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Beeson, Elizabeth, Ed.

Rural Policy Matters: A Newsletter of Rural School &Community Action, 2002.

Rural School and Community Trust, Randolph, VT.ISSN-1537-46962002-00-00

50p.; Published monthly. For volume 3, see ED 459 043.Rural School and Community Trust, P.O. Box 68, Randolph, VT05060. Tel: 802-728-5899; e-mail:[email protected]. For full text:http://www.ruraledu.org/rpm/rpm.html.Collected Works Serials (022)

Rural Policy Matters; v4 n1-12 2002EDRS Price MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.

Accountability; *Activism; Advocacy; *Court Litigation;*Educational Equity (Finance); Educational Finance;Educational Policy; Educational Research; ElementarySecondary Education; Federal Legislation; *Rural Education;Rural Schools; School Closing; *Small SchoolsEducational Adequacy

This document contains the 12 issues of "Rural PolicyMatters" published in 2002. Issues examine recent educational research onsmall and rural schools; report on court litigation related to rural schoolfinance and educational adequacy, resources for community action in supportof rural schools, and outcomes of school consolidation; outline policy issuesrelated to rural educational reform and funding; and describe publicationsand Web sites of interest. Articles include: Talking to the Press; BusAccident on Route That Causes No Harm; West Virginia School ConsolidationNixed by Citizens, Teachers; Vermont "Act 60" Continues To Improve Equity forState's Students; Groups Ask Arkansas Supreme Court for Decision SupportingRural Schools; Nebraskans Celebrate Rural Education Day; In Arkansas:Consolidation a Cure Worse Than Disease; Victory in North Carolina SchoolFinance Case; E-Rate Update; ARural Nebraskans Support Their Schools; AWestVirginia Court Says School Board Blocked Citizen Participation; AStrength inNumbers: A Rural Community Fights School Closure; ASmall Schools Work andThey're Cost Effective, New Report Finds; No Child Left Behind Act IncreasesFederal Role in Education, Puts Pressure on Rural Schools; Tennessee SupremeCourt Strikes Down Rural School Funding Plan; and Rural Students and SchoolsScore Major Victory in Arkansas Supreme Court. (SV)

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Rural Policy Matters

A Newsletter of the Rural School & Community Action

The Rural School and Community Trust

Volume 4, Numbers 1-122002

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Volume 4, No.1 ISSN 1537-4696

Rural Policy Matters THE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUST

A Newsletter of Rural School & Community Action

Talking to the PressSchools and taxes. Ask any Pennsylva-

nian, and they're guaranteed to have verystrong opinions about these issues. Infact, on any given day, it's common tofind a story, letter to the editor, or com-mentary about school funding in someof the more than 300 newspapers acrossthe Commonwealth.

Also remember that there are 3.7 mil-lion rural Pennsylvanians who rely a loton local radio for their news.

That doesn't include television, cable,ethnic press, and Internet outlets. Justthink. There's a gold mine of media or-ganizations out there, and they're inter-ested in hearing what citizens have to sayabout local education topics and in shar-ing that information with their audi-ences.

Pennsylvania School Reform Networkand the Education Law Center (PSRN)have seized upon that opportunity byengaging parents, other advocates, edu-cators, and policy makers in a public dis-course about school funding and manyother issues including English LanguageLearners, charter schools, special educa-tion, and school discipline.

Timothy Potts, PSRN director, ex-plains the organization's outreach to themedia.

"Instead of working to produce glossypublications with readership in the hun-dreds or thousands, our goal is to pro-duce newspaper editorials and storieswith readership in the millions," he said."Our strategy targets two groups: opin-ion leaders and advocates who read theeditorial pages, and ordinary citizenswho read the news pages. The first audi-ence we reach by regular visits with edi-torial boards. The second audience wetry to reach through regular contact witheducation reporters through EducationBeat" (an occasional e-mail alert fromPRSN that gives reporters story ideas on

current education issues. For copies visitthe following web site: http://www.psrn.org/edbeat.html.

A PSRN partnership with westernPennsylvania's Greene County govern-ment and its five school districts this pastfall proved to be successful at reachingthat audience. The purpose was to dis-seminate information to local residents,policy makers, and advocates about theimpact of the inequitable school fund-ing system on this community.

First, the Greene County Joint SchoolBoard Committee asked residents towrite letters about their opinions onschool funding. The information wasthen placed in binders, which were dis-tributed to all 15 legislators who serveon the House Select Committee on Pub-lic Education Funding. This body of thePennsylvania General Assembly wasformed this summer to create legislationthat would change the state's antiquatedfunding formula, which relies heavily onproperty taxes.

Second, a county government internworked with PSRN and local school dis-tricts by drafting several letters to theeditor reacting to the principles outlinedin a resolution passed by the Select Com-mittee. The letters, which were sent toseveral local newspapers, elaborated onthe nine principles of what a good fund-ing system would look like.

"This actually explained positive leg-islative action viewed as complex by eventhe most seasoned readers and put it intolayman's terms," said Sandy Zelno,PSRN's Associate Director in westernPennsylvania.

Next came the outreach to editorialwriters. From October to November, Pottsvisited more than a dozen editorialboards around the state to share his views

continued on page 2

January 2002

GettingYourMessages Outto the Press

If you're a nonprofit organizationor just a parent who has a passion foreducation issues and you're inter-ested in getting your messages out tothe press, here are some resources tostart with:

Visit Pennsylvania School ReformNetwork's web site www.psrn.org forsamples of op-eds written by directorTimothy Potts and for copies of Edu-cation Beat, an occasional e-mail alertfrom PSRN that is distributed to edu-cation reporters and editors.

When you get to the home page,click on "Education Beat," and "newsand updates."

Before calling reporters and edi-tors, here are some things to consider:

The goal is not an individual edi-torial or a news story but a relation-ship that you can sustain over a longperiod of time.

Be credible. Know what you're talk-ing about both on the merits and inthe political context of your state orlocality.

Talk about issues that matter, ei-ther to the editors or to the reporters.You can't wear out your welcome onissues you know the press doesn't careabout and can't be persuaded to talkabout.

Present those issues in a compel-ling way. Search constantly for theright words, the right analogies, andthe right data that will turn on thelight bulb in their heads.

Anticipate what your opponent willsay and be prepared to counter theirarguments.

It also helps if you can demonstratesupport from other credible organi-zations, though this is not absolutelynecessary.

continued on page 2

Let us know what you think of RPM'S new format at [email protected]!

Talking to the Pressfrom page 1

on the need for a new funding formulaand a proposal that would change thesystem's unfair approach to paying forschools. The timing was perfect. Rep.Nicholas Micozzie, a Republican fromDelaware County, had presented his pro-posal for a new funding formula at apress conference on November 13.Micozzie's plan called for increasing thestate's share of education funding whiledecreasing local property taxes. His planwould accomplish that by increasing thepersonal income tax by 1.8 percentagepoints over two years. As a result of thepress conference and editorial boardmeetings, The Patriot-News, which isbased in the state's capital, ran a series ofeditorials about school funding thatreached more than 150,000 readers.

PSRN and ELC's ongoing outreach tothe media again paid off when Len Rieser,co-director of the Education Law Center(ELC) wanted to inform people about newstate guidelines for English LanguageLearners and ELC's efforts to improveservices for the more than 30,000 stu-dents affected by these guidelines in Penn-sylvania. With the help of GinaAckerman, a mother of three childrenfrom Russia who are English LanguageLearners, Rieser informed readers aboutthese developments in local newspapersand the ethnic press including the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader and Al Dia, a Span-ish-language newspaper based in Phila-delphia.

As Matthew Vossler and Carrie Buchanan-Vossler, two advocates from western Pennsyl-vania pointed out in their letter to the editor,which by the way reached almost a quarter ofa million readers when it was published inthe October 9th issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Communities have begun to fightback and organize to make the education oftheir young children a priority."

Media organizations in Pennsylvania arelistening to that message. Let's keep that mo-mentum going.

Rosalinda DeJesus, Communica-tions Director, Pennsylvania School Re-form Network and Education Law Cen-ter, a project of the Education Law Cen-ter, which aims to provide fairer andbetter quality schools for all students inPennsylvania. For more informationplease visit the following web sites:www.elc- pa.org, www.psrn.org or call717.238.7171.+

New report examinesperceptions of rural America

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has re-cently released a report on perceptions ofrural America. The study, conducted byGreenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc.,is based on interviews with 242 people ineight regions of the country and includesthe perceptions of urban, suburban and ru-ral people.

According to the authors, "...percep-tions of rural America are centered on aseries of dichotomies rural life representstraditional American values, but is behindthe times; rural life is more relaxed andslower than city life, but harder and moregrueling; rural life is friendly, but intoler-ant of outsiders and difference; and rurallife is richer in community life, but epito-mized by individuals struggling indepen-dently to make ends meet. Rural Americaoffers a particular quality of life includingserenity and aesthetic surroundings, and yetit is plagued by lack of opportunities, in-cluding access to cultural activities."

In general, respondents felt that ruralAmericans have stronger families, aremore closely tied to their local communi-ties, and have more traditional values thantheir urban and suburban peers. Close tohalf of all respondents list poverty, price ofcrops, and lack of opportunities as the mostsignificant problems facing rural America.

The report briefly addresses the issue ofeducation and finds that both rural andnon-rural respondents list lack of accessto quality education as a concern. The au-thors attribute this concern to the fact thatrural areas tend to be isolated and cannotgenerate enough revenue to support largerschools. No mention is made of the ben-efits of small, community schools. Ruralrespondents are also worried about the factthat young people leave the community topursue higher education.

For more information on "Perceptions ofRural America", visit www.wkkf.org or callthe Kellogg Foundation at 616.968.1611.

Getting Your Messages Outfrom page 1Here are some rules to keep in mindwhen talking to reporters and editors:

Be accessible. Make sure you returna reporter's call in a timely fashion andbe sensitive to their deadline. If you can'tmeet the deadline let them knowupfront.

Get your message across. Repeat keythemes throughout the conversation.

Take time to answer the questions. Ifyou can't respond to the question rightaway, it's okay to let the reporter knowyou need to think about this and getback to them, as long as it's before hisor her deadline.

Don't be afraid to say you don't knowthe answer. Reporters can find the an-swer elsewhere and they appreciate yourunwillingness to speculate.

Stay away from giving a reportercomments that are off the record. You'rebetter off saying what the reporter canattribute to you so there's no confusionor misunderstanding.

The following are links that will helpprepare you to conduct those interviewsand write those op-eds and letters to theeditor:

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting hasa complete media activism kit. For a copyof the kit please visit the following website. It includes tips on how to communi-cate with journalists, how to write an op-ed, and how to get your news stories ontelevision, www.fair.org/activism/communicate.html

How To Write and Place an EffectiveOp-ed, www.communitycapital.org/re-sources/strategy/quick_tips_op_ed.pdf

The following media tip sheets for ad-vocates from Families USA can be foundat the following links:

"Tips for Interviews, Part II, Radio,"www.fam i 1 i esusa.org/med ia/pdf/i m-press/imprss12.pdf

"Drafting a News Release,"www.familiesusa.org/media/pdf/im-press /octimp.pdf

"How to Shift Focus On a Story,"www.familiesusa.org/media/pdf/im-press/imprs400.pdf

For more information about how to re-lay your messages about education issuesin the media, please call Rasalinda Delesus,PSRN /ELC communications director at717.238.7171 or e-mail her atrdejesus @elc- pa.org+

2 Rural Policy Matters, January 2002 www.ruraledu.org

The Consolidation BluesA Cautionary Tale

This is the story of how two South-eastern Nebraska school districts, Dillerand Odell, learned that school consoli-dation isn't always the answer. MilfordSmith, former superintendent of OdellPublic Schools , says that this scenario isbeing repeated all over Nebraska. Hetells this story to indicate that bigger isnot always more efficient.

In 1998-99, Diller CommunitySchools had approximately 160 studentsin grades K-12. They had recently passeda bond issue for remodeling and renova-tion and had closed a small elementaryschool due to general disrepair. Fiscalproblems forced the school to combinesome elementary grades and eliminatethe guidance counselor's position.

Meanwhile, neighboring Odell PublicSchool had an enrollment of approxi-mately 190 K-12 students. They had alsopassed a bond issue to do remodeling andreplace a K-6 building. Declining en-rollment forced Odell to enter into anagreement with Diller whereby the eight-member football team played at Dillerand the volleyball and basketball teamsplayed at Odell.

When Nebraska state aid wasreconfigured in 1997-98, Diller lost ap-proximately $75,000 in one year. Tomake up for the shortage, Diller wouldhave had to combine elementary gradeseven further, cut back on supplies andtexts, use all of the cash reserves, and stillhave to override the limits on propertytaxes. Instead, Diller and Odell decidedto consolidate. They framed the mergeras a means of enhancing educational op-portunities, solving Diller's fiscal prob-lems, and creating a new, larger districtthat would save money.

The new district bought out eightteachers and one part-time Superinten-dent and gave one Superintendent earlyretirement, for a total of $122,000. Thesize of the new district meant an increasein the base teacher salary of $1500, plussalary increases for teachers with ad-vanced degrees, for a total of $92,000.Salaries for the new principals and an in-crease in benefits for non-certified per-sonnel came to a total of $90,000. Anadditional 25,860 miles was added to thetransportation cost of busing students. Ata state rate of $1.10 per mile, the added

www.ruraledu.org

expense totaled $28,500. With more stu-dents in all grades, the curriculum neededto be aligned so that all of the studentswere working from the same textbook, acost of $50,000. New band uniforms andathletic equipment totaled $27,000. Thenew district was big enough to movefrom an eight to an eleven-member foot-ball team, so the cost of improving theathletic facilities came to $41,000. Newlocker rooms at the Odell high schooland a new football program at Odell Jun-ior High were also added. Diller, how-ever, did not want to lose all of theirsports, so they enlarged their football fieldto an 11-member size, which entailedacquiring more land and moving all ofthe light poles. Add in attorney fees, andthe total spending above base year ex-penses comes to approximately$460,000. For the 2001-02 school year,the expenditures above base year ex-penses are estimated to be $230,000. Somuch for saving money.

On top of that, the Nebraska State Ac-tivity Association moved Diller-Odellback into the eight-member footballranks again, so next year, the district mustdecide whether or not to play on Odell'sold field, set a new goal post on Odell'snew eleven member field in order to play

eight member football, or redo the re-cently converted field at Diller fromeleven back to eight. As it stands now,the team uses the dressing rooms atOdell, rides the bus 12 miles to play atDiller, and then rides back to Odell todress again.

There's another catch. The new districtis losing population. It's estimated that oversix years, the enrollment of the new districtwill decline from 350 to 220 that's justover the enrollment of Odell when themerger took place. Milford Smith says thesituation reminds him of altered lyrics ofcountry singer Tom T. Hall's 1973 song,the "Subdivision Blues":

You moved into the country tosend your son to a rural school.But the consolidated bus nowcomes by and takes your son toIstanbulYou don't know his teachers or thenames of his friendsYou are beginning to wonder if the"get big" trend ever ends.The tax rate went up, the State saidthe merger would save moneyI tell you man, the problems areno longer funnyIt called the mean old consoli-dation blues.

ESEA: Goodbad news for

The Elementary and Secondary Edu-cation Act (ESEA), the federal legislationfor K-12 schools, was recently reautho-rized by both the House and Senate. In-cluded in the education reform bill was$162.5 billion in first-time funding forthe Rural Education Achievement Pro-gram (REAP).

REAP is designed to address the factthat many rural districts lack the person-nel and resources needed to compete forfederal competitive grants. Rural dis-tricts frequently receive formula alloca-tions that are too small to be used effec-tively for their intended purposes. REAPgives rural districts more flexibility us-ing limited federal resources by allow-ing districts to combine federal funds

news andrural schoolsand use them where they are mostneeded. Funds can be used for such thingsas hiring teachers, funding professionaldevelopment, hiring specialists, offeringteacher signing bonuses, etc.

To be eligible for the REAP initiative,a district's average daily attendance mustbe less than 600 and all of the schoolswithin the district must have a SchoolLocale Code, assigned at the federal level,of 7 or 8. The stipulation for participat-ing in REAP is that districts must annu-ally assess student achievement for athree-year period. If no achievement isshown, districts are not eligible to par-ticipate for another three years.

continued on page 4

Rural Policy Matters, January 2002 3

THE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUST

Rural Policy Matters1825 K Street, NW Suite 703Washington, DC 20006

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ESEAfrom page 3

Rural districts will also benefit fromother provisions of the ESEA. Title Ifunding will be based on a formula thatmore directly targets any school with ahigh count of free- and reduced-luncheligible students. The local transferabil-ity provision will give all districts, ruralor otherwise, the ability to transfer up tohalf of the federal funds, with the excep-tion of Title I, and use them in other fed-erally suggested areas.

There are, however, a few mandatesthat will be problematic for rural schools.If schools fail to bring test scores up af-ter two years of school improvement ef-forts, they are required to offer publicschool choice to all students. That as-sumes that there are other schools nearby,which is not always the case in rural ar-eas. If schools fail to show improvementafter four years of effort, school districtsmust offer supplemental tutoring and

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must pay the transportation costs to getstudents to the tutoring location. This isan expensive proposition for schools inisolated areas.

Another provision mandates that bythe 2005-2006 school year, every teachermust be either certified and have passeda competency test in each subject theyteach or have an advanced degree. Forrural areas already facing teacher short-ages, this will only compound the pres-sure.

More details about ESEA will come tolight over the next few months. Untilthen, it looks like rural schools will begetting both the clouds and the silver lin-ing.

For more information on the REAPinitiative and how to apply in your state,contact your state department ofeducation. +

"You are now entering the classroom of the world'sbrightest and best students. Please sharpen yourintellect, your assertiveness, for we shall surelychallenge you to be the best you can be."

Seen on a poster placed near the entrance of a first-grade classroomin Lake View, Arkansas. Lake View is the district that filed a lawsuitagainst the state in 1992 claiming that Arkansas's school finance systemwas unconstitutionally unfair to the children in that rural district.

6

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Rural Policy MattersJanuary 2002 ISSN 1537-4696

Rural Policy Matters is published monthly by theRural School and Community Trust.

The Rural School and Community Trust is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to enlarg-ing student learning and improving community lifeby strengthening relationships between ruralschools and communities and engaging studentsin community-based public work.

The Rural Trust Policy Program seeks to under-stand complex issues affecting rural schools andcommunities; to inform the public debate overrural education policy; and to help rural commu-nities act on education policy issues affecting them.

Comments, questions, and contributions for Ru-ral Policy Matters should be sent to:

Policy ProgramMarty Strange, DirectorP.O. Box 68Randolph, VT 05060Phone: 802.728.5899Fax: 802.728.2011E-mail: policy.programkoruraledu.orgwww.ruraledu.org

This newsletter is available both electronically andin print. If you d prefer to receive it online, pleasesend a note with your e-mail address to:[email protected].

You may also correct your address on the labelabove and fax this page to us at 802.728.2011.

Editor: Elizabeth BeesonGraphics: Christine DammDesign: Gerry Cervenka

0 Printed on Recycled Paper

Volume 4, No:L ISSN 1537-4696

Rural Policy Matters 411111111tTHE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUST

A Newsletter of Rural School & Community Action Februaiy 2002

Bus Accident on RouteThat "Causes No Harm"

Middle and high school youth inCircleville, West Virginia, get on a busevery school day and head down theNorth Fork valley, turning on to Route33 for the trip through Judy Gap andBland Hills, up North Mountain, passingover the summit in the shadow of HarmonRocks at over 4000 feet. Then it's downthrough the Monongahela National For-est and along Friends Run, through thenotch between Peters and Castle Moun-tains, then the notch between Cedar Knoband Bible Knob, finally coming out inthe South Fork valley and into Franklin,the county seat, where they go to school.It's about 17 miles over narrow moun-tain roads, and takes about 40 minuteson mornings when the roads are good.And, they go home each day the same way.

North Fork kids have gone to schoolthere for several years, since the localschool board, under intense pressurefrom the State's School Building Author-ity, closed their school in Circleville. TheCircleville community did not want theschool closed and fought back. They ar-gued in a lawsuit challenging the schoolclosing that the bus ride is too long, toorisky, and poses too much hardship onkids, parents and community. A lowercourt agreed, but the West Virginia Su-preme Court reversed that ruling, sayingthat there was not enough evidence thatthe busing would cause harm to kids, andthat consolidation of the schools serveda "compelling state interest."

Since this setback, the community haslobbied hard to get permission to sendtheir kids to school in a community thatis down the valley and on the same sideof the mountain as Circleville, instead ofover the mountain to Franklin. But thatschool is in another county, and invis-ible lines drawn on the land are some-times harder to cross than mere moun-

tains. The School Board said "no." So,the kids bus to Franklin.

In January, the bus carrying those kidshome after school was run off the road ata double curve near Bible Knob by a trac-tor-trailer coming too fast down themountain on the wrong side of the road.The bus ran up an embankment andturned on its side. No one died. But, therewas a broken arm requiring pins, a headcut that took 30 staples to close, manyminor injuries and plenty of terror. Tenkids went to the hospital. The next day,only three kids got on the replacementbus from Circleville.

