suited to this method of learning, and not every parent is happy with their child spending most of the day in front of a computer screen. Unfortunately, alternatives in rural areas are scarce or unaffordable whether you are in Kansas or Missouri.

Private school tuition is expensive, and some do not have the time or money to homeschool. Picking up and moving to a new school district is not so simple either; unlike urban or suburban areas where a few miles in any direction will land you in a new district, rural areas are spotted with towns like islands in a sea of crops and pastures. Not to mention that for those that farm, moving is completely off the table. Interdistrict transfers can help, but the next nearest school may not be close enough to commute to and from every day.

Families living in rural areas should not have to accept limited opportunities for their children’s education. Education savings accounts (ESAs) could help families homeschool or enroll in a private school that’s just five miles away instead of transferring to another traditional public school 20 miles away. Charter schools can also provide another option if parents aren’t satisfied with what’s going on in their home district.

We should recognize that students, no matter where they live, have different needs and interests. We can also trust parents to make sound judgments about what kind of approach is best for their own kids. Rather than just accepting whatever the local school boards decides, parents and students from rural areas are right to throw a fit when it comes to accessing more opportunities in education.

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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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Show-Me Institute Distinguished Fellow of Education Policy James Shuls contributed a chapter on rural school finance. Although the chapter is not about any specific state, James drew on several examples from Missouri. For instance, he explained how Missouri’s property tax assessment practices place rural schools at a disadvantage when raising local funds for schools and how many rural communities tax themselves at lower rates. When you combine these two facts, it’s easy to see why rural schools receive much less money than their suburban and urban counterparts.

There are a myriad of issues affecting rural schools, and the book is a good reminder that education reform shouldn’t stop at city limits.

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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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One key finding is the difference between where most children attend school and their parents’ preferred type of school:

The vast majority of small town/rural residents taking our survey have had children in public district schools for at least one school year (87%), while much smaller proportions said the same of private schools (15%), homeschooling (11%), and charter schools (8%).

The table below shows the preferences of rural parents (and, for context, all parents) regarding the kind of schools they would like their children to attend:

Like parents in the rest of the nation, small-town/rural parents chose private school as their first option most often; interestingly, a larger proportion of these parents also chose homeschooling as their first option as compared to urban or suburban parents. 

It is no wonder, then, that small-town/rural parents are overwhelmingly in support of education savings accounts (ESAs) at 74 percent responding favorably. ESAs are publicly funded accounts that are controlled by parents so they access a variety of approved educational services for their children. Depending on a child’s needs, parents can use the ESA to pay for things like private school tuition, online learning programs, or different types of therapy. Because the money in an ESA can be used essentially like a debit card, it allows parents to tailor their child’s education. Compared to other school choice programs like vouchers and charter schools—which were still popular—ESAs were the favorite. 

The survey should help correct the perception that school-choice policies would mostly benefit urban students. In fact, a study from the Brookings Institute found that 73 percent of students in Missouri live within five miles of one or more private schools. In many cases, distance is not the primary obstacle keeping rural students from private schools.

ESAs would allow families to customize their children’s education. That could mean sending kids to a private school, purchasing supplies for homeschooling, or getting tutoring help for a child with special needs. As more and more evidence suggests that school choice—particularly ESAs—resonates with a majority of parents no matter where they live, shouldn’t we shape our education policy accordingly?

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For the 15 rural school districts that are selected, Code Missouri is an exciting development. CodeHS is going to give these districts its computer science program, training for teachers, the curriculum, and tech support—all for free. Fayette High School, which is near Columbia, is piloting the program, and students there are learning to build their own mobile apps.

The only downside is that there will still be a lot of kids in other rural districts without the opportunity to take these classes. This is not a knock against CodeHS at all; rather, it is a call for Missouri to find a solution for all its students.

Show-Me Institute analysts have written about course access at length, especially how it can help rural schools, and how we already have much of the infrastructure for it. If students across the state could use a portion of their annual per-pupil funding to enroll in courses online or at community colleges, they could learn how to code. More importantly, course access would go beyond computer science and give students the choice to take courses across a wide variety of subjects.

No doubt, these new computer science and coding programs are going to give students in a few, fortunate districts valuable new skills and help prepare them for the future. Since the infrastructure is there and course access would redirect current education spending, what’s stopping us from giving all students in Missouri the same opportunity?

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It is no secret that the Missouri Senate is a tumultuous place in these waning days of the legislative session. But as the final days of the calendar tick away, it’s looking increasingly likely that course access isn’t going to happen this year.  This would be a shame, for several reasons.

First, a course access program would address a serious problem in our state. As we have reported for some time now, hundreds of districts in our state have zero students enrolled in AP classes or advanced math and science classes. Other districts lack access to quality career and technical education because they simply don’t have the capacity to offer such programs. Course access could help solve this problem and amplify what smaller schools and school districts are doing to try and meet the needs of their students.

Second, it would help bridge the urban/rural divide. Education policy debates in the state often break along urban and rural fault lines. Rural folks think that the state is too narrowly focused on Kansas City and St. Louis, and to be honest, this is often a fair assessment. A program designed specifically to help rural school districts (though urban and suburban students would benefit as well) could help establish common ground across the state.

Finally, passage of course access legislation would be an example of bipartisan comity that the education policy community could build upon in the future. In our polarized times, there is less and less that unites people across the political spectrum. Education policy is not spared from this trend. Course access is an issue to which legislators on both sides of the aisle have contributed their support. It would be awful to squander that.

All is not lost. The legislature, and particularly the Senate, still has time to consider the course access bills before it.  Here’s hoping they make use of their final days to score a big win for students, our state, and our political culture.

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Two slides in the presentation jumped out at me. The first one is above.

Dovetailing nicely with the research I have done on rural schools in Missouri, DESE’s slide shows there are shortages in more than 10 teacher certification categories in 16 counties across the state, and shortages in 43 counties in 5 to 9 categories.

What are these categories, you ask? The next slide tells us.

Want to learn Spanish? Are you a gifted student? Interested in learning science? Live in one of these rural counties? Tough luck.

I commend the efforts that the state is taking to try and tackle this problem, but here at SMI we’ve been promoting a solution for quite some time now that would address these shortage issues—a course access program.

MOVIP has already certified courses in these subject areas. (Check out the list for just grades 6 to 8—its huge!) For $600 a year, students in these counties could take Spanish from a vetted source and get credit for it. All they need is the flexibility to reroute 600 of the dollars that the state sends their district to these alternative providers. Course access would do that. More than a dozen states around the country have figured this out.

The state’s current efforts, while laudable, seem to constitute a complicated and labor-intensive process with a high amount of uncertainty as to whether or not they will be effective. Every once in a while the simpler solution is the best one, and I think in this case Occam’s razor favors course access. If the state wants to solve these shortage issues, the state should seriously look into it.

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*UPDATE 2/6/2017, the data upon which Figure 5 and 6 are based are currently being reexamined and updated.  We will post an article on our blog when the review is complete.

*UPDATE 2/8/2017 The updated 2015-16 numbers for figure 5 as well as a correction for the original report are available here.

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