Rural School Closure and Consolidation

• In Event: “All of a Sudden, Rural Is on Everyone’s Mind”: Rural Education After Trump

Abstract

Rural communities face increasing pressure for school closure and consolidation as well as increasingly charter-friendly federal and state policies under the Trump administration (Klein, 2017). School choice policy is couched within a complex web of educational policy, economic disparities, and an accepted, long-established, cultural disdain of rural people (Wray, 2006). The legislative expansion of school choice policy is the enactment of an ideological shift-- from an understanding of the purpose of education as a democratic project to a neoliberal vision of schooling guided by efficiency, consumerism, and economic competitiveness (Shannon, 2007). A policy environment highly favorable to vouchers, cyber schools, and brick and mortar charter schools has been the outcome of this shift.

A neoliberal vision for schools, and its associated policies, however, does not map neatly onto rural schools and communities. The project to make schools more efficient and competitive, via closures, consolidations, and charters, is challenged by the role that rural schools play in the maintenance of the social fabric of rural communities and the central role that rural schools play in the maintenance of a community’s social safety net (DeYoung, 1995; Lyson, 2002; Peshkin, 1982). Rural schools are closed, consolidated, and, sometimes, reopened as charter schools amid this complexity. As a result, rural community members must seek the best option for their children, however “best” is defined.

Questions for Discussion:
How have rural communities experienced closures, consolidation, and charters?
What might the impact be of increasingly pro-charter school policy on rural communities?

Author

• Karen Eppley, The Pennsylvania State University