When does a community have the rightto keep school? And when does a com-munity have a right to use common senseto decide where it will send its kids toschool, if it must send them away fromhome? What price do kids have to pay tosatisfy the "compelling interests" of statesand the adults who run them?

Last April, Carolyn Arrit, a member ofthe Challenge West Virginia fellows pro-gram wrote an open letter to West Vir-ginia legislators to protest long bus ridesfor rural students. She asked legislatorsto consider the effect that these rides haveon students' lives and concluded her let-ter by writing, "An education is to be anall-around experience for children. Arewe truly giving each child in West Vir-ginia an equalopportunity to participatein school life and have a good education?Obviously many students, who live sev-eral miles away from the consolidatedschools, are not being served well by oureducational system."

For too long it seems that legislatorshave ignored the hardships that consoli-dation and long bus rides impose on ru-ral students. Apparently, students' timeis expendable. But legislators and schoolboards should not have the power to com-promise the safety of students. TheCircleville bus accident should be awake-up call not just to West Virginiaofficials, but to anyone who doubts theserious impact that long bus rides overrough terrain has on students.

To read Carolyn Arrit's 'An open letterto WV Legislators", visit http://www.wvcovenanthouse.orWchallengewv/news/april01.pdf.

Schools Are Engines ofRural CommunityWelfare

What happens to small rural com-munities when they lose their school?Cornell University sociologist ThomasA. Lyson wanted to know, so he as-sembled data from all 352 incorporatedvillages and towns with populations ofunder 2,500 in New York State. He di-vided these communities into twogroups the 71 with 500 or fewerpeople, and the 281 with more than 500people. Almost three-fourths of thelarger group had a school (73.7%),while only about half (52.1%) of the

smaller group did. Historical data in-dicate that nearly all of the towns andvillages had a school at one time.

Those with and without schools ineach of the size categories have similarage level profiles, percent of house-holds with children, and percent of chil-dren enrolled in school. But the socio-economic differences between them arepowerful.

The study also found that among thesmallest towns and villages:

continued on page 2

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7

Arkansas' Small SchoolsCut Poverty's Power OverStudent Achievement

Small schools and small school dis-tricts in Arkansas substantially reduce thenegative effects of poverty on studentachievement, according to results of aforthcoming study by Ohio Universityresearchers. The findings are consistentwith ones from similar studies in Alaska,California, Georgia, Ohio, Montana, andWest Virginia.

The studies conclude that the higherthe level of poverty in a cryrnmunity, themore positive the effect of smaller schoolson student achievement. In the Arkansasstudy, 28 separate analyses were per-formed using scores over three yearsfrom the Stanford Achievement Test (ad-ministered in grades 5, 7, and 10) andover two years from Arkansas' ownBenchmark Tests in literacy and math(administered in grades 4 and 8). For alltests and grades, data were analyzed forall students and for general educationstudents only (excluding scores of Lim-ited English Proficiency students and stu-

dents with Individual Education Plans),and at both the district level and for indi-vidual schools. In each instance, the cor-relation between student achievementand poverty was much weaker in thesmaller schools or districts than in thelarger ones.

The study wasauthored by Jerry D.Johnson, Craig B.Howley, and Aimee A.Howley, all of OhioUniversity. It was sup-ported by fundingfrom the Rural School and CommunityTrust.

The positive effect of small districtsappears even stronger than the positiveeffects of small schools, according to theauthors. Smaller schools on average re-duce poverty's powerful negative effectover achievement by about one-third toone-half in Arkansas. But, smaller dis-tricts on average cut poverty's power even

more, by one-half to three-fourths.The researchers also found the rela-

tionship between poverty, size andachievement as stronger in schools anddistricts with higher percentages of Afri-can American students.

This study comes as the Arkansas Su-preme Court begins deliberation over aschool funding lawsuit brought by the tinyLake View District serving one of the poor-est communities in the state's Delta region.A lower court has ruled that the fundingsystem is unconstitutional because it dis-tributes funds among districts inequitablyand provides inadequate funding to meetthe state's achievement standards.

"The studies conclude that the higherthe level of poverty in a community, themore positive the effect of smallerschools on student achievement."

Rural Community Welfarefrom page 1

Sixty percent of the communities withschools saw population growth from1990 to 2000; only 46 percent of thosewithout schools grew.

Average housing values in the com-munities with schools are 25 percenthigher than in those without schools.Their houses are newer, and more likelyto be served by municipal water andsewer systems.

Communities with schools enjoyhigher per capita incomes, a more equaldistribution of income, less per capitaincome from public assistance, less pov-erty and less child poverty.

Communities with schools have moreprofessional, managerial, and executiveworkers; more households with self-em-ployment income; 57 percent higher percapita income from self- employment; ahigher percentage of residents who workin the village; and fewer workers who

commute more than 15 minutes to theirjobs.

The differences between larger ruralcommunities with schools and thosewithout were similar, but not as extremeas the differences in the smaller commu-nities. It is clear from Lyson's report thatthe smaller the community, the morehaving a school matters.

In short, if your community has aschool, it is likely to be more stable andmore prosperous, with more peopleworking close to home in jobs in whichthey are decision makers. It could be thatmaking and keeping small schools closeto home should be part of every state'srural development strategy.

Lyson's research was supported byCornell University and the National Sci-ence Foundation. You can contact him attal2 @cornell.edu.+

Rural Policy Matters, February 2002

The finding that small districts as well assmall schools mitigate the effects of povertyon achievement is especially significant be-cause many in Arkansas have assumed thatdistrict consolidation would be part of thelegislative response if the Supreme Courtupholds the lower court decision. Accordingto the study authors, creating either largerschools or larger districts to serve low-incomeor African-American communities in Arkan-sas would likely harm student achievementand lower both school and district perfor-mance.

Based on: Johnson, J.D., Howley, C.B.,& Howley, A.A. (forthcoming). Size, Ex-cellence, and Equity in ArkansasSchools: A Matthew Replication. Athens,OH: Ohio University, College of Educa-tion, Educational Studies Department.+

For more research on theimpact of small schools onpoverty and studentachievement,visit ourwebsite at hap:/www.ruraledu.org/sapss.html. There you willfind links to reports onGeorgia,Ohio,Texas,andMontana.

8www.ruraledu.org

RESOURCES I

A new look at poverty and achievementDispelling the Myth Revisited, a new

report issued by Washington, DC-basedEducation Trust, finds that over 4,500high-poverty and/or high-minority U.S.schools scored in the top third of allschools in their states, leading authorsto conclude that poor and minority chil-dren can achieve at high levels whentaught well.

The report evaluates over one millionschool-level test scores, and identifies theschools in each state with math and/orreading scores in the top third of allschools that also ranked in the top thirdof the state for poverty levels and/or Afri-can-American and Latino enrollments.While the report does not address the is-sue of rurality, 32 percent of the schoolsidentified in the report are rural and 42percent are rural and small town.

The schools that achieve at high lev-els despite high poverty rates share six

common characteristics:Extensive use of state and local stan-

dards to design curriculum and assess stu-dent work;

Increased instruction time for read-ing and mathematics;

Substantial investment in professionaldevelopment for teachers;

Comprehensive systems to monitor in-dividual student performance that enableteachers to provide help before studentsfall behind;

Parental involvement;State or district accountability systems

with consequences for the adults in theschool, and;

Use of assessments to help guide in-struction and resources.

Critics of the report point out that theschools were identified based on oneyear's tests scores, and test scores can varywidely from year to year, especially in

smaller schools. Tom Loveless, the di-rector of the Brown Center on EducationPolicy at the Brookings Institution, isquoted in Education Week (1/9/02) assaying "What they need to do is not ob-fuscate the fact that poverty is a hugeobstacle to achievement. It is very diffi-cult to get high-poverty schools up tohigh levels of achievement."

Dispelling the Myth Revisited is basedon a new database created by the U.S. De-partment of Education and the AmericanInstitutes for Research. It is the first da-tabase to coralaine school-level assess-ment scores along with demographic in-formation on nearly every school in thecountry. The database is accessiblethrough The Education Trust's website,www.edtrust.org.

The report is available for download-ing at The Education Trust's website orby calling 202.293.1217.*

Report offers resources for communityactivists

A new report from the Institute forEducation and Social Policy at NYU,Map-ping the Field of Organizing for SchoolImprovement, offers community orga-nizing groups ideas for organizing strat-egies and for evaluating their work.

The report, researched and writtenwith assistance from California Tomor-row, Designs for Change and SouthernEcho, looks at the work of 66 neighbor-hood groups in seven large cities and inthe Mississippi Delta. The researcherscreate a useful profile of the groups'shared characteristics and tease out thecommon patterns in their struggles andsuccesses. The groups surveyed includeadult organizing groups, youth organiz-ing groups and intergenerational groups.

The report briefly describes the his-torical and national context of a rapidlygrowing school reform organizing move-ment, and offers insights from the groupsabout how they negotiate challenges suchas the community context, the role ofintermediary organizations, using dataand participating in coalitions.

www.ruraledu.org

The report raises interesting questionsfor rural organizers as we think abouthow we do our work and how we evalu-ate the impact. For example, in a sectioncalled "How Organizing Is Initiated AndHow It Evolves," the authors note, "Asgroups identify and choose organizingissues, they do not progress from initialconcerns about adequate facilities andsafety in the lunchroomwhat we callpresenting issuesto issues about im-proving the instructional core of school-ing. Instead, groups seem to spiral con-tinuously from presenting issues to coreissues and back again." Is this consistentwith the experience of rural school orga-nizing?

In a section entitled, "What Are GroupsAccomplishing?" the authors reportedthat when the groups were asked,"...about specific school improvements,groups listed commitments they havewon to change school policy and prac-tice. The greatest changes are in the qual-ity of learning experiences, followed byimproved facilities and safety, greater

Rural Policy Matters, February 2002

school accountability and strongerschool-community linkages." It seemsvery significant that groups reported thatmost improvements had occurred in thecategory of "high quality learning expe-riences" since that is a very difficult is-sue to tackle. And, it is sobering that thegroups least reported "stronger school-community linkages."

Although Mississippi Delta groupswere included, the findings are drawnlargely from the experiences of neigh-borhood groups in urban areas. In addi-tion, there is not a great deal of discus-sion about state-level policy work, whichis of great interest to all of our policyprogram partners. Nonetheless, Mappingthe Field of Organizing for School Im-provement is an excellent resource forthinking about local community orga-nizing for school improvement.

For a free copy of the research pleasecall Kavitha Mediratta at The Institute forEducation and Social Policy at New YorkUniversity, 212.998.5877 or e-mail herat kavitha.mediratta @nyu.edu /+

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MATTERS OF FACT

North Dakota considersdistrict consolidation

North Dakota legislators are consid-ering a plan from the Department of Pub-lic Instruction that would consolidatemost of the state's school districts, goingfrom 222 to 62 districts. The plan callsfor combining as many as nine districtsinto one new unit. Supporters of the planargue that consolidation would offer ru-ral students a greater variety of classesand that, because of declining enroll-ment, North Dakota's small rural schoolswill have to close anyway. Opponents seedifferently. The Grand Forks Herald(1/27/02) quotes rural school superinten-dent Tom Tracy as saying, "Are we tryingto wipe out rural North Dakota? Becauseif you wipe out the school, you wipe outthe town." A bill has not yet been draftedto implement the plan.

Toxic learningA report recently issued by the envi-

ronmental coalition Child Proofing OurCommunities Campaign finds that morethan 600,000 children in 1,200 schoolsin five states are attending schools builton or near toxic waste sites. AlthoughThe Campaign focused specifically onMassachusetts, New York, New Jersey,Michigan, and California, the reportstates that most states and school systemshave no environmental standards for se-lecting school construction sites. Manypoorer school systems opt to build on

cheap land on or near contaminated sites.For more information, visit http://www.childproofing.org/cslzindex.htmlor call 703.237.2249 ext. 21.

Alaska rethinks schoolfunding formula

The Alaska House Education Commit-tee has approved a bill that would sus-pend the state's "eroding floor" provisionthat critics say penalizes rural schools.The provision of the 1998 education fi-nance law decreases any extra districtfunding for new students by 40 percent.Districts hardest hit by the provision havebeen mostly rural and Native. The billwould suspend the provision for one year,during whicl, differencesbetween districts would be studied. Crit-ics have argued that the 1998 law's cal-culations of district cost differences werebased on how much districts were actu-ally spending, not how much they neededto spend. The one-year change would re-direct one million dollars in state moneyto 29 mostly rural districts.

Tell us your stories! Letus know what's happeningin your schools andcommunities.

I.0


Rural Policy MattersFebruary 2002 ISSN 1537-4696





Policy ProgramMarty Strange, DirectorP.O. Box 68Randolph, VT 05060Phone: 802.728.5899Fax: 802.728.2011E-mail: policy.program @ruraledu.orgwww.ruraledu.org




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A Newsletter of Rtnal School & Commtmity Action

WestVirginia SchoolConsolidation Nixed byCitizens,Teachers

School closings were stopped dead intheir tracks in Fayette County, West Vir-giniaat least for this yearafter Cir-cuit Judge John Hatcher ruled that thecounty school board violated the state'sopen meetings law.

Calling the board's decision to holdclosure hearings for 12 schools on asingle day in January "an egregious af-front to the principles of democracy,"Hatcher granted a permanent injunctionin response to a lawsuit filed by twoFayette County citizen groups.

"The Board finally may be getting themessage that they can't run roughshodover the people who pay the bills," saidCarolyn Arritt, the Fayette County fellowfor the Challenge West Virginia program,a statewide organization that supportssmall schools.

Arritt, one of those involved in seek-ing the injunction, said the room wherethe hearings were held had seating foronly 75 people and the board imposedtime limits on those who wanted to ad-dress the proposed consolidation actions.Arritt said residents who couldn't fit intothe room had to listen from a sound sys-tem in the hallway, and an estimated 100people were outside the building unableto even hear.

During the past year community mem-bers had tried to suggest a number of cost-saving methods that also would preservethe county's schools, but the superinten-dent and board members were not re-sponsive, Arritt said. Residents' questionsabout curriculum, transportation andextra-curricular activities went unan-swered.

According to Arritt, even when 86 per-cent of voters rejected a $39 million bondin May, the board didn't get the message."They were determined to consolidate the

seven high schools into four no matterwhat the citizens of the county wanted,"she said.

The judge agreed that the board vio-lated both the spirit and letter of the lawwhen it conducted five hearings for 12schools, beginning at 8 a.m. and runningall day. He pointed out that the countyhas many other buildings that were avail-able and could have accommodated thelarge number of people who came to thehearings.

He pointed out that the First Amend-ment to the Constitution, as well as WestVirginia law, envisions people attendingand participating in government, not justwatching their elected officials take ac-tion.

Mardi 2002Barry Bruce, an attorney representing

The Meadow Bridge Citizens for Com-munity Schools and Mount Hope Citizensfor Community Schools, said Hatcher'sruling made a huge statement for thepeople of Fayette County.

"And it should echo around the stateabout what school boards should do whenconsidering ramming consolidationdown citizens' throats," Bruce said.

Hatcher said the Board also violatedthe open meetings law when it met thefollowing Monday and voted to closefour high schools without allowing anycitizen comment.

Dozens of people waited outside thelocked board of education office only tolearn they would not be allowed to ad-dress the board, Arritt said. They weretold the board considered the meeting a"special meeting" which would involveonly the vote on the closures.

West Virginia Education AssociationPresident Tom Lange was among thosewho were not allowed to comment. The

continued on page 2

Vermont's "Act 60"Continues to ImproveEquity for State's Students

As state legislators once again con-sider whether to change or repealVermont's Equal Educational Opportu-nity Act of 1997 (Act 60), a new reportshows that the controversial legislationcontinues to improve educational eq-uity for the state's students. The report,Still "A Reasonably Equal Share:" Up-date on Educational Equity in VermontYear 2001-2002, was funded by theRural School and Community Trust.The study looked at the latest statewidedata to see if the 1997 law had contin-ued its progress toward achieving thethree main goals established by the

state's Supreme Court and the Legisla-ture: student resource equity, tax bur-den equity, and academic achievementequity. An update of a similar study re-leased last year, the report shows "no-table and continuous progress" in pro-viding equal education opportunitiesfor Vermont's schoolchildren under Act60.

Highlights of the report include:Act 60 is making significant and

steady progress in reducing inequi-ties of Student Resources. Before Act60 (FY 98), property wealthy towns

continued on page 2

For copies of the reports reviewed in this issue, visit us on the web at www.ruraledu.org

School Consolidationfrom page 1state Education Association and the WestVirginia Federation of Teachers joinedthe community groups in seeking the in-junction.

"You are taking the public out of pub-lic comment," Lange said. Lange had pre-sented a written report to the schoolboard, outlining the financial conditionof the school system. He said his infor-mation suggested such drastic consoli-dation is not needed, and "...for a boardto create such uncertainty and chaos in aschool system is unconscionable."

Hatcher said the right of people to at-tend as well as participate in governmentwas thwarted by the hearings, which "bydesign, format and location .. . were un-reasonable by a matter of fact and law."

He said the board, which acted on theadvice of Superintendent Harry Hoffer,"should have told the superintendent thatreason and common sense dictate thatall the people who wanted to attend couldnot be accommodated in that room."

By deciding to hold the daylong hear-ings in a small room, the board created"an air of anger and distrust," he said.

State Senator Leonard Anderson, whorepresents Fayette County in the stateLegislature, asked the board to rescindthe vote to close the four county highschools.

"By not allowing those who attendedthe meeting to speak or to ask questions,the school board denied the basic rightof taxpayers to petition their elected of-ficials," Anderson said. "They denied theresidents the right to participate in thedemocratic process."

In the aftermath of the Fayette Countyhearings, the West Virginia House of Del-egates unanimously approved a bill cre-ating a statewide procedure for anycounty considering closing a school. Thebill bars more than one hearing a dayand requires that school boards allow par-ents, teachers and other communitymembers a full public hearing in a venuelarge enough to accommodate them. TheState Senate will take up the bill.

The West Virginia Department of Edu-cation has supported a policy of schoolconsolidation since the 1980s. The statehas lost more than a quarter of its publicschools since 1990 and 151 more are tar-geted for closure.

"The Fayette County case is interest-ing to those who favor communityschools for a couple of reasons," saidLinda Martin, coordinator of ChallengeWest Virginia. "In the past, the executiveand legislative leadership have supportedconsolidation. But this time there was aswift response by lawmakers against therush to consolidate. It's also interestingthat the injunctive effort was joined bythe state's two teacher organizations, TheWest Virginia Education Association andthe West Virginia Federation of Teachers."

Beth Spence, Co-Director of Chal-lenge West Virginia, a statewide organi-zation of parents, educators and otherWest Virginians committed to maintain-ing and improving small communityschools. For more information, visithttp:11www.wvcovenanthouse.orglchallengewvlabout html.f

Vermont's "Act 60"from page 1

spent an average of 37% more, or $2100,per pupil, compared to the poorest towns.In FY 2002, this spending gap was lessthan 13%, with the per pupil disparitydiminished to $900. Thus wealthy com-munities continue to spend more on theirschools, but the gap has been signifi-cantly reduced.

Act 60 has significantly improvedpast inequities of Tax Burden for fund-ing local schools. In FY 98, the poorestfamilies paid the highest percent of theirincome for school taxes (3.3%) and thewealthiest families paid the least (2.5%).Last year, the poorest households paid lessthan two percent for school taxes (1.8%),while the wealthiest households paid2.3%. The percent of income needed tosupport education dropped in all incomecategories, though the decrease is mostdramatic for those earning the least.

Academic Achievement inequitiesstill exist. Children living in property-rich communities do better on state as-sessments. Also, children living in townsthat spend more on education do better.However, on both of these indicators, ouranalysis indicates a continued trend to-wards shrinking the achievement gap.For example, in FY 98, the percent of stu-dents meeting or exceeding the standards

was 19% higher for the wealthiest com-munities as compared to the poorestcommunities. In FY 01 this gap was re-duced to 12%.

Academic achievement continues toimprove in all categories of propertywealth and in all categories. Studentacademic improvement, since the pas-sage of Act 60, has not been limited tothe poorest communities. More Vermontstudents are meeting or exceeding stan-dards across all levels of spending andall levels of property wealth.

"Based on continued improvementsin educational equity, it seems wise tocontinue the critical aspects of Act 60that have been effective in improving eq-uity," said Lorna Jimerson, Ed.D., the re-searcher who compiled the report."Though the tax impact for some Ver-monters has been burdensome, the im-pact for students all students has beenpositive. Given the results of this analy-sis, we believe that Vermont is maintain-ing its bearing and that Act 60 is accom-plishing what it was intended to accom-plish."

"As states around the country strugglewith school finance issues, it is encour-aging to see Vermont's success in find-ing a school funding formula that is mov-ing the state toward both equity and ad-equacy," said Rachel B. Tompkins, Ed.D.,President of the Rural Trust. "We believe

2 Rural Policy Matters, March 2002

and Vermont's experience proves thatschool funding can be both equitable andadequate."

Passage of Act 60 followed a 1997 Ver-mont Supreme Court case, Brigham v.State of Vermont, in which the court ruledthe state's education funding formulaunconstitutional. The Court stated, "Tokeep a democracy competitive and thriv-ing, students must be afforded equal ac-cess to all that our educational systemhas to offer. In the funding of what ourConstitution places at the core of a suc-cessful democracy, the children of Ver-mont are entitled to a reasonably equalshare."

