Quick Stop Economies Present Challenges to the Nation's Rural Schools
Communities with limited employment opportunities also experience problems with the cost of local education and school funding
One problem many rural schools have is that they are seeing enrollments of challenged students increase as overall enrollment falls. This is happening in communities with limited employment prospects. The rules assume that children are the same everywhere, but fail to take into account that some children and their families are stuck in minimum wage, Quick Stop economies.
Quick Stop economies develop when people stop in your community only to buy fuel or food. Countless numbers pass through, but few choose to stay and build a life. It’s an economy of minimum wage jobs and little chance for advancement. Many of the children who are born and raised in Quick Stop areas learn to look elsewhere for opportunity.
This situation affects rural schools in at least three ways. First, the cost of local education goes up as the percentage of students with special needs increases. Then, second, if overall enrollment declines, state funding is placed at risk because in [many] states, small schools are penalized: per pupil state aid [decreases] as enrollment falls.
So as the youthful population of a stagnant community declines and school enrollment drops, schools lose money both from reduced numbers of students as well as through reduced support per child. The third negative effect takes place when funding is affected by test scores. No Child Left Behind fails to acknowledge that the lay of the land for many rural communities is below the flood plain of social, economic, and educational reality.
While small schools are literally flooded with new requirements that mandate more hours of testing, teachers may lack important time for interaction with individual pupils. And while intensive testing done solely to justify funding becomes the measure of outcome-based education, it may mask the true outcome of State and Federal educational directives that dominate the attention of overloaded faculties and discriminate against any school not urban or wealthy.
Sometimes, because of constraints on funding and teachers’ time, the very students that educational requirements are designed to help are denied the attention they need in order to achieve. Better funded schools in higher population areas continue to raise teacher salaries. Sometimes dedication, quality of a rural life, and lower cost of living are enough to offset the better pay offered in cities – but not always.
Source: Daily Yonder, “Letter from Langdon: The Field of Public Education Isn’t Flat” by Richard Oswald, July 11, 2007, reprinted with permission. Contact Kim Preston, kimp@cfra.org or 402.687.2103 x 1022 for more information on school issues.
One problem many rural schools have is that they are seeing enrollments of challenged students increase as overall enrollment falls. This is happening in communities with limited employment prospects. The rules assume that children are the same everywhere, but fail to take into account that some children and their families are stuck in minimum wage, Quick Stop economies.
Quick Stop economies develop when people stop in your community only to buy fuel or food. Countless numbers pass through, but few choose to stay and build a life. It’s an economy of minimum wage jobs and little chance for advancement. Many of the children who are born and raised in Quick Stop areas learn to look elsewhere for opportunity.
This situation affects rural schools in at least three ways. First, the cost of local education goes up as the percentage of students with special needs increases. Then, second, if overall enrollment declines, state funding is placed at risk because in [many] states, small schools are penalized: per pupil state aid [decreases] as enrollment falls.
So as the youthful population of a stagnant community declines and school enrollment drops, schools lose money both from reduced numbers of students as well as through reduced support per child. The third negative effect takes place when funding is affected by test scores. No Child Left Behind fails to acknowledge that the lay of the land for many rural communities is below the flood plain of social, economic, and educational reality.
While small schools are literally flooded with new requirements that mandate more hours of testing, teachers may lack important time for interaction with individual pupils. And while intensive testing done solely to justify funding becomes the measure of outcome-based education, it may mask the true outcome of State and Federal educational directives that dominate the attention of overloaded faculties and discriminate against any school not urban or wealthy.
Sometimes, because of constraints on funding and teachers’ time, the very students that educational requirements are designed to help are denied the attention they need in order to achieve. Better funded schools in higher population areas continue to raise teacher salaries. Sometimes dedication, quality of a rural life, and lower cost of living are enough to offset the better pay offered in cities – but not always.
Source: Daily Yonder, “Letter from Langdon: The Field of Public Education Isn’t Flat” by Richard Oswald, July 11, 2007, reprinted with permission. Contact Kim Preston, kimp@cfra.org or 402.687.2103 x 1022 for more information on school issues.
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