Location, Location, Location: School Choice in the Rural Context

• In Event: 75.054 - Understanding Educational Opportunity in Rural School Districts: An Examination of Community, Demography, and Policy

Abstract

In order to understand choice in the rural context, it is crucial to first understand how rural is defined. The U.S. Census Bureau (2014) defines rural as being neither an urbanized area (50,000 people or more) nor an urbanized cluster (between 2,500 and 50,000 people). Every state has at least 50% of its geographical area classified as rural (the District of Columbia is the only area that is 100% urban) (US Census Bureau, 2014), yet there is no monolithic version of what rural looks like—rural communities in West Virginia differ from those in Alaska, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, or Utah. Further classification by the NCES (2014f) explains the variations among rural areas: rural fringe (less than or equal to 5 miles away from an urban area, or less than or equal to 2.5 miles away from an urban cluster), rural distant (between 5 and 25 miles away from an urban area, or between 2.5 and 10 miles away from an urban cluster), and rural remote (more than 25 miles away from an urban area or more than 10 miles away from an urban cluster). These distinctions assist in providing a deeper contextual understanding of rural areas and the school choice options being utilized by rural students.

School Choice in the Rural Context
The five school choice options outlined in this paper (not including traditional, assigned, public schools) are charter, private, magnet, and virtual/online schools as well as homeschooling. Continuing the trend found in urban centers across the country, there is less information and data available about non-charter choice options. Thus, the purpose of this paper is neither to discuss student achievement, education funding, curriculum, student assignment, or teacher and administrator preparation, recruitment, and training, nor is it to serve as advocacy or critique of the various school choice options available to rural families. Rather, the intent here is to outline the choice options in which rural families participate in order to, first, bring continued visibility to educational opportunities available to rural families and, second, to expand the school choice conversation with a conscious effort to avoid “placism”, or bias based on where a person lives (Jimerson, 2005). Thus, this paper provides descriptive data that details educational opportunity, in the form of choice, that is available to rural families and students.

Author

• Ain A. Grooms, University of Georgia - Athens