Jimerson, a policy researcher for theRural Trust, set out to determine whetherprogress in achieving educational equityunder Act 60 had continued in the pastyear. Her conclusion is that it did.

"Act 60 is fulfilling the mandates of theSupreme Court decision and the goals ofthe legislation," said Jimerson. "Spendinginequities are decreasing. Tax burdens aremore appropriately aligned with income.More children are performing better onstatewide assessments. And local controlhas not been diminished. In short, Act 60 isfulfilling the mandates of the SupremeCourt decision and the goals of the legisla-tion." The report is available online atwww.ruraledu.org. For a printed copy, callThe Rural Trust at 202.955.7177.*

www.ruraledu.org

IN THE COURTS I

Groups AskArkansas Supreme Courtfor Decision Supporting Rural SchoolsFriend-of-the-Court Brief Filed in Lakeview School Funding Case

On January 31, 2002, the ArkansasPublic Policy Panel and the Rural Schooland Community Trust filed a friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) brief beforethe Arkansas Supreme Court. The brief,filed on behalf of the state's rural schools,urged the high court to uphold a lowercourt's ruling in the landmark Lakeviewschool funding case currently on appeal."Every school day, geography is deter-mining the educational destiny of thou-sands of Arkansas students," the briefcontends.

The groups asked the high court touphold the decision that Arkansas schoolsare unconstitutionally under-funded andthat the school funding formula is un-constitutionally inequitable. The statehas appealed that ruling to the ArkansasSupreme Court.

The brief contends that:Arkansas' large rural population and

high rural poverty rate make it essentialthat the needs of rural students be con-sidered in a court decision on the equityand adequacy of school funding;

Smaller schools and smaller districtsare particularly beneficial to help over-come the effects of poverty on studentachievement in poorer communities;

Equal school funding does make a dif-ference: the effects of poverty and thedisadvantages of rural geography can bemitigated for rural students if they haveequal educational opportunity; and

The state's property tax system createsserious inequities for rural schools.

If the state is going to guarantee allArkansas children equal educational op-portunity, "the state's school finance sys-tem must take into account the extent ofpoverty in rural communities," the briefcontends. Arkansas' poverty rate in 1998was 16.4%, compared to 12.7% nation-ally. The poverty rate for rural Arkansasis 63% greater than the U.S. average."With a declining tax base, Arkansas' ru-ral communities are trapped in a cruelcycle of poverty that prevents them fromadequately addressing their single mosteffective economic development strategy

www.ruraledu.org

improving their public schools," notesthe brief.

The brief cites recent research show-ing the benefits of smaller schools anddistricts for improving academicachievement, especially among poor andminority students, and cautions againstclosing or consolidating small ruralschools. Commenting on this recom-mendation, Rural Trust President RachelTompkins said: "The state should recog-nize the benefits of small schools andsmall districts, and try to preserve themwhenever possible. If you take poor, ru-ral kids away from their small, commu-nity schools and put them in biggerschools far from home, research showsthat you may be taking away the one ad-vantage they have."

In their brief the two groups arguethat, despite their disadvantages, ruralArkansas students have the capacity toachieve at far greater levels if they areprovided with equal educational oppor-tunities. Citing research showing thecorrelation between poverty, race, andeducational achievement, the brief con-tends that "evidence abounds that withadequate resources, poor and minoritychildren can succeed academically."However, the state's per capita expendi-tures on education are the lowest in thenation a fact reflected in poor state andnational test results and very poor teachersalaries. "The connection between the

State's educational achievement and itsfinancial investment in education is un-mistakable," the brief states. The groupsrecommend that Arkansas target re-sources based on student needs and localability to fund schools."The State's con-stitutional responsibility to provide stu-dents with equal educational opportunitycannot be simply achieved by providingidentical funding or programs among alldistricts," they note.

The reliance on local property taxesto fund public schools has created aschool finance system that is inherentlyinequitable, resulting in significant dif-ferences in per-pupil annual spending in"property rich" and "property poor"school districts. The brief points out thatthe $1,800-per-pupil difference betweenArkansas schools spending at the 95'"percentile and those spending at the 5'hpercentile "would be enough to raiseteacher salaries, hire more teachers toreduce class size, renovate dilapidatedbuildings, offer remedial readingcourses, or provide computers for everyclassroom" in a small school district.

"Property taxes can't solve the prob-lem," said Bill Kopsky of the ArkansasPublic Policy Panel. "Strapping farmersand rural residents with the highest prop-erty tax rates in the state still won't meetbasic needs, because the property valuesin many of our rural counties simply arenot very high."

New Research Finds Smaller isBetter in Arkansas

As the Arkansas Supreme Court con-siders its upcoming ruling in the LakeView school finance case, and the state'sBlue Ribbon Commission on Public Edu-cation considers how to provide an equi-table education for all of Arkansas'schoolchildren, a report recently releasedby the Rural Trust indicates that one ofthe options being considered consoli-

dation of school districts would hurt,rather than help, student achievement inArkansas.

Researchers from Ohio Universityanalyzed test scores from every Arkansasschool on seven state-mandated tests todetermine if students from low-income

continued on page 4

Rural Policy Matters, March 2002 3

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THE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUST,


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Arkansas researchfrom page 3

communities do better in small schoolsand districts, or in large ones. Their con-clusion is that, across the board, smallerschools and smaller districts are mosteffective in reducing the predictable ef-fects of poverty over student achieve-ment.

Included in the results discussed inSmall Works in Arkansas: How Povertyand the Size of Schools and Districts Af-fect School Performance in Arkansas isthe finding that smaller schools are mosteffective in reducing the negative effects

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of poverty when they are part of smallerdistricts. Smaller schools are particu-larly important for African Americancommunities. The relationship betweenschool size, poverty, and student achieve-ment is as much as three times greater inschools with the highest percentage ofAfrican American students.

Small Works in Arkansas: How Pov-erty and the Size of Schools and DistrictsAffect School Performance in Arkansasis available online at www.ruraledu.org.For a printed copy, call the Rural Trust at202 .955.7177.+

MATTERS OF FACTJournal features ruralschool issues

The Council for Basic Education'sJanuary journal Basic Education is dedi-cated to rural school issues. Topics in-clude the Rural Education AchievementProgram (REAP) recently authorized un-der the Elementary and Secondary Edu-cation Act (ESEA); preparing teacher forrural schools; the challenges of account-ability and sustainability in rural schools;and the irony of rural school consolida-tion in a time when education reformersare touting the benefits of small schools.Two of the articles are by RuraMust staff mem-bers Marty Strange and Doris Terry Williams.To read an online version, visit http://www.c-b-e.org/bdiss0201/a0toc.htm.

New look at rural schooltrends

"Interstate Variations in Rural StudentAchievement and Schooling Conditions,"a recent digest from the ERIC Clearing-house on Rural Education and SmallSchools, reviews research on the statusof rural student achievement and school-ing conditions and describes their varia-tions across the nation and the states. Itexamines (1) national trends and inter-state variations in rural student achieve-ment, (2) rural schooling conditions af-fecting achievement, (3) interstate varia-tions in rural school conditions, and (4)the challenge of determining "what works"in rural schooling. To read the digest, visithttp://www.ael.orWeriddigests/edow01-5.htm or call 800.624.9120.+ q


Rural Policy MattersMarch 2002 ISSN 1537-4696





Policy ProgramMarty Strange, DirectorP.O. Box 68Randolph, VT 05060Phone: 802.728.5899Fax: 802.728.2011E-mail: [email protected]

This newsletter is available both electronically andin print. If you'd prefer to receive it online, pleasesend a note with your e-mail address to:[email protected].





Rural Policy Matters THE RURAL m1P*-SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUST


Nebraskans CelebrateRural Education Day

On February 19, 2002, rural schooladvocates in Nebraska gathered at theCapitol for Rural Education Day. Spon-sored by the School at the Center, ClassI's United, and the Center for Rural Af-fairs, the theme of this year's Rural Edu-cation Day was "Save What WorksSeeking Educational Equity forNebraska's Rural School Children."Jerry Hoffman, the Director of theSchool at the Center, provided openingremarks that asked the questions "Since`small works', why destroy rural schoolsthrough lack of funding? What is thestate's constitutional responsibility toensure equal educational opportunity toall of Nebraska's children?"

This year's event included rural stu-dents speaking out on the need for edu-cational opportunities. Ann Moles, asenior at Nemaha Valley School in Cook,Nebraska (population 333), made thefollowing remarks about being a studentin a small, rural school:

"I have, for my whole life, attended asmall school. I love the atmosphere, theteachers, and the opportunities. I don'tbelieve that there is anywhere better tolearn than a small school. While theremight not be as many classes offered, theteachers are able to have more one onone time with students. Also, in a smallschool, one is able to know everyone, andwon't walk down the halls surroundedby strangers.

"Everyone feels like someone special.The teachers in a small school are alsothe best. Because of a smaller class size,they are able to spend more time withindividual students. Also, though not allstudents are [at the] top of the class,teachers in a small school are able towork with students, thereby finding hisor her special talent and working on de-veloping it. Because of fewer teachers,many also take on other duties like

April 2002

coaching or sponsoring after-school pro-grams, often without reaching the paylevel of teachers in larger schools. Theopportunities available in a small schoolare hard to beat. A student is able toparticipate in numerous activities.

"I participate in volleyball, AcademicDecathlon (which recently won its fourthstraight state title and will be attendingthe National Championships in Phoenix,AZ), track, math team, quiz bowl, speechteam, cheerleading, band, choir, Future

Business Leaders of America, businessteam, annual staff, trap shooting team,and 3-D (our school's drug free group).If I attended a large school, I would havemaybe participated in one or two of thoseactivities, and would not have receivedsuch a well-rounded education.

"If we really want students of the nextgeneration to have a well-rounded edu-cation and to have self-confidence inthemselves and their work, small schoolsneed to stay open and need to be sup-ported."

For more information on Nebraska'sRural Education Day, visit the Centerfor Rural Affairs at www.cfra.org or con-tact Kim Preston at 402.846.5428.+

In Arkansas: Consolidationa Cure Worse Than Disease

Trying to save money through con-solidation of either schools or districtswould likely be "a 'cure' that wouldworsen the disease" of poor achieve-ment caused by inequities in Arkansas'education funding system. That wasthe message delivered in testimony bythe Rural Trust's policy director, MartyStrange, to the state's Blue RibbonCommission on Public Education. TheCommission is charged with propos-ing massive changes in the state'stroubled education program.

Strange reported on results of acomprehensive statistical study of stu-dent test performance in all the state'sschools. The study was undertakenwith the financial support of the RuralTrust by researchers at Ohio University.They analyzed scores on seven state-mandated tests to determine if stu-dents from low-income communitiesdo better in small schools and districts,or in large ones. They found:

The higher the level of poverty in acommunity, and the larger the school,

the lower test scores are. The smallera school serving the poorest commu-nities is, the better students do. Thesame holds true for district size.

Children from wealthier communi-ties tend to do better on tests thanchildren from poorer communities,but this "achievement gap" is nar-rower among communities served bysmaller schools than among commu-nities served by larger schools. Thesame is true for smaller and larger dis-tricts.

Smaller schools are most effectivein reducing the negative effects of pov-erty when they are part of smaller dis-tricts. Poverty hurts student achieve-ment the most in larger schools withinlarger districts.

Smaller schools are particularly im-portant for African American commu-nities. The relationship betweenschool size, poverty, and studentachievement is as much as three timesgreater in schools with the highest

continued on page 2

Let us know what's going on in your state at [email protected]

WHAT WE HEAR...I

From ArkansasThe Arkansas State Board of Educa-

tion has voted to take over two ruralschool districts, Elaine and Altheimer,both with longstanding academic perfor-mance problems and both in the eco-nomically distressed Delta region of Ar-kansas. Ninety-five percent of the chil-dren in the Elaine district are eligible forsubsidized meals. Teachers in the districtare paid $28,166 a year on average, about$6,500 less than the state's average. Con-ditions are similar in Altheimer, thoughsalaries are closer to the state average.The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reportsthat the state department intends toplace a chief academic officer, curricu-lum and assessment monitor, and twomathematics and literacy coaches in theElaine district at a cost of more than$277,000 per yearabout 11% morethan the local school board has beenauthorized to spend.

From West VirginiaAccording to the Charleston Gazette,

when the West Virginia Department ofEducation named Nuttall Middle Schoolin Fayette County, West Virginia one ofonly 50 "exemplary" schools in the state,parents, teachers, and administrators, atdidn't find much cause for celebration.

The Fayette County school superin-tendent had just recommended to theCounty Board of Education that thesmall, rural school be closed, and its stu-dents bussed to distant schools wherethey would be taught either in a roomnow used for concessions, or in a base-ment. They would be leaving behindcounseling and tutoring programs, analternative school for kids with disciplineproblems, nursing and truancy pro-grams. More than likely, they would alsobe losing their top academic performancethat had helped earn the school its "exem-plary" status. The superintendent's argu-ment: Closing Nuttall would save thecounty $77,018 a year.

Nuttall's fortunes turned for the bet-ter when an accountant found a matherror in the savings calculation. The sav-ings would only be $30,862. The super-intendent refused to change his recom-mendation, but the school board balkedand the community organized around

the battle cry "Nuttall should be cloned,not closed!"

A court has ruled the closure of sev-eral schools in the county must be puton hold, a school board election haschanged the composition of the board,and the superintendent has been dis-missed.

In the meantime, one State Board ofEducation member has asked why sevenof the state's 50 exemplary schools arealso scheduled to close under countyconsolidation plans.

From MississippiAccording to the Jackson Clarion-

Ledger, proposed Mississippi state bud-get cuts have placed about a dozenschools at risk of financial bankruptcy.The state plans to take about one-thirdof a $158 million revenue shortfall outof the budget for school districts. Ac-cording to law, the state could take overdistricts that end a fiscal year with a defi-cit, but that isn't likely. After all, howwould the state cure the problem exceptby spending more money?

From PennsylvaniaAs Pennsylvania tries to deal with a

continuing struggle around schoolfunding and property taxes, ruralschools are finding that they have an allyin Pennsylvania Rally for Public Educa-tion, an urban group of Pittsburgh par-ents and citizens. In a recent letter tothe editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette(3/19/02), Theresa Smith the Co-Chairof the group, wrote, "We will never en-joy strong economic development with-out solving the problem of high prop-erty taxes. If we are to attract businessesand prepare their future employees, weneed to consider this problem an eco-nomic development dilemma...We livein a state that has 3.6 million ruralpeople, the largest rural population inthe country. Many of these areas sufferfrom a dwindling tax base. Don't thesechildren deserve a high-quality educa-tion as well?"

Sandy Zelno of the PennsylvaniaSchool Reform Network (PSRN) reportsthat the Pittsburgh group has been agreat advocate for the rural fundingcause and says, "Even die-hard urban-

Rural Policy Matters,April 2002

ites can start spitting the word 'rural' offtheir tongues when they try!"

From AlabamaIn an effort to motivate and boost stu-

dent awareness of education, Caring Ala-bamians Reforming Education (CARE),along with an Alabaman Hip-Hop groupBlack Phoak, is currently promoting Aca-demic Pep Rallies throughout the state'shigh schools. Through recommenda-tions from principals and local radio sta-tions, the pep rallies that had started inone schoolhave grown into a statewidetour.

To further involve the student in theireducational programs, CARE will launcha new High School Listening Sessionproject called What's Up? with the helpof local senators and board members.The project will host monthly sessionswith students on issues such as health,college, their immediate education, andtheir place in society. To further assist inthe fight to educate Alabama's youth, CAREboard member Dr. Tom Ellis, communitymembers and Black Phoak will be on handto provide entertainment, voter registra-tion and health screenings.

Arkansas Consolidationfrom page 1

percentage of African American students.Strange also pointed out that consoli-

dating the smallest schools serving thepoorest communities would lower theirstudent's performance levels, making itmuch more difficult for the now largerschools to meet the "trend and improve-ment" standards required by the Arkan-sas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment,and Accountability Program.

Schools or districts that fail to meetthese improvement standards will fallunder various sanctions, and will requiremore state oversight and supervision.This will increase costs, and likely morethan offset any financial gains to comefrom consolidation.

"It would be penny wise and poundfoolish to try to spend less by makingschools or districts bigger," Strange toldthe study commission.

www.ruraledu.org

IN THE COURTS

High Stakes in the Supreme CourtRural education advocates would be

well advised to keep an eye on a signifi-cant case pending in the U.S. SupremeCourt that has the potential to sap fur-ther resources away from under-fundedrural public schools and could lead tofurther segregation of public schools. OnFebruary 20th the high court heard ar-guments in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris,a case involving the constitutionality ofthe Cleveland, Ohio voucher program.Under the four-year-old program, thestate provides parents with vouchersworth up to $2,350 for lower-income, el-ementary-age children to attend one of49 participating schools. Parents are ex-pected to contribute from 10 to 25 per-cent of the school's tuition, dependingon family income.

Last year, the State of Ohio supportedthe program with $14.9 million in stateaid. Nearly 4,000 children are usingvouchers under the program with 99%of the voucher students attending pri-vate religious schools. Opponents of theprogram argue that the significantamounts of government money reachingprivate religious schools violates the es-tablishment clause of the First Amend-ment. Supporters contend that the pro-gram is constitutional because parents,not the government, choose to usevouchers at religious schools.

A key point in the case could bewhether or not the voucher programbenefits students. Ohio has contractedwith the Center for Evaluation at Indi-ana University for an official study of theprogram. The center has kept track ofvoucher students, along with controlgroups of public school students whoapplied for vouchers but did not receivethem and other public school studentswho did not apply for vouchers. In a Sep-tember 2001 report, the Center foundthat with only minor exceptions, thereis no pattern of achievement differencebased on scholarship status among thegroups. A copy of the report is availableat: http://www.indiana.edu/-iuice/.

Although the court will only decidethe First Amendment question presentedin the case, privatization and pro-voucher advocates would likely try to usea court decision in favor of the Cleve-

www.ruraledu.org

land program to establish new programsin other states. Voucher programs havethe potential to sap resources away fromrural and urban public schoolsschoolsthat are currently struggling to educateall students. New voucher programsmight also cover students who are cur-rently enrolled in private religiousschools. In effect, these programs wouldask taxpayers to pick up the tab for stu-dents already attending private schools.In the current tight fiscal environmentfacing most state governments, includ-ing Ohio, it is doubtful that state legis-latures would be likely to increase aid tothe public schools while also starting topay for the education of private studentswho are not currently funded by statetax dollars.

A court decision in favor of voucherscould be particularly harmful in theSouth where a separate system of largelywhite private schools exists. This sepa-rate system could possibly be funded bystate sponsored voucher programsnearly 50 years after Brown v Board ofEducation held that racially segregatedschools deny black students equal pro-tection of the law under the U.S. Consti-tution.

In the end, public school students, in-cluding students attending the nation'sresource deprived rural schools, could behurt in a number of ways if the court sanc-tions the Cleveland program.

Whether private school vouchers aregood educational policy will probably notbe addressed by the high court. On thispoint it is clear that Americans supportpublic schools, not vouchers. Voters con-sistently say that they do not favorvouchers because they take critical dol-lars away from public schools, they riskleaving thousands of children behindbecause private schools are often notwilling to educate hard to serve specialeducation and limited-English proficientstudents and, they diminish public ac-countability for taxpayer dollars.

The historical essence of America'spublic schools is that they are publiclyfunded, publicly accountable, and opento everyone. Although the SupremeCourt probably will not say much aboutthese issues when it decides the Zelmancase, its decision could, nevertheless, bea watershed event that shapes the futureof public education across the nation.

A final decision by the court is ex-pected this summer

Rural Education AchievementProgram Update

As of this writing, President Bush'sFY 2003 budget proposal eliminatesfunding for the Rural Education Achieve-ment Program (REAP). REAP, which ispart of the Elementary and SecondaryEducation Act, (ESEA) is made up ofthree initiatives that are designed to helprural districts compete effectively forFederal competitive grants and makebetter use of grant allocations that areoften too small to be effective. The threeinitiatives are 1) the Alternative Uses ofFunds Authority, which allows eligibledistricts to combine funding under cer-tain programs to carry out activitiesunder other, specified federal programs;2) the Small, Rural School Grant Pro-gram, in which grants are awarded di-

Rural Policy Matters,April 2002

rectly to eligible districts to carry outactivities under other, specified pro-grams; and 3) the Rural and Low-IncomeSchool Program, in which grants areawarded to states, that in turn awardgrants to eligible districts either directlyor competitively for specific activities.

For a fact sheet on REAP, includinginformation on the application processvisit http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/reap.html or call Charles Lovett at202.401.0039.

To get a rural perspective on ESEA,read "Rural Schools See Problems Meet-ing ESEA Rules" in Education Weekly(3/13/02) at http://www.edweek.org/ew/

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Randolph, VT 05060

Achievement Programfrom page 3

ew_printstory.cfm?slug=26rural.h21.For a look at the implications ESEA has

for community school advocates, visit theCoalition for Community Schools at http://communityschools.org/newsletterv.2.4.htmlor call 202.822.8405.


PAIDE. Barre,VT

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ERIC CLEARINGHOUSE ON RURAL ED. AND SMALL SCAPPALACHIA EDUCATIONAL LABORATORY1031 QUARRIER STCHARLESTON WV 25301-23171..1.1111111.1 lIII 11,11,1n11 ,,,11.1111,111111,11

If you're interested in learning more aboutprogram implementation of REAP, contactthe Rural Trust at [email protected] or goto our website at www.ruraledu.org.

MATTERS OF FACT I

Idaho organization seeseducation as key to ruraleconomic development

According to a report recently re-leased by the Andrus Center for PublicPolicy in Idaho, investing in public edu-cation is the key to revitalizing the state'srural communities. The report, RuralIdaho:Challenged to Change, is based ona two-day conference held last fall onrural issues. The authors write, "Idahovoters must insist in strong and consis-tent investment in education. They mustdevelop tax policy that puts more toolsin the hands of local officials who mustlead the rural recovery." The reportcomes at a time when budget writershave cut $23.3 million in state aid topublic schools. For more information,visit http://www.andruscenter.org or call208.426.4218.

Rural teacher pay inMinnesota lags

Schools in what were once rural Min-nesota towns are becoming suburban yetteachers in these schools are not seeingtheir salaries rise to suburban levels. ThePioneer Press (3/25/02) reports that inthe Farmington district, a former farmcommunity that has become a bedroomcommunity for the Twin Cities, teach-ers with master's degrees and ten yearsteaching experience make $36,713. Innearby Rosemount-Eagan-Apple Valleydistrict, the 10-year teacher makes$51,000. Greg Ohl, the Superintendentof Farmington is quoted as saying thatwhile enrollment growth means addi-tional education revenue for the district,"the problem is when you're growing,you need that money to hire more teach-ers, not just provide raises for the cur-rent folks." Farmington is not currentlyconsidering raising taxes to boostteacher pay.


Rural Policy MattersApril 2002 ISSN 1537-4696


The Rural School and Community Trust is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to en-larging student learning and improvingcommunity life by strengthening relationshipsbetween rural schools and communities and en-gaging students in community-based public work.

The Rural Trust Policy Program seeks to under-stand complex issues affecting rural schools andcommunities; to inform the public debate overrural education policy; and to help rural commu-nities act on education policy issues affectingthem.








Rural Policy Matters THE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY THUS!' ,


Victory in North CarolinaSchool Finance Case

Rural and at-risk students in NorthCarolina's public schools won a majorcourt victory on April 4 when SuperiorCourt Judge Howard Manning, Jr. issuedhis final ruling in the state's school fi-nance case (Leandro v. North Carolina)filed by schools, parents and children infive low-wealth and predominately ruralschool districts.

In 1997, the North Carolina SupremeCourt ruled that under the stateconstitution's education clause, studentshave a fundamental right to receive a"sound basic education." The court de-fined a "sound basic education" as onethat will at least provide every studentwith:

Sufficient ability to read, write, andspeak the English language, along witha sufficient knowledge of fundamentalmathematics and physical science, toenable the student to function in a com-plex and rapidly changing society.

Sufficient fundamental knowledge ofgeography, history, and basic economicand political systems to enable the stu-dent to make informed choices regard-ing issues that affect the student person-ally or affect the student's community,state, and nation.

Sufficient academic and vocationalskills to enable the student to success-fully engage in post-secondary educationor vocational training.

Sufficient academic and vocationalskills to enable the student to competeon an equal basis with others in furtherformal education or gainful employmentin contemporary society.

The high court sent the case back toJudge Manning to determine whether ornot the current education and fundingsystem were, in fact, providing all stu-dents with a sound basic education.In his final ruling Judge Manning notedthe following key findings:

May 2002

The constitutional right to a soundbasic education is not a minimum stan-dard, but rather, a high standard thatapplies to all students. The state's test-ing program used to judge studentachievement uses four levels to measurestudent performance (Levels I, II, III andIV). Under the constitution, Level IIIperformance is required, not Level II asadvanced by the state.

Nearly 40% of the state's students arenot performing at Level III as requiredby the constitution. Most of these stu-dents are considered to be at risk of fail-ure due to poverty, race or their socio-economic backgrounds.

At-risk children require more educa-tional resources. With effective, individu-alized and differentiated instruction de-livered by well-trained, competent teach-ers with high expectations, at-risk chil-dren can achieve at far higher levels.

Every school in North Carolina is ca-pable of having 90%of its students atgrade-level proficiency.

Students who drop out of high schoolare not receiving a sound basic educa-tion.

Under the current system, at-risk stu-dents are not receiving the equal oppor-tunity to obtain a sound basic educationmandated by the North Carolina Consti-tution.

The court went on to identify thecomponents necessary to ensure thatstudents are offered a sound basic edu-cation.1. Every classroom must be staffed witha competent, certified, well-trainedteacher who is using effective educa-tional method(s) that provide differen-tiated, individualized instruction, assess-ment and remediation to the studentsin that classroom.2. Every school must be led by a well-trained, competent principal with theleadership skills and the ability to hireand retain competent, certified and welltrained teachers.

continued on page 2

New Hampshire Schools:Adequate and Accountable?

A divided New Hampshire SupremeCourt ruled recently that the state isnot doing enough to hold schools ac-countable, nor to provide the state'sstudents with an adequate education.In what is being considered a victoryfor the plaintiffs, the Court said thatthe state must "do more than merelyencourage school districts to meet edu-cational standards." The Court alsosaid that the state cannot waive stan-dards for some schools simply becausethey lack resources. The state is re-sponsible for ensuring that all schools

have the resources to meet whateverstandards are set.

Although New Hampshire lawmak-ers generally agree that the state shouldmonitor test scores, there is some con-tention as to how schools should beheld accountable. Critics argue thatgiving the state the role of enforcerwould be giving the state too muchpower over local districts.

Currently, New Hampshire third,sixth, and 10th grade students take

continued on page 2

A warm Rural Trust welcome to all of our new subscribers in Tennessee!

School Financefrom page 1

3. Every school must be provided withthe resources necessary to support an ef-fective instructional program so that theequal opportunity to obtain a sound ba-sic education for all children, includingat-risk children, can be met.4. At-risk 4-year-olds are entitled to pre-kindergarten programs in order to ob-tain a sound basic education.

In his decision the judge makes itclear that under the state constitutionand key education laws, the state ofNorth Carolinanot local school sys-temshas the ultimate obligation toprovide each child with an equal oppor-tunity to obtain a sound basic education.The judge concludes by observing thatthe solution to this problem lies in thehands of the General Assembly and theState Board of Education. In the wordsof the judge: "The State of North Caro-lina must roll up its sleeves...and causeeffective educational change when andwhere required." According to JudgeManning, if more resources are requiredthen it is the duty of the state to providethose resources.

Rural advocates, who for years havebeen claiming that property-poor ruralschools lack the resources they need tooffer students equal educational oppor-tunity, hailed the court decision as a vic-tory. Sheria Reid, an education attor-ney with the North Carolina Justice Cen-ter, a Rural Trust's partner organizationthat has worked on the case for severalyears said: "The court has spoken in clearterms. The judge has confirmed what iswrong with our education system andhow to fix the system. It is time for thestate to move forward to ensure that ev-ery child, especially children living inrural communities, receive the teachers,school principals, programs and re-sources they need in order to ensure thateach student's constitutional right to ahigh-quality education is promoted."

Reid's sentiments were echoed by anumber of education organizations andmost of the state's newspapers, thatcalled on the Governor and the Legisla-ture to forego an appeal of the decisionand begin implementing a remedy im-mediately. The state has 30 days to de-cide whether or not it will appeal the trialcourt decision to the North CarolinaSupreme Court

Teacher Salaries in RuralStates Lagging

Preliminary data released by the Na-tional Educational Association (NEA)last month indicates that averageteacher salaries in predominantly ruralstates lag significantly behind salaries inurban states. And the difference is dra-matic.

This annual NEA report, Rankings &Estimates, presents demographics andstatistics from all 50 states and the Dis-trict of Columbia on a wide range of edu-cationally relevant areas. The latest re-port summarizes the 1999-2000 dataand makes estimates for 2000-2001.

Not unexpectedly, the states rankingthe lowest in salary are all primarily ru-ral states. This list includes: South Da-kota, North Dakota, Mississippi, Mon-tana, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nebraska,Oklahoma, Arkansas, Wyoming andWest Virginia. And notably, every stateabove the national average of $43,335,

except for Alaska, is a more densely popu-lated urban state. The salary differentialsare striking. First ranking New Jersey, forexample, has an average salary ($53,281)that is over 76 % higher than the aver-age salary in South Dakota ($30,265).

Average teacher salaries do not tell thewhole story, of course. They reflect thepercent of highly experienced teachers,as well as the actual salary scale. Also,state-level data is needed to illuminatethe within-state salary differences be-tween rural and suburban/urban areas.Later this spring, NCES will release datathat will help understand these issues.Until that time, this NEA report is infor-mative, and for rural communities, quitealarming.

For a copy of the report, call 202.822.7200or visit http://www.nea.org/publicecVedstats/rankings/02/ranking.pd1

Check out our new websitedesign at www.ruraledu.org!E-mail us at [email protected] to suggestresources that you've found useful in your work.

Adequate and Accountable?from page 1

state assessment tests, but districts are not required to respond to test scores. Whilethere is no deadline attached to the recent ruling, the state will soon have to beginmeeting new Federal accountability standards established in President Bush's "NoChild Left Behind Act."

This latest ruling caps more than a decade of education litigation in New Hamp-shire. In 1991, five low-wealth school districts (one rural, one large town, and threesmall towns) sued the state saying that New Hampshire's heavy reliance on localproperty taxes discriminated against children in poor towns. In 1993, the State Su-preme Court ruled that the state constitution guarantees all children an adequateeducation. In 1997, the Court ruled that the education funding system was uncon-stitutional and ordered the state to come up with a new finance system. The Legis-lature then passed a statewide property tax.

In a separate but related story, the New Hampshire House recently approved a billthat would cut school aid by $38 million. The bill would cap education aid increasesbased on inflation. Critics assert that the bill ties increases to the Northeast Con-sumer Price Index, which doesn't measure labor costs the biggest school expense.

The Nashua Telegraph (4/18/02) quotes Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, as say-ing that capping aid increases shifts more of the cost onto the local property taxpay-ers. "If the money isn't coming from the state, it's coming from the local taxpayers,"she said.

2 Rural Policy Matters, May 2002 2 www.ruraledu.org

SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES I

Lowering the Overhead by Raisingthe Roof:And Other Rural Trust Strategies to Reduce the Costsof Your Small School

Too often people say they agree thatsmall schools are better for students,teachers, and people in the community

but then they add, "We can't affordthem." The Rural Trust believes that theopposite is true we can't afford NOT tohave smaller schools. In Lowering theOverhead by Raising the Root: a newpublication written to help communitiesreduce the costs of maintaining, build-ing, and renovating small schools, au-thor Barbara Lawrence reports on spe-cific strategies that rural communitieshave used and shares what she haslearned from people throughout thecountry.

The title of the publication comesfrom a creative solution one rural com-munity used to address their affordable,year-round housing shortage and theirdifficulties attracting and retainingteachers. The tiny community ofIsleford, Cranberry Isle, Maine has asmall school located in a structure builtin 1913, which had an unused and spa-cious attic. In 1992, local contractorsconverted the attic into an apartment,to be offered at a less-than-market rateto help attract a qualified teacher to thisisolated community and offer an induce-ment to remain. The current teacher andhis family have been in residence for sev-eral years, and the comfortable apart-ment is a real benefit, making living onthe island an attractive choice for them.

Lowering the Overhead begins bysuggesting factors to consider beforestarting to plan a school facilities project,such as understanding the resistance tosmall schools that many administratorsand legislators may have, and also un-derstanding the importance of examin-ing and questioning state policies. It maybe difficult to change policy that is out-moded, or never made much sense, butit is possible. Lowering the Overhead

www.ruraledu.org

continues by providing a total of 13 strat-egies for reducing costs including theimportance of good maintenance and sit-ing and using renovation instead of newconstruction. The book ends with an ex-tensive list of resources for further in-formation on the strategies. The strate-gies demonstrate that it is possible toafford good small schools by being cre-ative, proactive, and willing to makesome compromises.

Lowering the Overhead by Raisingthe Roof is available through the Rural

Trust. To order, send shipping addressand check for $10 payable to "RuralSchool and Community Trust" to: RuralTrust 112,5_K_Street, NW, Suite 703,Washington, DC 20006.

Join the Rural Trust's School-Com-munity Facilities Network. For more in-formation see: www.ruraledu.org/facilities.html, and join the school-com-munity facilities list sery by [email protected].+

Small Schools Healthierfor Students

According to the latest results fromthe National Longitudinal Study of Ado-lescent Health, small schools are not justbetter for student learning, they're bet-ter for student health as well. Improv-ing the Odds: The untapped power ofschools to improve the health of teens,by Dr. Robert Blum of the Center forAdolescent Health and Development atthe University of Minnesota, takes an in-depth look at school connectedness astudent's feeling of being part of andcared for at school.

The study finds that school size is theonly structural characteristic associatedwith school connectedness; as schoolsize increases, school connectednessdeclines. Students with more schoolconnectedness are less likely to engagein risky behavior such as drug use, vio-lence, or early sexual behavior. Accord-

Rural Policy Matters, May 2002

;72 1

ing to Blum, "In smaller schools, stu-dents, teachers, and school administra-tors all have more personal relationshipswith each other. They know who youare. This is important to keeping kidsengaged and a part of school."

Other factors that improve schoolconnectedness are teachers who makestudents feel like they are valuablecontributors and students who have ra-cially integrated groups of friends. Fac-tors with no strong association withschool connectedness include class-room size; teacher experience orcompletion of an advanced degree; andhaving harsh disciplinary codes.

The results are drawn from writtensurveys filled out by 71,515 students in127 schools. For more information, visithttp://allaboutkids.umn.edu or callBrenda Hudson at 612.624.5680.

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11 10VELMA MITCHELLACQUISITIONS ASSISTANTERIC/CRESS AT AEL, IN1031 QUARRIER ST STCHARLESTON WV 25301-2326

MATTERS OF FACT IEducation financedatabase now available

A new website from the National Con-ference of State Legislators (NCSL) al-lows users to look up and compare theeducation finance systems of every state.The free resource can be used to gatherinformation about local taxing methods,tax and spending limits, tax credits andexemptions, earmarked state revenue,foundation program information, andrecent school finance litigation. Usersalso can compare spending on individualissues such as special education or tech-nology for every state. For access to thedatabase, visit http://www.ncsl.org/pro-grams/educ/ed_finance/intro.htm.

Ohioans supportcommunity schools

A recent poll finds that Ohio residentssee schools as the centers of communi-ties. According to the Knowledge WorksFoundation, 87% of respondents agreethat "everyone in the community shouldbe more involved with local publicschools" and 84% supported communityuse of facilities during afternoon, eveningand weekend hours for activities likehealth clinics, recreation activities, andparenting and adult education classes.For more information on the Ohio'sEducation Matters poll, visit http://www.kwfdn.org/2001_poll/index2.htmlor call 513.929.4777.

Tracking rural educationalattainment

The National Center for EducationStatistics report "Coming of Age in the1990s: The Eighth-Grade Class of 198812 Years Later" presents findings fromthe fourth follow-up survey of the Na-tional Education Longitudinal Study of1988 (NELS:88/2000). The report exam-ines the educational and labor marketoutcomes of the initial eighth-grade co-hort of 1988 in the year 2000, when themajority of the cohort was 26 years old.According to the report, 81.9% of thecohort who lived in rural places had re-ceived a high school diploma, and 21%had received 0 h .1,gree. 9.8%of the rural students had not received ahigh school diploma or an equivalent,compared to 7.2% of urban students and6.9% of suburban students. To read thecomplete report, which is currently onlyavailable online, visit http://nces.ed.gov/pubse,arch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002321.

Send us your stories!Every one of our headlinestories in RPM this year wassubmitted by one of oursubscribers. E-mail editorElizabeth Beeson [email protected] call 802.728.5899.

it.ST COPY AVAILABLE o


PAIDE. Barre,VT

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Rural Policy MattersMAY 2002 ISSN 1537-4696

Rural. Policy Mattersis published monthly by theRural School and Community Trust.

Th ural School and Community Trust is a non-p educational organization dedicated to en-larging student learning and improvingcommunity life by strengthening relationshipsbetween rural schools and communities and en-gaging students in community-based public work.



Policy ProgramMarty Strange, DirectorP.O. Box 68Randolph, VT 05060Phone: 802.728.5899Fax: 802.728.2011E-mail: policy.programOw'ruraledu.orgwww.ruraledu.org

This newsletter is available both electronically andin print. If you d prefer to receive it online, pleasesend a note with your e-mail address to:policy.program(coruraledu.org.




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Volume 4, No.6 ISSN 1537-4696I

Rural Policy MattersA Newsletter of Rural School & Community Action June 2002

E-Rate UpdateIn an attempt to streamline the "uni-

versal service schools and libraries pro-gram," generally known as the E-Rateprogram, the Federal CommunicationsCommission (FCC) asked for publiccomment on many areas of theprogram's administration. The Educa-tion and Library Network Coalition(EdLiNC), a coalition representingschools and libraries around the nation,has gone to bat for an effective programto fund telecommunications use and in-frastructure nationwide. The E-Rate pro-gram uses funds collected from telecom-munications carriers to cover discountsoffered to schools and libraries for theirtelecommunications infrastructure andservices. Recognizing that the programhas been an especially important asset forrural schools, the Rural School and Com-munity Trust is a member of EdLiNC.

Briefly, here are some of the key po-sitions taken by EdLiNC and the RuralTrust:

Funding commitments to applicantschools or libraries which are left unusedat the end of any fiscal year (i.e. the ap-plicant did not complete a project)should be added to the next fundingyear's total, since the demand for dis-counts is running double the $2.5 mil-lion in available funds each year.

Discounts should not be used to payfor Internet access that is "bundled" withcontent because the fundamental pur-pose of the E-Rate program is to fundtelecommunications services, not con-tent.

Discounts should expand to coverfunding for wireless services and voicemail used for educational purposes.

Applicants should have the choice be-tween paying the provider the full costof the service, later claiming reimburse-ment from the provider through the E-Rate fund, or in the alternative, payingthe provider only the discount price,

leaving it to the provider to get the restreimbursed from the fund.

Providers or applicants who are will-fully or repeatedly in noncompliancewith program regulations should be sus-pended from participation.

As expected, several telecommunica-tions carriers had a different perspective.For instance, many carriers wanted un-used funds returned to them, or used tooffset future contributions. Also predict-ably, wireline providers wanted to re-

strict the use of E-Rate funds for wire-less service.

The FCC will sort it out and issue anorder addressing these and other issues.Meanwhile, schools and libraries are be-ginning to receive their funding com-mitment letters for Funding Year 2002-03. The estimated demand for telecom-munications and Internet access for2002-03 is $1.817 billion, while the esti-mated demand for internal connectionstotals $2.619 billion. Since a total of only$2.25 billion is available, it is likely thatfor the first time the fund may be un-able to meet all requests for internal con-nections, even for applicants falling atthe 90% discount level.

Rural NebraskansSupport Their SchoolsThe news surrounding rural schools

sometimes appears to be all bad: de-clining enrollments, inadequate and dis-criminatory state financing schemes,consolidation. However, the demon-stration of support for rural schools inthe state of Nebraska is good news tobalance out the bad.

In 1996 the Nebraska Legislatureadopted LB 806, the law containing thestate's school finance formula. A yearlater, the Legislature adopted LB 1114,which places state-imposed levy limitson local property taxes, including thosethat help finance schools. The law al-lows political subdivisions supportedby property taxes including schoolsystems to override these levy limitswith the approval of the voters in thepolitical subdivision. Essentially, citi-zens can choose to increase their prop-erty taxes.

Because of decreases in state aid tomany school systems since the school

finance formula was implemented,many school systems have faced thedifficult choice of asking voters formore funding through increased prop-erty taxes. Generally, the alternative isstark: merge with another school sys-tem, significantly reduce educationalprograms and personnel or increaserevenues. The decision is made doublydifficult by Nebraska's economy and taxstructure property taxes hit rural citi-zens very hard, particularly farmersand ranchers; incomes in rural Ne-braska are among the lowest in thenation and Nebraska has one of the fivehighest rates of agricultural propertytax rates in the nation.

Since 1998, there have been 60school property tax override electionsin the state (some districts have triedtwice). Forty-one override attemptshave passed, with citizens agreeing to

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Let us know what you think of our new website at www.ruraledu.org!

New Reports ProvideEducation Data

The National Center for EducationStatistics (NCES) has recently releasedseveral new reports on elementary/sec-ondary education statistics. Each of thereports is available through the NCESwebsite, http://nces.ed.gov.

"Digest of Education Statistics, 2001"provides a compilation of statistical in-formation covering the broad field of edu-cation from pre-kindergarten throughgraduate school. 430 tables are availableto view on the web, or they can be down-loaded as Excel, Lotus or PDF files.Among the statistics included:

26.3% of U.S. public schools are lo-cated in rural places and enroll 17.2%of all public students. Rural schoolsmake up the largest proportion of pub-lic schools in the U.S.

38.4% of school districts have enroll-ments of less than 599 students and en-roll 6.1% of U.S. public school students.1.6% of school districts have enroll-ments of more than 25,000 students andenroll 32.1% of U.S. public school stu-dents.

52% of rural schools report having atleast one, less-than-adequate buildingfeature. 70% of rural schools need tospend money to bring their buildingsinto good overall condition.

8% of rural public schools reported aserious violent crime, compared to 17%of urban schools.

The web-enabled report is available athttp://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/digest2001/.

"Arts Education in Public Elemen-tary and Secondary Schools: 1999-2000" provides national data on artseducation in public elementary and sec-ondary schools for the 1999-2000 schoolyear. Among the findings: rural schoolsare the least likely to offer music (87%offer music classes), visuatarts (87% of-fer visual arts), dance (6% offer dance),or drama (37%offer drama). The reportis currently only available online and is lo-cated at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002131.

"The Nation's Report Card: U.S.History 2001" presents the results of the2001 assessment in U.S. history publicschool courses from the National Assess-ment of Educational Progress. Amongthe findings: at grades 4 and 8, students

attending schools in rural and urbanfringe locations had higher averagescores than students in central cityschools. At grade 12, students attend-ing schools in urban fringe locations hadhigher scores than students in both ru-ral and central city locations. For moreinformation, visit http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ushistory/results/ orcall 1.877.4ED.Pubs.

"Public High School Dropouts andCompleters From the Common Coreof Data: School Years 1991-92 through1997-98" presents dropout and four-year high school completion rates bystate. Dropout and completion rate dataare broken out by state, race/ethnicity,grade, and locale. Among the findings:of the states that reported dropout ratesin 1997-98, Kentucky had the highestrural dropout rate at 9.9% and Wiscon-sin had the lowest rate at 1.3%. In gen-eral, students in rural districts are less likelyto drop out than are their peers in large ormid-size cities. The full report is currentlyonly available online at http /nces.ed.gov/

pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002317."Early Estimates of Public Elemen-

tary and Secondary Education Statis-tics: School Year 2001-2002" providesinformation on the number of studentsin enrollment, teachers, high schoolgraduates and total revenues and expen-ditures. This report, which does notcontain rural-specific information, isonly available online and can be down-loaded at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002311.

"Statistics in Brief: Revenues andExpenditures for Public Elementaryand Secondary Education: School Year1999-2000" contains basic revenue andexpenditure data, by state, for public el-ementary and secondary education forschool year 1999-2000. The report,which does not contain rural-specific in-formation, is only available online andcan be downloaded at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002311.

"Financing Elementary and Sec-ondary Education in the States: 1997-98" presents state-level analyses of rev-enues and expenditures for the 1997-98 school year and includes informa-tion on capital and facilities spendingby state. The report is only availableonline at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002319.

Nebraska Supportfrom page 1

raise property tax levies with an average"yes" vote of 69%. There is no better ex-ample of support for public schools.

However, given the facts of Nebraska'seconomy and tax structure, one wouldhypothesize that rural Nebraskanswould be reluctantif not downrighthostileto proposals to increase prop-erty taxes, while generally more prosper-ous urban and suburban voters wouldbe more amenable. In fact, the resultsare the opposite. Of the 60 override elec-tions, six occurred in urban, suburbanor large rural school systems. Only twoof those six override attempts passed (in-cluding the first school system overrideattempt in 1998 by what is generallyconsidered the wealthiest suburban dis-trict in the state; it is also interesting tonote that the two closest votes in suc-cessful override elections were these twolarger school systems). The Lincolnschool systemthe state's second larg-est and home to the state capitol and the

2 Rural Policy Matters, June 2002

University of Nebraskahas failed in twooverride attempts by significant margins.Thus, small, rural school patrons havevoted to increase their property taxes in39 of 54 attempts.

These successful overrides were indistricts with some of the smallestschools in the state. Many are also inagriculturally-based communities withlow average incomes and high propertytax burdens. The good news coming outof rural Nebraska is that its citizens arewilling to raise their own taxes to sup-port their schoolsa demonstration oftheir commitment to community-schoolconnections, to retaining communityidentity and, most importantly, to theirchildren.

Jon Bailey is the Rural Policy Pro-gram Director at the Center for Rural Af-fairs in Walthill, NE. He can be reached [email protected] or by calling 402.846.5428.Visit the Center for Rural Affairs online atwww.cfra.org.

4 www.ruraledu.org

RESEARCH FROM THE FIELD

Vermont School Choice ExperimentMay Negatively Affect Rural Schoolsand Communities

Most research on the effects of schoolopen-enrollment programs is concen-trated on urban and inner-city schools.Now, a recent study of a five-year experi-mental open-enrollment program inRutland County, Vermont provides in-sight on how such programs mightnegatively impact small and ruralschools.

Starting in 1997, the seven highschools in Rutland County, Vermontstarted a pilot open-enrollment programthat allowed up to 10 students in eachschool to transfer to another high schoolof their choice. No money was exchangedbetween the schools, with the exceptionof excess special education costs whichwere borne by the home district. If therewere more students wanting to transferinto or out of a particular school, a lot-tery was used to select participating stu-dents. Under the program, students ortheir parents were responsible for ar-ranging transportation.

Four years into the program, the su-perintendents of schools in the RutlandRegional School Choice Collaborative con-ducted an evaluation of the program. Sur-veys were sent to all 63 students enrolledin the voucher program and 60 were com-pleted and returned. These open-endedquestionnaires asked about reasons forchoosing, positive and negative features,co-curricular participation and transpor-tation. In addition, guidance counselorsprovided grade point averages both beforeand after choosing. School level data werecollected on key factors such as achieve-ment scores, poverty and income.

Among the findings were:76% of the students that participated

in the program migrated from smallschools to larger schools, suggestingthat small high schools in Vermont couldbe significantly and negatively impactedparticularly if money followed the stu-dent.

67% of the participating studentsmoved toward a school in the center ofthe region rather than laterally or out

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to a more distant school, suggesting thatthe long-term viability of rural schooland community connections could suf-fer.

Neither participating students northe receiving schools showed significantacademic improvement under the pro-gram. Choosing students had averagegrades between a low B or high C, andthey remained at this level in the choos-ing school. Further, the relationshipbetween school test scores and the mostpopularly chosen schools was weak.

The leading reason students chose toattend another school was related tosocial connections and friends, not aca-demic concerns.

The ability of students to participatein the Vermont school choice programwas affected by the student's access toan automobile or a parent willing andable to provide transportation. This fac-tor could lead to further centralizationof schools when parents work in the cen-tral area.

Participating students tended to chooseschools in higher income areas which, when

coupled with access to transportation, couldlead to socio-economic separation of students.

In sum, the study concluded thatgains associated with the choice experi-ment have, after four complete years,proven illusive. Beyond students beingsatisfied with their decision, no gains inacademics or in other areas were attrib-utable to the program. The study concludesthat such school choice programs have thepotential to negatively affect the viability ofmany small, rural schools and communities.

Information about the study andwhere to obtain copies: William J.Mathis and Deborah Etzler. "Academic,Socioeconomic and D-ansportation Cor-relates in a Rural Public School VoucherSystem." Paper presented at the 2002meeting of the American Education Fi-nance Association. Electronic or textcopies of the full report are available bycalling or emailing Sid Glassner, Execu-tive Director, Vermont Society for theStudy of Education, (802) 247-3488 ore-mail at essmontO)sovernet.

Census Shows GapsBetween Rural, Urban

New U.S. Census data are showingthat there is an increasing economicdivide between rural and urban coun-ties across the country. By and large,rural counties missed out on the eco-nomic boom of the '90s, a fact that isreflected in higher poverty levels andlower educational attainment levels.

In Washington state, the income gapbetween rural and urban counties is thewidest it has been in 30 years. Lowerrural incomes are not always offset bylower housing prices. Rural residents

are spending a large proportion of theirincomes on rent or mortgage payments.

With manufacturing businesses leav-ing rural areas and agriculture becom-ing less viable, Nebraska's rural towns arelosing both population and economicclout.

Wisconsin, North Dakota, Minnesota,South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas,Missouri, Illinois and Indiana grew a

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Rural Policy Matters, June 2002 3


Randolph, VT 05060


PAIDE. Barre,VT

Permit No.2

12 11ERIC CLEARINGHOUSE ON RURAL ED. AND SMALL SCHOOLS1031 QUARRIER ST APPALACHIA EDUCATIONAL LABORATORYCHARLESTON WV 25301-231 7

MATTERS OF FACTIdaho's rural schools getfederal funds

Idaho's rural schools will be receiv-ing $5.4 million in federal grants to im-prove safety in small districts. Grantsranging from about $7,600 to $245,000are going to mostly small, rural schooldistricts. Much of the money will be usedto demolish unsafe school buildings, re-move asbestos and remodel buildings toaccommodate people with disabilities.The Idaho Statesman (5/20/02) reportsthat Idaho school districts have struggledwith improving dilapidated buildingssince a district court judge ruled in 2001that the state's funding mechanism forraising money to fix buildings was un-constitutional.

Colorado lawmakersapprove School FinanceAct

Colorado lawmakers have approved theSchool Finance Act, which directs $4.1 bil-lion into K-12 education. The finance actalso includes $15 million to fund a facili-ties lawsuit settlement. The money willmostly go to rural districts to replaceschool buildings. According to the RockyMountain News (5/10/02), the money willmean new buildings for districts like ru-ral Las Animas, where the 86-year oldColumbian Elementary schools' brickwalls are literally pulling apart and wherea lack of elevators means classroom aidscarry disabled students up and down stairs.

Alaska's rural districtsapproved for fundingincrease

Alaska's House and Senate FinanceCommittees have agreed to put close to$1 million in the state's capital budgetto offset the money that 22 rural districtswill lose under the current funding for-mula. The 1998 school funding formula's"eroding floor" provision decreases anyextra district funding for new students by40%. Districts hardest hit by the provi-sion have been mostly rural and Native.The $1 million in supplemental fundswould be for one year only, until the re-sults of a study examining the cost dif-ferences of rural anti urban districts iscomplete.+

Census datafrom page 3

combined 8.1% during the last decade,well below the national average of13.2%. Forty-seven of North Dakota's 53mostly rural counties lost population.

In Mississippi, where 16.2% of thepopulation has a household income ofless than $10,000, an increasing propor-tion of rural younger people are drivinginto Jackson for jobs.

Throughout the month of May, theU.S. Census Bureau released new infor-mation about income, education, com-muting and birthplace for every state.

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Rural Policy MattersJune 2002 ISSN 1537-4696





Policy ProgramMarty Strange, DirectorP.O. Box 68Randolph, VT 05060Phone: 802.728.5899Fax: 802.728.2011E-mail: policy.program(cbruraledu.orgwww.ruraledu.org








WestVirginia Court SaysSchool Board BlockedCitizen Participation

West Virginians who support smallschools won another court victory inJune when a Raleigh County circuitjudge blocked the closing of Marsh ForkHigh School, concluding that thecounty's ten-year planning process wasflawed.

Judge H. L. Kirkpatrick III said MarshFork residents were denied "basic fair-ness" because they were not included onthe committee "vested with the respon-sibility of researching and compiling thedata ultimately expanded upon and uti-lized as justification for the closure oftheir own high school."

"It's not surprising that these peoplefeel disaffected and alienated from a lo-cal board that, from all outward appear-ances, seems to ignore them," Kirkpatricksaid. "Equal representation is a funda-mental principle of democracy."

Attorneys for the school board wereunable to identify members of thecounty's Comprehensive EducationalFacilities Plan (CEFP) committee or sayhow many people served on it, statingonly that the committee was "fluid."

Every school district in the state wasrequired to submit a comprehensive fa-cilities plan in order to compete forschool building funds, and the plan wassupposed to reflect large-scale citizenparticipation.

The Raleigh County school boardvoted in March to close Marsh Fork on a3-2 vote. Kirkpatrick said there was noinput from residents prior to the vote.

"It stretches the imagination to be-lieve that any of these citizens from the

C1 Marsh Fork area who have commis-sioned studies, compiled statistics and

re) packed both hearing and courtroom onbehalf of Marsh Fork High School, would(NI

O."-

fail to seize the opportunity to serve ona CEFP committee if invited to do so,"Kirkpatrick said.

He said if the CEFP had been prop-erly constituted and operated in themanner intended, the facilities planwould be very different than the one sub-mitted to the state.

"Deficiencies in the underlying com-position of committees render the en-tire work product suspect," Kirkpatricksaid in his ruling. "To gloss over theflawed establishment of the underlyingplanning team and committees . . .is todeny these residents basic fairness."

Kirkpatrick's conclusions supportthose reached by Challenge West Vir-ginia, a statewide school reform group.Challenge conducted surveys and re-search into the state facilities planningprocess and discovered a process thatdiscouraged, rather than encouraged,citizen participation.

July 2002"Basically we found that the CEFP

committees at best didn't listen to thosewho support small schools," said Chal-lenge coordinator Linda Martin. "In theworst cases, people were denied accessto information, bullied by architects andschool planners and ignored when theydid manage to state differing opinions.

"Judge Kirkpatrick's opinion is so sig-nificant because it confirms what ordi-nary people told us about the facilitiesplanning process it wasn't fair, it wasn'tdemocratic and the facilities plans thatwere developed didn't belong to them."

Earlier this year Fayette County Cir-cuit Judge John Hatcher stopped theclosing of four schools after ruling thatthe county school board violated thestate's open meeting laws by voting with-out public comment. He said the boardcommitted "an egregious affront to theprinciples of democracy" when it heldclosure hearings for 12 schools on oneday.

Beth Spence, Co-Director of Chal-lenge West Virginia, a statewide organi-zation of parents, educators and otherWest Virginians committed to maintain-ing and improving small communityschools. For more information, visithttp:11www.wvcovenanthouse.orglchallengewvlabout.html.:.

WestVirginia Plans forMega-School on Hold

In Monongalia County, West Virginia,plans to build what would be the state'slargest elementary school are on hold.Originally, the Monongalia County Boardof Education planned to consolidate fourschools in a new Westwood Elementarywhich would house 800 students. Now,close to seven months later, the Boardfinds itself with $5 million to build a $10million school and facing growing pres-sure from a group of parents called the

Westside Small Schools Initiative.The parents and school personnel are

asking the Board to consider alternativesand look for ways to build smaller schoolsfor 300-400 students. Parents have re-peatedly expressed concern over the sizeof the proposed school and the length ofbus travel time for some students. If thenew school goes through, some of the

continued on page 2

Check out the Vermont Act 60 update inside!

School Plans on Hold A Chink in the Armor:from page 1

youngest students will be facing one-waybus rides of one hour and fifteen minutes.

Parents and school staff first learned ofthe proposed consolidation in Januarythrough an article in The Dominion Post.At a meeting following the announcement,the 25-member staff of Westover Elemen-tary presented each Board Member and theSuperintendent with a letter and a packetof information on small schools. They re-quested that the Board and Superinten-dent stop and reflect on the data and re-vise or change the current plan.

Virginia Aultman-Moore, a parent, isquoted in The Dominion Post (5/23/02) assaying, "This community has been consis-tent in supporting small schools. Beforeand after the last bond was defeated we sentparent surveys out. Ninety percent of par-ents both times said they want smallschools. This is discouraging and frustrat-ing. Why did the Board decide not to lis-ten to us?"

Parents took up the fight by meetingin homes and forming the Westside SmallSchools Initiative. The group passed outinformation as parents dropped off theirstudents at school and invited them to at-tend a Local School Improvement Coun-cil meeting, where they passed out post-cards for parents to write comments onfor the Board of Education. They have alsoset up a website that includes links to in-formation on small schools, contact infor-mation for writing to the State Board ofEducation and the Legislature, meetingdates, and background information.

The Dominion Post (6/14/02) quotesMonongalia County Schools Superinten-dent Dr. Michael Vetere as saying, "Iwouldn't necessarily say we are back tosquare one. But we aren't going ahead withthe (consolidation) plan right away." TheWestside Small Schools Initiative hopesthis means that that the school board isconsidering other options. In the meantime, they are continuing to gather sup-port.

For more information on the WestsideSmall Schools Initiative and the proposedMonongalia County school consolida-tion, contact Virginia Aultman-Moore at304.292.7046 or visit www.geocities.com/westovercommunity/.+

Update on Vermont's Act 60

The Vermont Legislature's recentlycompleted session included a miscella-neous tax provision that takes a small,though significant, bite out of Act 60'sequity promise.

When Act 60 was passed in 1997, themain components required all districts,whether property-wealthy or property-poor, to tax at the same rate to raise thesame amount of money. Wealthy com-munities had to raise taxes to be com-parable to all other Vermont towns.Since their actual tax revenues gener-ated more than they needed, the extramoney was put into an Education Fundto supplement low yields in poor dis-tricts, allowing them to begin to investmore in local schools.

There were loopholes in the originalbill. First, to ease the tax pain of wealthycommunities, the initial legislation in-cluded a 4-year phase in period. Second,towns could raise money privately andkeep some expenses "off the books." Thissecond loophole has been used exten-sively by wealthy communities that raisemillions and avoid the so-called sharingprovisions. Essentially they have beenable to keep taxes down by appealing toout-of-town second homeowners withno stake in local schools.

This year, a third chink in the equityappeared. The Legislature approved acapital construction "special deal" thatallows districts to fund building projectsoff the Act 60 formula. Thus fundingthese projects comes from their ownproperty-wealth base and not throughthe equalized yield used for all the restof education costs.

This provision will allow property-wealthy communities to do capital con-struction at a much lower rate than poorcommunities. The other result is thatmillions of dollars may be diverted fromthe Education Fund. At this time, theFund is flush and is experiencing a sig-nificant surplus, so the diversion ofmoney is not a problem...yet.

Adopting this "special deal", however,does establish a very dangerous prece-dent. It was passed to appease politiciansrepresenting these wealthy districts. Thepolitical pressure to radically change Act60 was enormous, and though propos-als for more fundamental revisions were

Rural Policy Matters, July 2002

unsuccessful, this does represent a per-ilous retreat from Act 60 equity.

In Vermont, where most communi-ties are rural, political divisiveness israrely rural versus suburban/urban, butrather wealthy versus poor towns. Withchanges to Act 60, those communitieswith higher numbers of second homeownersand fortuitous mountains (ski areas) canand will benefit. The poorest rural areaswill once again be disadvantaged.

Though this chink in the equity ar-mor is small, it threatens to expand andit underscores the necessity for advocatesto remain ever vigilant in the quest forequity.

Time will tell. This provision is slatedto "sunset" in 5 years. Past history, how-ever, indicates that it often is a very pro-longed sunset.:

OrganizingPosition Available

The Arkansas Public Policy Panel ishiring a community organizer to workin East Arkansas primarily around edu-cation, civil rights, economic and othercore quality of life issues. The positionwill assume a major role in an effort toaffect the local and state education sys-tems, among other things. Complete jobdescription can be found at www.ARPanelorg.For more info, contact Bill Kopsky at Ar-kansas Public Policy Panel, 1308 WestSecond, Little Rock, AR 72201, 501.376.7913,fax: 501.374.3935..

Iowa Suitfrom page 3

The suit also contends that under theIowa Constitution, students are entitledto an adequate education in safe sur-roundings. Plaintiffs in the case are seek-ing a declaration from the court thatIowa's Local Option Sales Tax be ruledunconstitutional under both the Stateand Federal Constitutions. The Plaintiffsare asking the Court to order the Stateto create a school funding system thatequalizes funding among school districtsand insures that schools have fundingthat is adequate to offer all students ahigh quality education consistent withthe state constitution.

3 www.ruraledu.org

IN THE COURTS I

Alabama Supreme Court BacksAway from Enforcing SchoolFinance Improvements

In the ongoing battle to improvefunding for rural schools across the na-tion, tension is often created between thecourts that have found school financesystems to be constitutionally lacking,and the state legislatures that have theultimate power to fund education. Thelatest example of this tension comesfrom Alabama where the state SupremeCourt recently ruled that Alabama's leg-islators and the Governor, not its judges,are responsible for determining the bestway to fund public education.

In a 7-1 decision, the Alabama highcourt ruled that courts should not beinvolved in decisions about how to ad-equately and fairly fund all of the state'sschool systems. Those decisions are theprovince of the legislative and executivebranches of government, the court ruled.But while declining to direct the statelegislature and Governor to take actionto remedy the state's school funding pro-gram, the Supreme Court left standinga lower court ruling that the Alabama

funding system did not meet the require-ments of the state constitution.

The decision comes as a setback to the35 poor and largely rural school districtsthat filed the original lawsuit in an ef-fort to have the courts intervene to in-crease funding from the state. Ruralschool leaders in Alabama said that theruling would make it harder to ensurethat that children in poor and largelyrural districts would be put on equal fi-nancial footing with students in wealthydistricts with healthy tax bases.

Within Alabama, the disparities infunding between school systems are star-tling. Students in prosperous areas of thestate receive local funding equal to$5,175 per student per year. In contrast,students attending low wealth schoolsreceive local funding equal to $300 perstudent per year.

The battle for equitable and adequatefunding for schools in Alabama nowshifts to the state legislature. The StateDepartment of Education has proposed

a bold education funding plan that wouldchannel over $1.7 billion dollars into thestate's public schools. The plan would bephased in over five years and would putmuch of the burden on local govern-ments to raise the new money. It alsowould also create a pool of money avail-able to poor school districts unable toraise sufficient funding on their own.With the court's ruling to stay out of thefray over funding, schools and studentswill, no doubt, face an uphill battle inselling this proposal to legislators.

The decision in Alabama underscoresthe need for rural advocates to alwaysbuild political support for their causeeven as they fight for reform in thecourts. Courts can, and often do, play animportant role in the battle for equitableand adequate funding for education. Butin the end, the legislature and Governorare generally the parties that must bepushed and convinced to appropriate themoney needed to implement school fi-nance reforms.:

Iowa Suit Challenges Use of LocalOption Sales TaxSeeks Equitable and Adequate School Funding

Until now, Iowa was one of only ahandful of states that has not seenschools and students take the State tocourt challenging the way that schoolsare funded. In April, however, a coalitionof 160 school districts and individualplaintiffs brought suit in state court, al-leging that the current finance systemviolates the Iowa constitution's educa-tion clause because it creates significantdisparities in educational resources anddoes not provide sufficient resources formany districts to be able to offer an ad-equate education to their students. The

www.ruraledu.org

suit is entitled: Coalition for a CommonCents Solution v. State of Iowa.

Iowa uses revenues collected fromLocal Option Sales Taxes to fund a sub-stantial portion of the state's public edu-cation system. The suit contends that thefunds raised by the Local Option SalesTax and distributed to local schools isbased purely upon the place of collec-tion rather than the needs of studentsand schools and thus does not relate tothe number of pupils in a school district,the cost of providing an education tothose pupils or any other educational

factor. As a result, the Local Option SalesTax creates significant disparities in thequality of education Iowa children re-ceive depending on where they happento live. These disparities have resultedin aging and declining school facilitiesthat in turn affect student attendanceand teacher retention, prevent installa-tion of new technology, and cause over-crowding and cancellation of numerousschool days due to excessive heat.

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Study Finds Child PovertyWorst in Rural Areas

A new study released by Save the Chil-dren reports that one in six children liv-ing in the rural United States is living inpoverty and suffers from poor educationand lack of health care. Extreme pock-ets of rural poverty are located in six re-gions: the Rio Grande area along the US-Mexican border, central Appalachia, theMississippi River Delta, the Southwest,the Central Valley of California, and theAmerican Indian reservations in theNorthern Plains states. In these areas, therates for child poverty are two to threetimes the rate of the national average.Overall, there are 2.5 million rural chil-dren living in poverty in the U.S.

Included in the study are these find-ings:

Child poverty is greater in rural ar-eas than in urban areas. Of the 200 coun-ties with persistent poverty, 195 are ru-ral.

Rural children are 50 percent morelikely than their urban peers to lackhealth insurance.

Over half of all rural children in pov-erty are minorities. 33 percent of ruralHispanic children, 37 percent of ruralAfrican American children, and 44 per-cent of rural American Indian childrenlive below the poverty line.

To download a copy of "America's For-gotten Chilcii Chiiti i-ovef ty in RuralAmerica," visit www.savethechildren.org.For more information, call1.800. SAVETHEC H I LDREN.

"Small is not only better, it isthe best."

U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, commenting aboutsmall schools in his commencement address for threegraduating seniors of Pickens School in rural WestVirginia.

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Rural Policy Matters _ .

THE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUST...


Strength in Numbers:A Rural CommunityFights School Closure

When the Board of Education in ClayCounty, Alabama, voted to close BibbGraves High School in May, a small K-12 school in the rural community ofMillerville, local residents did not justget mad, they got together and took ac-tion. Committed to working together forthe benefit of their children and theircommunity, these residents proved thatconsolidation decisions can be reversed.With a July ruling from the U.S. Depart-ment of Justice, community residentswon the right to maintain their school,at least through the 2002-2003 schoolyear.

Tony Thornburg, a local white min-ister who was active in the community'sefforts described why the community hasbeen so adamant about keeping theschool. "This school is the heart of ourcommunity; without it our communitywould just dry up, and our kids wouldnot have nearly as good a chance educa-tionally. Our community would not beable to provide the same level of supportto a school so far away," he said.

Jerry Culp, Parent-Teacher-StudentOrganization (PTSO) President, echoedthese sentiments, "Without the school,we'd probably lose at least two of ourstores and probably our post office; it'sall the activity at the school that keepsthe stores in business. We'd also lose ourcommunity fellowship. Now, everyonehas a reason to feel like a family becausethe school binds us together."

The strength of this bond particularlyacross lines of race and class is woventhroughout the story of the community'sefforts to protect their school and proved

t".. to be essential to their success. HenrySterling, an African American ministerwho has been active for years in non-vio-co

tv,

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lent efforts to end discrimination andimprove race relations in Alabama, de-scribed Bibb Graves School as a goodenvironment for African American stu-dents and cited the relationship betweenAfrican Americans and Caucasians in thecommunity as central to his commit-ment to keeping the school open. "Toclose a school that is a good example ofhow black and white people can worktogether is just not right," he said.

With about 400 students in kinder-garten through twelfth grade, BibbGraves is the smallest school in the

August 2002county. It also has a higher percentage(24-28%) of African American studentsthan most other schools in the county.If consolidated, all of its students wouldbe transferred to other schools, creatingbus rides of an hour and a half and longer(each way) for many students. Fewer stu-dents and parents would be able to takepart in school activities in the largerschool and the long distances would poseadditional barriers to participation andachievement.

People involved with Bibb GravesSchool decided not to accept the deci-sion of the school board. Theyimmediately formed a committee con-sisting of community residents (with andwithout children), students, and PTSOmembers, and they resolved to find a wayto keep the school open. Students cre-ated and distributed flyers. Interest wasso intense that crowds of 200-300 peoplefrequently overflowed the capacity of the

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Five State-Level RuralOrganizations LaunchRural Equity Collaborative

The Rural School and Communitynust, with five state-level rural orga-nizations, has recently launched theRural Equity Collaborative, a pioneereffort to strengthen grassroots-level in-volvement in public school fundingpolicy.

The Rural Equity Collaborative willfocus on equal educational opportunityas a school funding goal. The groupsmaintain that equal educational oppor-tunity requires a school fundingsystem that is both adequate and equi-table for all schools. A funding systemthat supports every school equitably,

but inadequately, denies opportunity.Conversely, a system that guaranteesevery school the same minimum fund-ing, but allows wealthier communitiesto spend as much as they want, deniesequality.

The five state partners in the RuralEquity Collaborative will conduct theirown work and will also workcollaboratively the Rural Trust on spe-cific state-school funding problems.Some of the broader goals they hopeto accomplish:

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Let us know what's happening in your schools and communities at [email protected]

(1a.)

Strength in Numbersfrom page 1

local church, where they held regularcommunity planning meetings. Thecommunity established the MillervilleLegal Fund and obtained legal counsel.They held yard sales and ad hoc fund-raisers to help cover their expenses, anddonations poured in.

Student Kristi Stewart, a rising jun-ior, observed, "There's that wholeteenage factor of thinking you just wantto get out of school, but when we heardthat we wouldn't have our school any-more, we realized what we had. Thestudents who had tried to act like theydidn't care about school were crying thehardest. The students and the wholecommunity pulled to-gether to try to keepour school. We haveworked really hard."

Concern for the stu-dents' academic futuremotivated many sup-porters of Bibb GravesSchool who felt thatlong bus rides andfewer opportunities to participate inschool activities would discourage somestudents from completing high school.They also hated to see the close relation-ships and personal attentiveness tostudents at Bibb Graves replaced by moreimpersonal circumstances of a largerschool.

Students praise the willingness ofteachers to make time to work with themand expand their opportunities. LisaRowell, a rising senior who has alreadybeen accepted to an out-of-state college,said "We all know each other here, teach-ers and students are close. If we want tostart something new, we can, we justhave to talk with the teachers about it.And if we want to study something ortake a class that's not on the schedule,we can just tell the teachers and they willwork with us." Lisa, who is white, regu-larly attended and reported on schoolboard and community meetings, in ad-dition to participating in several otherextracurricular activities. "I want tograduate here," she said. "But I don'tjust want it for myself. I want it for allthe children here, and for the wholecommunity. It would really hurt ourcommunity and our economy if we lostour school. I'm proud of our commu-nity and how we have pulled together."

Another senior, Sheena Simmons,agrees. "Teachers take time with the stu-dents. They'll work with you if you havea special interest. And, they try not toleave any one behind in class. If you needextra help they'll even tutor you afterschool." As an African American, Sheenafeels a special connection to Bibb Graves."If you want to participate in somethinghere you can, it doesn't really matterwho you are, we work together," she said.

Faculty underscored this commit-ment to students. "The students here aregreat, and teachers are willing to go theextra mile for them; they see to it stu-dents get what they need. We havestudents who go to selective colleges.And, we work to see that students aretreated fairly and given equal opportu-nities. When you start working here thatattitude rubs off on you. It's what we

notify and obtain approval from the U.S.Department of Justice when closing aschool where racial balance would beimpacted. In the case of Clay County, thesystem operates under the consent de-cree reached in Lee v. Macon (AnthonyT Lee v. Macon County, Alabama, Boardof Education), the 1960s desegregationcase that resulted in the racial integra-tion of schools across much of the South.The Department of Justice is required toreview these cases and their impact. Inaddition to paperwork submitted by theschool system, lawyers for Bibb Gravesasked the Department of Justice to re-view the effect of closing their raciallyintegrated school.

In school systems governed by Lee v.Macon, the law firm of Gray, Langford,Sapp, McGowan, Gray, and Nathanson,which prosecuted the original case, also

reviews school clo-sures for racial impact.Stanley Gray, an attor-ney with the firmreviewed county docu-ments and attended twocommunity meetings."We look at these mat-ters solely from the

perspective of desegregation and specifi-cally to represent the interests ofminority students, parents and teachers.I attended two meetings and saw every-body sitting together, not AfricanAmerican in one place and white in an-other. I got a sense that they were reallyunited and had a genuine concern fortheir school and their students."

Lawyers from the U.S. Department ofJustice also reviewed county records, metwith faculty, students, and communityresidents and concluded that Bibb Gravescould not be singled out for closure. Inletter dated July 18, 2002, the Depart-ment stated that neither legitimate norpersuasive reason had been provided toclose a desegregated school in lieu of aracially identifiable school. According toGray, "The Justice Department was nottelling Clay County to close a school ornot to close a school; the ruling is thatthe county cannot close only BibbGraves, it cannot single out a raciallyintegrated school for closure." The rul-ing means that Bibb Graves will remainopen at least through the 2002-2003school year.

Community residents express reliefand optimism and a deep commitment

"We want [students] to know they come from areal community and a place of strength andempowerment... We want to give them theopportunity to learn they can make a meaningfuldifference in their own community and in theworld:'

expect of each other," one teacher ob-served. Another teacher remarked, "Inever once didn't want to get up and goto work at Bibb Graves. It was more likea family than a place just to go to work.This kind of academic attention and op-portunity has not been confined withinthe walls of the school. Bibb Graves hadinstituted several place-based educationinitiatives, which have enhanced theentire community and provided stu-dents with opportunities to develop andutilize real-world skills. Initiatives likeThe Community Connection, a commu-nity newspaper staffed by students,present students with intellectually de-manding work that makes a realdifference in the lives of other people.One teacher explained, "We want stu-dents to learn that education applies tolife beyond the school in a big way. It'snot just a commodity to better them-selves. We want them to know they comefrom a real community and a place ofstrength and empowerment, that fight-ing for what is right and doing goodwork is important. We want to give themthe opportunity to learn they can makea meaningful difference in their owncommunity and in the world."

Like many racially integrated schoolsystems, Clay County was required to

2 Rural Policy Matters,August 2002

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IN THE COURTS I

North Carolina Court UpdateIn the latest development in the long-

running Leandro school finance case inNorth Carolina, Judge Howard Manningrejected the plan that state officials of-fered in response to Manning's rulingthat at-risk children in North Carolinawere not receiving a sound basic educa-tion. State officials gathered a group ofdocuments, lifted mainly from the workof the governor's education task force,that were supposed to show the judgehow the state intended to meet thecourt's demands.

Commenting on the documents sub-mitted by the state, Manning said, "Thetask force is merely advisory. In starkcontrast, however, the court's orders inthis case are not advisory. It appears clearto the court that the state, including thelawyers in the Attorney General's office,has failed to appreciate this distinctionand elected to do little if anything, inorder to comply."

He also asserted that, since the statehas argued in the past that money is notthe issue, North Carolina current bud-

get crisis is no excuse for not proceed-ing. Manning said within 10 days, hewanted to hear exactly what the state wasdoing to assist Hoke County schools andother plaintiff parties. The lawsuit wasbrought by a group of low-wealth ruralschool districts more than 10 years ago.

When Manning first ruled inLeandro, state officials said they wouldabide by his decision, but at the sametime, they have submitted a very broadappeal to the North Carolina State Su-preme Court. 4.

Strength in Numbersfrom page 2

to work to maintain all of the county'ssmall high schools. Resident Jerry Culpannounced, "It's not often you get a sec-ond chance and we want to make themost of it. We know the best thing forClay County and all its children is tomaintain all four public high schools.We're committed to that." He added, "It'splain now that the reasons given for clos-ing Bibb Graves School, academics andmoney, just don't hold water." Indeed,research has shown that in terms of costsper graduate, small schools are morecost-effective.

A teacher noted, "There's a lessonhere not to underestimate small schoolsand the opportunities they provide stu-dents. There are so many advantages."

The community celebrated the goodnews with a work day and residents ofall ages spent hours cleaning, painting,mowing, and doing landscape work atthe school. But residents' work is farfrom complete. They are now discuss-ing plans to start a tutoring program andto initiate community projects in eachclass. Bibb Graves will also be one of sev-eral hundred schools around the countryto participate in the Youth Civic Engage-ment Project sponsored by the PewMemorial Trust initiative Project 540:Students Turn For A Change. In thewords of Reverend Sterling, "This is agood school and community, but it's notas good as it's going to be."

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REC Launchfrom page 1

Define rural school finance issues na-tionally from a rural perspective

Develop skills, practices, and toolssupporting rural organizing on schoolfinance issues.

Demonstrate the use of these skills,practices, and tools in a diverse group ofleading rural states.

Communicate effectively with urbaneducation activists

Build a national rural constituencyfor school finance reform

The Collaborative member groupswill address a wide variety of issues, butthe most prominent include:

Competitive Adequacy:Many of the most important educationalresources needed for all to meet highacademic standards (especially goodteachers and administrators) are in lim-ited supply and schools compete witheach other for these resources. Statefunding policy should assure that localvariations in wealth do not deprive thepoorest communities of the funds nec-essary for them to compete in the mar-ket for these resources.

Equity in Place"Educate ThemWhere You Find Them":Kids go to school in real places, and "eq-uity" can only occur in a place wherethey feel safe, wanted, needed, and ex-pected to do well. Funding systems thatdeprive kids of friendly schools close tohome are both inadequate and inequitable.

Fiscal Efficiency and Accountability:State policy should assure that the

resources available for equal educationalopportunity are used competently. Noamount of funding for a school is ad-equate if the funds are not used in themost cost-effective way. Fiscal ineffi-ciency produces educational inequity.Rural citizens need the skills necessaryto understand school budgeting and ac-counting; to analyze how muchspending should be adequate to meetacademic standards when competentlymanaged; and to identify policy choicesthat encourage best fiscal managementpractices.

Over the next several years, the RuralEquity Collaborative hopes to grow andadd new state partners. The inauguralfive state partners are from prototypicalrural regions are Appalachia, the Delta,the Great Plains, northern New England,and the Southeast, and consist of the fol-lowing groups:

Challenge West VirginiaNebraska Coalition for EducationalEquity and AdequacyNorth Carolina Justice andCommunity Development CenterSouthern Echo (Mississippi)Vermont Children's ForumInitial major support for the Rural

Equity Collaborative comes from theFord Foundation. 4.

Rural Policy Matters,August 2002 3

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179VELMA MITCHELLACQUISITIONS ASSISTANTERIC/CRESS AT AEL, INC.1031 QUARRIER ST STE 607CHARLESTON WV 25301-2326

Arkansas House SpeakerPans Consolidation Plan byBlue Ribbon Commission

A leading Arkansas legislator says hedoes not believe the consolidation ofsmall schools into regional high schoolswill save Arkansas taxpayers money andhe won't support a proposal to do so bythe Arkansas Blue Ribbon Commissionon Public Education.

According to the Arkansas DemocratGazette (July 24, 2002), RepresentativeHerschel Cleveland of Paris, Arkansas,the incoming speaker of the ArkansasHouse of Representatives, says consoli-dation won't likely save money becauseof the initial investment in new schoolsand the fact that administrative positionsare usually not eliminated by consolida-tion, just moved from one place toanother.

Cleveland, who graduated from a classof 20 at Magazine High School in Arkan-

sas, told the Arkansas Farm Bureau thatmoney is not the main issue in consoli-dation anyway. He said small schools doa better job of educating troubled kidsbecause "you see those folks who areabout to fall through the cracks, and youcan lift them up and help them."

The regional high school plan is onlyone of many Blue Ribbon Commissionrecommendations that will be consid-ered by the legislature next year. A courtdecision declaring the state's schoolfunding sysi t---rv,t;hit7,,nally ineq-uitable and inadequate has createdintense interest in public education inArkansas. One of the schools most likelyto be consolidated is Lakeview, the tinyrural school in the state's poor Delta re-gion that filed the lawsuit 10 years ago.

"If Lakeview is consolidated, there will be fewer starterson football teams, fewer presidents of student councils,fewer valedictorians...All consolidation will do is createbig conglomerates that are more difficult to manage[and] do not generate the kind of community supportthat you will see in small towns:'

Judge Andrew Bagley commenting on the rural school districtthat was the lead plaintiff in the Arkansas school finance lawsuitthat is now facing consolidation.

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Policy ProgramMarty Strange, DirectorP.O. Box 68Randolph, VT 05060Phone: 802.728.5899Fax: 802.728.2011E-mail: policy.program(_Lururaledu.orgwww.ruraledu.org




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Small Schools Work andThey're Cost Effective,New Report Finds

Research on the relationships ofschool size, poverty, and student achieve-ment has shown that small schools arebetter for kids particularly kids frompoorer communities. Now, a new reportgoes head-to-head with conventionalwisdom about economies of scale, prov-ing that smaller schools can be cost-ef-fective, as well. Dollars and Sense: TheCost Effectiveness of Small Schools, tobe released this month, is a collabora-tive effort of the KnowledgeWorks Foun-dation, the Rural School and Commu-nity Trust, and Concordia, Inc. It bringstogether the work of nine authors withexpertise on school facilities to challengethe common belief that big schools arecheaper to build and maintain than aresmall ones. Their conclusion: investingtax dollars in small schools makes goodeconomic sense.

Dollars and Sense points to a num-ber of alarming trends in school size: therampant rural school consolidation poli-cies of the past few decades, state poli-cies that favor construction of hugeschools over smaller ones and that dis-courage maintenance or renovation ofolder schools, and the alarming growthin the size of the average school from127 students in 1940, to 653 today.

Diseconomies of Scale

The authors cite research on the hostof educational and social benefits ofsmall schools benefits that includehigher academic achievement, lowerdropout rates, less violence and vandal-ism, greater teacher satisfaction, andmore community involvement. Simi-larly, they point to research on the nega-tive effects of large schools on students,

September 2002

teachers, and members of the commu-nity, as well as the "diseconomies ofscale" inherent in large schools.

These diseconomies are rarely dis-cussed when a new school facility is pro-posed, but are extremely important infiguring the true cost of building andmaintaining a school. For example, largeschools may appear on the surface tohave a lower per-student cost. However,when the much-higher dropout rates oflarger schools are factored into a cost pergraduate, small schools suddenly be-come more cost effective. The long-termcosts to society of school dropouts theirlower earning power, higher arrest andjail rates, higher incidence of child abuseand neglect, and poorer overall healthalso argue powerfully in favor of usingthe cost per graduate to measure the truecost of a school.

Larger schools also require costlyadded tiers of administration, more se-curity personnel, and additional main-tenance and operations personnel ex-penditures that significantly increase theper-student cost of a school, and thatgrow as a school becomes larger. Anothermajor diseconomy in large consolidatedschools is transportation fuel, buses,bus drivers, and maintenance. Yet, saythe report's authors, the billions of dol-lars it costs to transport students everyyear are rarely factored into cost com-parisons between smaller and largerschools. Finally, they point out, the eco-nomic costs when a community loses aschool can be significant.

Reasonably Sized Schools

One of the most important findingsin Dollars and Sense is that small schoolsare also quite competitive with bigschools in construction costs. The au-thors analyzed a database of 489 schooldesigns submitted to architectural de-sign competitions between 1990 and2001. These schools varied greatly insize, accommodating between 24 and

Getting It Done...From Duck Hill (MS)...

Citizens in Duck Hill, Mississippihave won a battle to keep Duck Hill El-ementary School open next year. Thisvictory is the result of long-term com-munity organizing in MontgomeryCounty by Action, Communication andEducation Reform, Inc. (ACAER), agroup of concerned citizens whosechildren attend Montgomery Countyschools in the Mississippi Delta. For thepast several years, citizens in this farm-ing community have been taking re-sponsibility for improving the educa-tion of their children and for holding

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the school board and school personnelaccountable for acting in the best in-terests of their children.

One of ACAER's first victories wasto elect Al White to the MontgomeryCounty school board in 1998. AfricanAmericans gained a majority on theschool board for the first time in May2001. Mr. White is now chair of theboard and has sought to make theschool board more accessible to thecommunity by rotating the boardmeetings among the three schools inthe county and by opening up the bud-

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Rural Matters...Small Works...Community Counts...Kids Can!

Arkansas School BoycottPrompts Lawsuit, RuralOrganizing

When schools opened this year in theLee County district centered inMarianna, Arkansas, only 181 kids re-ported. That was a little short of the ap-proximately 1,700-student enrollment.

The boycott, organized by the localMinisters Alliance in response to parentsand school personnel in this majorityAfrican American district, was sparkedboth by the upcoming school board elec-tions and by school management issues.

The primary cause of the boycott wascommunity dissatisfaction with a schoolboard decision not to open all sevenboard seats to election after redrawingboundaries of board zones. At issue isan Arkansas law that requires districtswith at least 10 percent minority popu-lation to establish equally populatedelection zones to be represented by asingle board member. The law requiresthat when zones are redrawn, all seatsmust be opened for election. A lawsuitfiled by four boycott leaders on the sec-ond day of school alleges that the dis-trict redrew the boundaries, but onlyopened two of seven seats for re-election.African American candidates had filed forall five of the seats currently held bywhite board members. The lawsuitclaims they are being denied the chanceto run.

The district claims they have madeonly minor changes in the boundariesof districts created in 1994 in compli-ance with the law, and that the changesactually support the African Americancommunity by assuring that two incum-bent black board members will not be inthe same district, which would forcethem to run against each other.

Other boycott issues surrounded sani-tation and the deplorable condition ofrestrooms. Photographs sent to the statedepartment of education and to the lo-cal and state departments of healthprompted official inspections and a rul-ing that the facilities were unsatisfactoryand had to be in compliance with healthstandards within a week.

Another community demand was tosecure certified teachers in English andmath. Teachers are being shifted to meetthat demand.

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The school has a long history oftroubles, with boycotts, a teacher strike,and poor academic performance thatthreatens to prompt a state takeover.However, test scores increased substan-tially last year, and the district claims itis making progress.

The boycott was called off after a weekbecause of the concessions gained. But,the election remains the principal pointof continuing contention. One judge is-sued a temporary injunction requiringthat all seats be open for election andthat the five black candidates be placedon the ballot, but another judge over-ruled the injunction, concluding that theboundary changes did not require anelection in all seven zones. The decisionmay be appealed. The election is sched-uled for September 17, 2002 and bothwhite incumbents face a black chal-lenger.

In the meantime, the community issetting up a task force to monitor theschool system.

Picture It!A picture is worth a thousand words.

So, students and others in two rural Ohioschool districts are using photographsto define their school facilities needs.

The Camera Project is an action re-search tool being used in the WarrenLocal and Federal Hocking districts toencourage citizens to think about theconditions, location, size and design oftheir school facilities.

Local organizers Amy Lipka and JerryHartley worked with 11 teachers and 250students in both school districts. Stu-dents from a variety of grade levels par-ticipated in the project. Teachers volun-teered to incorporate the Camera Projectinto their curriculum from January toJune 2002. The organizers brainstormedwith students and teachers about thestrengths and weaknesses of theirschools and then decided how to photo-graph their ideas. Photographs docu-mented outdoor learning spaces such asnature trails and ponds and diversity of

class subjects, which included a local oralhistory program, sign language and aphoto lab. Photographs also documentedtrash blowing from fans used for cool-ing and a lack of locker space. Studentswrote about their photos and discussedwhy they chose to photograph what theydid.

Throughout the summer, organizersattended community meetings and lo-cal festivals, presenting the photos andwritings to local residents. The publicshowing of photographs proved to be apowerful way to encourage citizens tovoice their concerns about their localschools and then begin to define ways todeal with them.

The Camera Project is sponsored bySchool and Community Connection, aproject of Rural Action, a non-profit or-ganization that creates model strategiesinvolving a broad base of citizens inbuilding environmental, economic, andsocial sustainability in AppalachianOhio..

Small Schools Workfrom page 1

4,000 students. First, the researchersgrouped the elementary, middle, andhigh schools and then divided eachgroup at the median size for that group.They then compared the average cost ofthe smaller half with that of the largerhalf of each group. In this comparison,the smaller schools were about 20 per-cent more expensive than the largerones, both in terms of cost per studentand cost per square foot.

Even that surprisingly small differ-ence disappeared, however, when theauthors evaluated only the 145 schoolsthat were not larger than what most edu-cation professionals consider "reason-ably sized" 1,000 students for highschools, 750 for middle schools, and 500for elementary schools. The smaller halfof these reasonably sized schools weresignificantly less expensive to build, cost-ing $105 per square foot (compared to$120 for the larger schools) and $16,283per student (compared to $17,618 for thelarger schools).

Single copies of Dollars and Sense areavailable free of charge by writing the Ru-ral School and Community Trust, 1825 KSt., NW, Suite 703, Washington, DC 20006,or sending e-mail to [email protected].

Rural Policy Matters, September 2002 43 0 www.ruraledu.org

GLEANINGSOverheard in North Carolina...

The Raleigh News and Observer re-ports that Steve Trayton, a North Caro-lina Department of Public Instructionconsulting architect whose blessing isrequired before a local school district canbuild a school, says most high schoolsin NC are being built for more than 1,000students because they are "more eco-nomical" and "can offer a more diversecurriculum." But, he added, "Now thatwe've consolidated so many smallschools, we're recognizing some of thethings we gave up from small schools."No comment.

Overstepping in Ohio...

Developments in Ohio highlight concernssome people have about centralized schoolbuilding finance systems that have emergedin response to school finance lawsuits. RandallFischer, executive director of the Ohio SchoolFacilities Commission, recently resigned be-cause he had accepted perquisites such as golfoutings from contractors to whom heawarded $23 million in unbid contracts. Ohioexpects to double the number of schools be-ing built and renovated with Commissionfunding. About half the construction willbe renovations.

Over-busing in West Virginia...

The Charleston Gazette has launcheda series called "Closing Costs" focusing onthe cost that school consolidation in WestVirginia has imposed on rural school chil-dren. Reporters Eric Eyre and Scott Finnare the authors of the series; the first in-stallment appeared in the August 25, 2002issue and was filled with revealing data,stunning anecdotes, powerful quotes, andgreat references to research on health ef-fects of riding buses. Fighting school con-solidation and long bus rides in your neckof the woods? This is a must-have series.The articles are online at http://www.wvgazette.com/news/Closing.+

Getting It Done...from page 1

get to greater community input andscrutiny. The school board has also hiredits first African American female attor-ney.

The community hoped a new countyschool superintendentelected after asuccessful lawsuit to keep Winona Cityschool district voters from voting in theMontgomery County school superinten-dent election (they have their own su-perintendent)would be more support-ive of the county's small rural schoolslike K-6 Duck Hill, with 100 students.

Unfortunately, ACAER is disappointedin the newly elected superintendent. Oneyear into her tenure, she surprised theboard by recommending to close DuckHill Elementary School. The superinten-dent claimed the district could not af-ford to keep Duck Hill open and thatclosing the school and sending studentsto Kilmichael Elementary would saveabout $900,000. The board tabled therecommendation to buy time to alert thecommunity and gather information.

Community members quickly let theboard know they were distressed aboutthe proposed closing. Not only wouldDuck Hill lose its community school, butalso some students would have to endurebus rides over 50 miles each way toKilmichael. With the support of the com-munity, the board continued to keep theclosure of Duck Hill off the agenda forseveral more months, during which timethe state Department of Public Instruc-tion was asked in to evaluate the finan-cial stability of the school system.

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The department's report estimatedthe savings from closing Duck Hill atabout $150,000. The department offeredto help the board find ways to save moneyand keep the school open. The town ofDuck Hill waived sewage fees to help cutcosts and keep the school. In April 2002,the superintendent announced that shewould withdraw her recommendation toclose the school.

Al White, the school board chair, said:"We are making progress. Having ourmeetings at each school has increasedcommunity participation. Even thoughwe feel we have a lot to learn aboutschool finances, we did the right thingto keep Duck Hill open. The communityneeds a school and small childrenshouldn't have to be on buses for longperiods of time. And guess what? Onehundred percent of Duck Hill's secondgraders are at proficiency in reading andone hundred percent of our fifth grad-ers are at proficiency in math!"

To learn more about the work of Ac-tion, Communication and EducationReform, call 662.565.7004, or [email protected].

To Dryden (NY)...

In January 2001, a facilities commit-tee of the Dryden (New York) CentralSchool District recommended to theboard of education that the district's K-5 program be consolidated into oneschool of over 1,000 students. Thismeant closing two elementary schools

in outlying villages, each with K-2 en-rollments of about 110. The Dryden dis-trict covers more than 100 square milesin upstate New York and small villageschools have served the students of thisrural area since the 1930s.

A grassroots group called the Com-munity-Based Schools (CBS)Committeequickly formed and launched an intense18-month organizing and public educa-tion campaign. They focused on the ben-efits of small schools and the value ofschools to communities. CBS organizedpetition drives, mailings, leaflet distribu-tion, letters to the local papers, public fo-rums, and a phone campaign to electthree new CBS-supported candidates tothe school board this May. A month later,in a record voter turnout, a referendumon consolidation was soundly defeated bya margin of three to two.

Throughout the process, it becameclear that the current board of educa-tion was committed to consolidation andnothing short of replacing board mem-bers was going to affect the outcome. Al-most a quarter of the voters in the boardelection were first-time voters who wereconvinced by the CBS committee thattheir votes could make a difference.(Source: Rachel J. Dickinson, who orga-nized the Community Based Schoolscommittee and served as chair for overtwo years. She was elected to the schoolboard this year in an election that estab-lished an anti-consolidation majority onthe Board.)

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RESOURCES FOR THE CAUSEThe Achievement Gap 2002: An Up-

date details many how many AfricanAmerican and Hispanic students inNorth Carolina continue to lag behindtheir white peers in academic perfor-mance. The report also chronicles the highand disproportionate discipline rates anddropout rates of these same students as wellas their underrepresentation in advancedcourses and overrepresentation in specialeducation. The report offers some recom-mendations for improving the outcomesfor these students and explores the im-plications of the long-running Leandrolawsuit, brought by rural school districtsthat argued that the funding available tothem was insufficient to provide theirstudents with a sound basic education.The report is available from the NorthCarolina Justice and Community Develop-ment Center in PDF file at http://www. ncjustice .org/edlaw /AchGap2002.pdf.Call Jenny Jensen at 919.856.2164 orsend an e-mail to [email protected] obtain a hard copy. $10.00 or largerdonations. Volume discounts negotiated.

Tools for Success: What is an Ad-equate Education? has just been re-leased by Citizens for the EducationalAdvancement of Alaska's Children(CEAAC). The report is based on conver-sations with Native Alaskans held in ru-ral communities and at conferences overthe past year. Three themes dominatedthe conversations: (1) an adequate edu-cation gives young people the tools tosucceed in whatever life they choose; (2)an adequate education is owned by thelocal community and reflects the diversecultures of the whole state of Alaska, and(3) an adequate education finds a bal-ance between small locally-basedschools and regional economies of scale.CEAAC and rural Native Alaskans will beusing Tools for Success as they work toimprove the resources available to ruralschool children. One free copy is availableby contacting Spike Jorgensen [email protected].+

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No Child Left Behind ActIncreases Federal Role inEducation, Puts Pressureon Rural Schools

The newly authorized federal Elemen-tary and Secondary Education Act ESEA2001 (No Child Left Behind) representsthe largest increase in education spend-ing by the U.S. government in historyand a corresponding expanded federaloversight role in state education pro-grams. The law has major implicationsfor rural schools, and rural school advo-cates should be particularly aware of thedetails, the impact they are likely to haveon state policy, and their costs. Key as-pects of the new legislation include:

States are required to have a systemof annual testing in reading and mathfor grades 3-8 for the 2005-2006 schoolyear with a "starting point" or baselinebased on 2001-2002 data. All childrenmust be tested, including all poor chil-dren, all minority children, children withlimited English proficiency and childrenin special education.

Each year, states must meet "adequateyearly progress" goals (established by thestate) and have all students performingat "proficient" levels (also defined by thestates) by the 2013-2014 school year.

Data must be collected and "disaggre-gated" by economic status, ethnicity,disability, and the students' English lan-guage proficiency. The purpose is toreveal and eliminate any "achievementgaps" between these subgroups. Butwhen the number of students in any sub-group is small, the value of this data canbe statistically meaningless, especiallywhen comparing performance from yearto year.

Beginning this year, states are re-quired to publish annual report cards on

October 2002

the performance of school districts. Like-wise, districts are required to submitsimilar reports to the public with school-level data. For rural schools, this couldmean publishing results for very smallclasses in very small communities.When newspaper readers find out, forexample, that five out of 18 fourth grad-ers scored below proficiency in reading,there will likely be open speculationabout who the five kids are. Putting pres-sure on adults to perform better asteachers and school administrators is

one thingpublicly humiliating chil-dren is another.

Beginning this year, all new teachershired with federal funds provided underTitle I of the act must be "highly quali-fied." Even paraprofessionals hired withTitle I money will soon face stricter re-quirements, which include two years ofcollege, a minimum of an associates de-gree or some other "established qualitystandard." If state certification standardsused to define "highly qualified" are toonarrow, the level of curriculum special-ization will be too great for many smallschools to achieve.

Federal funds in the amount of $900million are available to help states anddistricts set up "scientifically based"reading programs for grades K-3. An ad-ditional smaller reading program isavailable for programs to help 3-5 year-olds in poor or disadvantaged areas.

The bill includes a change in Title 1funding geared to provide more re-

continued on page 2

Montana School FinanceLawsuit Filed

Several Montana school districts,parents, and the Montana teacher's or-ganization filed suit in state court inearly September claiming that the stateschool finance system is unconstitu-tional because it does not provideschools and students with adequatefunding. The plaintiffs argue that thestate's school funding system does notallow schools enough money to meetstate standards, which violates theMontana constitutional requirementthat the state provide a "basic systemof free quality public elementary andsecondary schools." In addition, thesuit alleges that the funding system is

not based on the actual cost of provid-ing a quality education and fails to en-sure that all schools are equallyequipped to give students a solid edu-cation. According to the lawsuit, with-out additional state funding, schoolswill be forced to layoff teachers, dropa number of classes and extracurricu-lar programs and let school facilitiesgo without maintenance.

The Montana Quality EducationCoalition, an organization of 51 schooldistricts representing more than halfof the state's public school children,

continued on page 2

Help us track states misusing test scores to sanction small schools. See story, page. 4

No Child Left Behindfrom page 1

sources specifically targeted to districtswith high concentrations of poor chil-dren. In addition, both states and schooldistricts in general have much greatercontrol over federal funds.

The law also provides for two "flex-ibility demonstration projects": one forstates and the other for districts. Up toseven states and 150 school districts willbe selected to consolidate all state-ad-ministration and state-activity fundingunder ESEA programs, including Title I.

Penalties for school failure get in-creasingly stiffer each year. Beginningthis school year, schools that are re-ported as "failing" must offer studentsthe option of transferring to better per-forming public schools; after three years,a failing school district must cover thecosts of providing tutoring for children;and after four years, the school trans-portation for children who choose totransfer. For many sparsely populatedand isolated rural districts, this will notbe practical, logistically or fiscally.

Meeting each of these requirementsmay prove especially problematic forrural school communities, particularlyin regard to teacher recruitment, costsof transporting children across evenlarger distances, and finding supplemen-tal education resources, including tutorsand other specialists.

Among the likely effects of the act isincreased competition for "highly quali-fied" teachers certified in the subject areathey teach, aggravating the competitivedisadvantage many resource-poor rural(and urban) schools face in the marketfor teachers. Teaching at least some sub-jects "out of field" is common in smallschools with limited faculty, and the newlaw will likely aggravate this problem.States will be required to develop a planto assure that poor children have thesame high quality teachers as other stu-dents, but it remains to be seen whetherthis part of the law will be aggressivelyenforced by the U.S. Department of Edu-cation.

Furthermore, small rural schools of-ten lack adequate technology forprogrammatic instruction and staff pro-fessional development. The new annualscience assessments due in place by2007-2008 will likely present formidableachievement gaps unless new resourcesare in place in every rural school. Faced

with the financial burden of providingcostly new infrastructure and resources,rural districts will be under tremendouspressure to build larger, consolidated re-gional schools, thereby incurringincreased transportation costs, increas-ing class size and sacrificing the closeinteraction they now enjoy between fac-ulty, students and parents.

Though the Act is accompanied by alarge increase in federal funding for edu-cation, the proportion of federalspending on schools remains very smallcompared to state and local contribu-tions. Increased federal dollars foreducation and targeting special fundstowards rural and poor schools are cer-tainly steps in the right direction, butin the end, states and local communi-ties are still going to have to pick up thebiggest part of the tab for the new fed-eral mandate. And they'll have to findthe funds in very short order.

Among the many obligations imposedon states by the No Child Left BehindAct, there is not, unfortunately, a re-quirement that state and local fundingsystems be either equitable nor adequateto meet the act's ambitious educationalgoals. However, the new law might pro-vide rural parents and school advocateswith a new legal weapon to brandish inthe legislatures and the courts to de-mand equal educational opportunityfrom state and local governments. Thedevil will certainly be in the details.:-

Montana School FinanceLawsuitfrom page 1

is funding the law suit. The coalition,which has raised about $200,000 in duesthis year, previously joined four otherstatewide education organizations tofund a professional study of the state'spublic school funding system. The re-sults of that study show Montana schoolsare $170 million short of what they needto meet state and national standards.

Some Montana education groups arenot supporting the lawsuit. The MontanaSchool Boards Association and the Mon-tana Rural Education Associationbothplaintiffs in previous funding lawsuitshave decided not to enter the case, opt-ing instead to focus on legislative solu-tions during the 2003 legislativesession.:

2 Rural Policy Matters, October 2002

ESEA and State BudgetsWith states facing severe budget cuts

and shortages, some districts are desper-ately struggling to meet and maintain newstandards with rapidly shrinking budgets,especially mandates aimed at increasingtesting and reducing class size. Recent es-timates by the National Governors Asso-ciation indicate that 44 states currentlyface revenue "shortfalls." The NationalAssociation of State Legislatures reportsthat 12 states have 2002 budget gaps inexcess of 10 percent. Things look moreominous for FY 2003, with 11 states vot-ing to cut K-12 education spending ratherthan increase it. Federal tax changes mayfurther decrease state revenues which willonly deepen the extent of tax increases and/or budget cuts that states will have tomake.

ESEA,Teacher Shortages, and ClassSize

Despite ESEAs tougher teacher qual-ity requirements, there are as yet no federalregulations or guidelines on how to applythem. Faced with severe state budgetshortfalls and dire teacher shortages, someare worried that in desperate efforts to staffclassrooms, some states may change theirlicensing requirements. Officials in Cali-fornia, which has 45,000 teachers onemergency permits, warn that some statesare going to be under serious pressure tochange the definition of "highly qualified."Declining revenues for elementary andsecondary education have repeatedly beenlinked to fewer fully qualified teachers andlarger class sizes.

Parent Involvement and ESEAThe No Child Left Behind Act defines and

mandates parent involvement Based on theNational PTAs definition, parent involvementmeans "the participation of parents -iri regu-lar, two-way, and meaningful communicationinvolving student academic learning andother school activities, including ensuringthat parents play an integral role in assistingtheir child's learning, that parents are encour-aged to be actively involved in their children'seducation at schools, and that parents are fullpartners in their children's education in-cluded, as appropriate, in thedecision-making and on advisory commit-tees." The new definition and mandate mayprovide rural communities another impor-tant argument for lobbying against schoolconsolidation. Studies have found that par-ent involvement is higher in small schools,and higher in rural areas than in urban ar-eas.

www.ruraledu.org

In West Virginia, the Beat Goes onPromises to Keep and Miles to Go Before West Virginia Officials Sleep

The Charleston Gazette has publishedthe latest in its series on "Closing Costs"about the harm that the state's schoolconsolidation policies have done tokidsand it will make rural advocateseverywhere cheer. The latest installmentis about "broken promises," describinghow the benefits officials said would re-sult from consolidation, including aricher curriculum and lower costs, sim-ply have not materialized.

Just two of many revelations:In the past decade, 300 West Virginia

schools have been closed and statewideenrollment has declined by 41,000, butthe number of administrators has actu-ally increased. The number of centraloffice administrators has increased 16percent.

Many schools offer less, not more cur-riculum. In ten counties surveyed,officials promised consolidation wouldresult in more than 100 advanced place-ment courses that were not offered inthe past two years, and the article citescases where foreign language offeringsshrank dramatically after consolidation.In Pendleton County, where local offi-

cials promised zoology, calculus, Japa-nese and 22 other advanced placementclasses would follow consolidation, onlydrama has been added.

This series is full of facts and insightsthat will help rural people everywhererebut the overblown promises made topromote consolidation of schools. It hasWest Virginia education officials strug-gling to explain their policies. You canget it online at the following address:http://www.wvgazette.com/news/Clos-ing.

Bus Rides BustedThe Charleston Gazette reports that WestVirginia education officials have instructedlocal school boards to report whetherschool bus rides exceed the state's guide-lines: no more than 30 minutes one-wayfor elementary school children, 45 min-utes for middle school students and anhour for high school students. State offi-cials are also going to review bus routes tosee if the longer ones could be shortened.

More importantly, the state educationdepartment will begin examining pro-posals to close schools to see to it that

IN THE COURTS I

Federal Courts May BeOpen to School FinanceChallenges

A federal circuit court ruling in a Kan-sas case may have altered prospects forchallenging state funding systems in fed-eral courts. Since an early 1970s U.S. Su-preme Court ruling that people do nothave a right to education under the U.S.Constitution, it has been understoodthat state education funding systemscould not be challenged in the federalcourts. As a result, over the past 30 years,rural and urban advocates of school fi-nance reform have taken most of theirlegal claims to state courts.

But this summer, the federal appealscourt for the 10"' Circuit ruled in the caseof Robinson v. Kansas that a group of

www.ruraledu.org

Kansas parents and students could chal-lenge portions of the Kansas school fi-nance system in federal court if theycould show that the state's system vio-lated federal civil rights laws or laws en-acted to protected disabled students. Inthe case, the parents and students claimthat the state must comply with federalcivil rights laws because it receives fed-eral funding for education.

If this decision withstands a likelyappeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, somerural schools, parents and students whoare seeking fair and adequate funding fortheir schools may be able to take theircase directly to federal courts.

consolidation doesn't force long busrides on large numbers of children. Ac-cording to a special report in the Gazette,thousands of West Virginia childrenspend over two hours a day on schoolbuses, with more than half the state's busroutes exceeding the state guidelines.

Meantime, the state's church leadershave announced plans to take up theschool busing issue, and most observersexpect a major push in the next legisla-tive session to impose strict standardson the length of bus rides.

Court to School Board: Open UpMeetings

The West Virginia Supreme Courtvoted 5-to-0 not to hear an appeal fromthe Raleigh County Board of Education.The Board had appealed a decision fromthe Raleigh County Circuit Court thatfound the Board guilty of violating theopen government meetings law and notfollowing proper procedure in the devel-opment of a ten-year comprehensive fa-cilities plan. As a result, the Marsh ForkHigh School, threatened with closure,will stay open, for now.:-

Rural SchoolFunding Programin Jeopardy

The Bush administration's 2003 bud-get proposes to eliminate funding for theRural Education Achievement Program(REAP), which was funded for FY 2002at the level of $162.5 million. Advocatesfor REAP say that even $162.5 million isonly about half the original congres-sional authorization of $300 million.The administration argues that schoolswill make up for the lost REAP moneywith large increases in other programs.Not so, says the American Association ofSchool Administrators. AASA says thatthe grant formulas for the make-upmoney the administration is referring toare based on population, so most of thesedollars won't go to rural schools.

For more information on this issuesee Thomas D. Rowley's article "No (Ru-ral) Child Left Behind" at www.rupri.org/articles/left.html. For more informationon REAP, go to http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/reap.html.

Rural Policy Matters, October 2002 3

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InternetAccessUpdate


Randolph, VT 05060

The following are some facts fromInternet Access in U.S. Public Schoolsand Classrooms: 1994-2001, a report bythe National Center for Education Sta-tistics:

In fall 2001, 99 percent of publicschools and 87 percent of classrooms inthe United States had access to theInternet compared to 35 percent ofschools and 3 percent of classrooms in1994.

In schools with at least 75 percent ofstudents eligible for free and reducedpriced lunches, 79 percent of classroomshad Internet access, compared to 90 per-cent of classrooms in schools with lessthan 35 percent of students eligible.

In 1996, dial-up Internet connectionswere used by 74 percent of public schoolshaving Internet access, but by 2001, 55percent of connected schools had T1/DS1lines, a continuous and much faster typeof Internet connection, and only 5 per-cent of schools still used dial-up connec-tions.

In 2001, only 72 percent of schoolswith under 300 students were usingbroadband Internet connections com-pared to 96 percent of schools withover 100 students. Eighty-two percentof rural schools had broadband, com-pared to 88 percent of urban and sub-urban schools.+

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

179ERIC CLEARINGHOUSEON RURAL EDUCATION AND SMALL SCHOOLSPO BOX 1348CHARLESTON WV 25325-1348

Test ScoresLand SmallSchools onPriority ListState accountability systems put pressureson schools to "perform" that is, to raisestudent test scores or be subject to vari-ous sanctions. But testing experts say thatwhen the number of students is very small,using test scores to evaluate the wholeschool is statistically irresponsible.

Many states and the federal govern-ment pledge that they will not let thishappen, but the state of Vermont recentlyreleased proud news that 19 of 28 Title Ischools listed as needing improvementhave met criteria to get off that list. Fivemore may soon get off the list as new testdata comes in. Only four are sure to re-main on the "priority schools" list.

One is Belvidere Central, a PK-6school with 32 students (fewer than 5per grade) in one of Vermont's most re-mote and mountainous Northeast King-dom communities. Belvidere might beable to use the help afforded schools onthe list and a lot of schools not onthe list might, too but none of themneeds the shame or the improper statis-tical analysis that brought it.

Know of a situation in your statelike this? Let us know. Help us trackthis issue nationally.

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THE RURAL SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY TRUSI"

Rural Policy MattersOctober 2002 ISSN 1537-4696










cNi psychologists, and superintendents.cO But incredibly, the legislature did nottr) include the cost of hiring teachersCNI

among the 42 components in the BEP.

C)



A Newsletter of Rural School & Community Action November 2002

Tennessee SupremeCourt Strikes DownRural School Funding Plan

The Tennessee Supreme Court hasconcluded for the third time that thestate's school funding system violates thestate constitution. The central issue inthis ruling (Tennessee Small SchoolSystems v. McWherter) is that the Ten-nessee Teachers' Salary Equity Planadopted by the state legislature in 1995,violates constitutional guarantees ofequal protection by failing to provide allstudents with equally qualified teachers.

This case began in the late 1980swhen a group of small and rural schoolsystems sued the state arguing that stu-dents in their districts did not enjoy theopportunities afforded students inwealthier districts because the schoolfinancing system depends too much onlocal property taxes. The Supreme Courtagreed with the school systems and saidthat any school aid formula must pro-vide sufficient funds to schools to coverthe actual costs of educational programsand services.

In response, the Tennessee legislatureadopted the Basic Education Program(BEP) as the state's new education fund-ing mechanism in 1995. The BEP isbased on the cost of providing specificservices and programs, taking into ac-count 42 components of a basiceducation. The 42 cost components arereviewed annually by the legislature andinclude, among other things, the cost ofvocational education, guidance counsel-ing, textbooks, transportation, libraryservices, special education, and capital ex-penditures for facilities. The componentsalso included the costs of hiring secretar-ies, librarians, principals, custodians,

Instead, the legislature enacted a one-time salary equity plan that attemptedto equalize teachers' salaries across theboard by pegging salaries to the 1993statewide average pay of $28,094.

In 1998, the small school plaintiffswent back to court charging that theBEP is unconstitutional because dispari-ties in teacher salaries have grown and,unlike the 42 components in the BEP,teacher salaries are not annually re-viewed and adjusted to assure equity. TheSupreme Court agreed with the plain-tiffs, saying that teacher salaries are "themost important component of any edu-cation plan and a major part of everyeducation budget."

The state unsuccessfully argued thatthe current plan had, in fact, equalizedteacher salaries. But according to thecourt, average salaries vary as much as$16,000 per year between some rural andsome wealthier school districts. In the

Supreme Court's view, "it takes littleimagination to see how such disparitiescan lead to experienced and more edu-cated teachers leaving the poorer schooldistricts to teach in wealthier ones wherethey receive higher salaries."

But even as it was handing rural andsmall schools a major court victory inthe case, the court backed off requiringtotal equalization of school spending forteacher salaries, saying that nothing"prevents a local school system fromsupplementing teachers' salaries from itsown local non-BEP funds when suchfunds are in addition to its local BEPcontribution. Some disparities in teach-ers' salaries from school district toschool district will exist." How muchcontinuing disparity the court will tol-erate based on these supplements paidfrom local sources of wealth remains tobe seen. But the court made it clear thata plan for paying teachers must comefrom the legislature, not the courts, be-cause it "speaks for the people on mat-ters of public policy such as this."

Lead attorney for the plaintiffs isLewis Donelson, III, a senior partner inthe Memphis firm of Baker, Donelson,Bearman and Caldwell. He is a memberof the Rural Trust Board of Trustees.

Rural Perspective Featuredat National SchoolFunding Conference

For years, urban school issues havedominated most national discussionsamong school finance experts. That ap-pears to be changing as school financereform leaders increasingly recognizethat in order to be successful, theymust also take into account the needsof rural schools and students. Reflect-ing this sea change in advocacy efforts,participants at a recent two day con-ference in New York sponsored by the

I I III

National School Funding Networkheard about the "rural perspective" onschool finance reform from speakersrepresenting the Rural School andCommunity Trust and rural groupsengaged in school finance reform innumerous states.

Some of the key points made by ru-ral advocates at the conference in-cluded:

continued on page 2

' it

Rural Perspective Featuredfrom page 1

One in three students attend schoolsin rural areas and small towns nation-wide.

The poverty rate for rural children isactually higher than for urban childrenand poor rural schools frequently are asracially diverse as many urban schools.

Many rural schools are small by ne-cessity and community choice, but statepolicymakers increasingly are forcingthem to close and consolidate. The re-sult is often harmfu, long bus rides thatmay hinder student achievement.

Like many urban schools, ruralschools frequently have poor facilities,lack qualified teachers, face inadequatetechnology and have limited resourcesto serve high numbers of at risk, specialeducation and limited English proficientstudents.

Rural schools receive almost $2,000less per child annually than do schoolsin metropolitan areas.

The speakers went on to point outthat while rural schools often have beenat the forefront of successful school fi-nance litigation, they have frequentlyseen their court victories evaporate aslegislatures react by forcing ruralschools to consolidate in the name of fis-cal efficiency.

Speakers also indicated that the newNo Child Left Behind Act could seriouslyjeopardize rural schools and studentsdue to a lack of funding to implementthe law. Furthermore, the unique chal-lenges rural schools face in recruitingand retaining highly qualified teachersin remote rural areas exacerbates thesituation.

The speakers offered five suggestionsfor fully engaging rural schools in orga-nized efforts to improve funding for edu-cation:

Support efforts to achieve "equity" aswell as "adequacy" in school financesystems because adequacy alone will notaddress the needs of rural schools.

Recognize and understand the uniquecharacteristics and needs of ruralschools and students.

Ensure that proposed remedies pro-vide rural schools with the resourcesthey need to address their unique needs.

Ensure that solutions to school financeproblems don't lead to consolidation ofschools, because both urban and rural stu-dents are entitled to good small schools.

Leave the Money on the Table:Vermont Better Off Going It Alone

Under the federal No Child Left Be-hind Act, schools must show adequateyearly progress toward academic profi-ciency for every child. If they fail, thereare consequences such as forced schoolchoice, obligations to provide privatetutoring, and state takeover of adistrict. If a state fails to put such poli-cies in place, it risks losing federal fund-ing under Title I of the Elementary andSecondary Education Act. Funding underthe act was increased so the states would havean incentive to meet its ambitious goals.

The ringer is that the states get to de-cide what is proficient. Some states withvery high standards decided that whatmight have been proficient before the fed-eral law was passed is more than proficientnow, and have lowered their standards.

But what if a state decides that it wantsrigorous standards and that the cost ofmeeting the unrealistic federal goal farexceeds the federal funding available? Itcould just leave the money on the table.

William J. Mathis, education financeprofessor at the University of Vermont

and a Vermont school superintendent,analyzed that prospect for hisstate. Vermont students consistentlyscore between 22 and 32 percentilepoints higher than the average on na-tional tests, but because its own aca-demic standards are so high, it ratesabout 46.5% of its own students as be-low standard on at least one of its owntests. Using conservative assumptionsbased on research literature, Mathis cal-culated that it would cost the state$158.2 million to provide the testing,remediation, and instructional and ad-ministrative services necessary to meetthe federal goal, using the state's currentrigorous standards. This represents anincrease in spending of about 15.5%.

Total federal funding for K-12 educa-tion in Vermont will be $51.6 million thisyear, an increase of $4.3 million. Whyaccept the federal money when the costof doing so exceeds the revenue providedby threefold, asks Mathis. You can findthe Mathis study on our Web site atwww.ruraledu.org.

Michigan Looks at DecliningEnrollment in Rural Schools

Michigan, with the sixth largest ru-ral population in the U.S., has a substan-tial number of rural school districts withdeclining enrollment, especially in theeconomically distressed Upper Peninsulaand the northern regions of the LowerPeninsula. A year ago, the legislatureadopted a provision allowing schoolswith fewer than 1,500 students in gradesK-12 to average student enrollment overthe past three years for the purpose ofcalculating state aid, but Governor JohnEngler vetoed the appropriation neededto support this policy, preferring to studythe problem. His study committee foundthat most schools with declining enroll-ment have cut budgets, eaten into theircash reserves, worked together and useddistance learning to cut costs. The com-mittee arrived at numerous recommen-

Ensure that rural schools are fullpartners in coalitions that may beformed to advocate for school financereform.

2 Rural Policy Matters, November 2002

dations, among them:A rural schools electronic network to

gain access to instructional and profes-sional development services.

Changes in the funding formula pro-viding more support for sparsely popu-lated districts.

More use of inter-district cooperationto cut administrative costs.

Financial incentives to consolidate.More use of multi-age and multi-

grade classrooms.Revising the state aid formula's

method of counting students which"...gives an unfair advantage to large,growing school districts and fails to ac-knowledge the difficulties being experi-enced by the smaller, declining enroll-ment districts..."

The committee also suggested thatthe small districts establish their ownmeans of being represented "more dis-tinctively" before the legislature, sayingthe large district associations can't rep-resent their interests.

www.ruraledu.org

Arkansas Schools NeedingImprovement Listed

The Arkansas Department of Educa-tion has listed 47 schools in 26 districtsthat it considers potential "School Im-provement Schools" under the federalNo Child Left Behind Act. The classifi-cation is based on the schools' students'performance on the Stanford Achieve-ment Test in 1998-1999 and 1999-2000.They were listed if they receive federalTitle I funds (based on poverty levels) andif 25% or fewer of their students scored"proficient" on the test. They also hadto have failed to show "adequate yearlyprogress" on the test in both years. Stu-dents were tested in grades 5, 7, and 10.

The state had not intended to list anyschool until the end of this school yearbecause it wanted to use results from itsown Arkansas Benchmark Exam, whichit has only started using recently. Butno, said the federal governmentif youwant federal money, you have to listschools now. So the state used the olderSAT test scores.

Students in a "listed school" cantransfer to another school in the district,or get tutoring from an approved tutor,both at the district's expense.

Data from the Department ofEducation's Web site is available for 45of the 47 schools. It indicates that:

Those 45 had a total enrollment of15,284, or about 3.5% of the state's to-tal enrollment. They represent just fewerthan 4% of the state's schools.

On average, two thirds of the studentsin these schools are African Americanand 75% are poor, compared to 25% and50.5% statewide.

Fifteen of the 45 schools are locatedin Pulaski County, with Little Rock at itscore. But the Delta region, which islargely rural, poor, and African Ameri-can, also has 16 schools on the list, in-cluding five in Phillips County alone,among them the Lake View ElementarySchool in the district that filed Arkan-sas' school funding lawsuit.

Only four of the schools had a pov-erty rate less than the state average.Twenty -seven have poverty rates exceed-ing 75%.

Only seven of the 45 schools have Af-rican American enrollment below thestate average of 23%; 35 of the 45 haveAfrican American enrollment at leastdouble the state average.

Only eight of the 45 have more than100 children per grade, the minimumnumber that testing research suggestsare needed to make judgments aboutschool performance. 'I\venty-six had halfthat number, and six had fewer than 20students per grade.

Only 10 of the 45 are high schools,and only two of them are in the samecounty (Chicot).

Two comments: First, using studenttest scores to rate school performancebased on a small number of students tak-

Public likes Small Schools,Fair Funding, More Moneyfor Low Performing Schools

Among the recent findings of the34th annual Phi Delta Kappan/GallupPoll of public attitudes toward publicschools:

Seventy-seven say school size af-fects student achievement, with morethan half saying elementary schoolsshould be under 500 students, 73%saying middle schools should be un-der 1,000, and 50% saying highschools should be under 1,000.

www.ruraledu.org

Eighty-eight think funding shouldbe the same for all public school stu-dents in their state, and 58% say they'drather increase state taxes than cutspending in hard fiscal times.

Seventy-seven oppose closing aschool that fails to meet state perfor-mance standards, and 77% think suchschools should get more funding.

Rural Policy Matters, November 2002

Mif I

ing a test at a given grade level, espe-cially measuring "progress" from year toyear, is not a responsible use of test data.The pool of students taking the test caninfluence variation from year to year tooheavily.

Second, while these schools may needimprovement (a lot of others do, too),the remedy provided hardly seems likelyto achieve results. For rural schools inparticular, sending kids to anotherschool is probably not practical. And us-ing the school's limited resources to paytutors seems likely to deprive it of thesupport needed to serve the remainingstudents. While schools, particularly ru-ral schools, are scrambling to meet thedemand for "highly qualified" teachersand paraprofessionals to teach Title I eli-gible students, no one is certain of thecriteria for selecting tutors for the mostneedy children.

In this case, public policy needs im-provement as much as the schools.

IfYou Resist,They WillAudit

The Fayette County School Districtin West Virginia will be audited by theState Department of Education for thesecond time in four years, the only dis-trict in the state to be audited twice sincea new auditing system was installed in1998. Twelve of the state's 55 districtshave not been audited at all under thenew system.

It's been a busy year in Fayette. A yearago, the former superintendent tried toclose eight schools, holding hearings forpublic input on all eight in one day. Par-ents sued, and the court stopped theclosures, calling the hearing tactic "anegregious affront to the principles of de-mocracy." Other community groups filedsimilar suits in other counties, andFayette voters replaced pro-consolida-tion school board members with anti-consolidation candidates. That's why werefer to the superintendent as "former."

continued on page 4

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ERIC CLEARINGHOUSEON RURAL EDUCATION AND SMALL SCHOOLSPO BOX 1348CHARLESTON, WV 25325-1348

Declining Enrollment:Widespread, ButEspecially in the West

At least 18% of the rural schools inevery state suffered from declining en-rollment of 10% or more between the1996-97 and 2000-01 school year, ac-cording to the latest data from the Na-tional Educational Statistics Center.

More than half the rural schools lost10% of enrollment over that period infive states Hawaii, Nevada, North Da-kota, Montana, and Alaska.

The hardest hit region was the North-ern Plains, where all five states (Montana,Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota,and Wyoming) placed among the top 11states in percent of rural schools withdeclining enrollment.

Many other western states were alsonear the top in percent of rural schoolslosing enrollment at that rate, including

California (48%), Idaho (47%), Arizona(47%) Utah (46%), New Mexico (45%),Oregon (45%).

There were only five non-westernstates where at least 40% of rural schoolslost that much enrollment North Caro-lina (43%), Vermont (43%), Maine(42%), West Virginia (40%), and Loui-siana (40%).

Declining enrollment is one of 11 in-dicators we use to rank the urgency ofaddressing the policy needs of rural edu-cation in each state. We also use sevenstatistical indicators to rank the impor-tance of rural education in each state.Watch for the second edition of our state-by-state report, Why Rural Matters, to bereleased in early 2003.

If You Resist, They Will Auditfrom page 3

The state says none of that has any-thing to do with why Fayette is beingaudited again: too many schools with lowtest scoresthat's the reason. Localschool board members think otherwise.Why not give the new board and the newsuperintendent a chance to show results?

Linda Martin, executive director ofChallenge West Virginia, a non-profit or-ganization that works to keep and

improve rural community schools, anda member of the Rural Trust board ofdirectors, was more direct. "This is an-other example of the state runningroughshod over people," she said. Shecalled the efforts of community peopleto keep and improve schools in Fayette"democracy at its best." Martin con-cluded, "Yet, the state board, elected byno one, is trying to find a way to takeover the school system to force its willon the people of Fayette County. It is adisgrace." "it

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Volume 4, No.12 ISSN 1537-4696AL 11--



Rural Students andSchools Score MajorVictory in ArkansasSupreme Court

In a decision that will no doubt im-pact school finance lawsuits pending inother states, the Arkansas SupremeCourt issued a decision on November 21,2002 in Lake View School District v.Huckabee, concluding that the state'ssystem for funding education is bothinequitable and inadequate and violatesthe state constitution. In striking downthe finance system, the court addressedthe following key issues.

The responsibility for educating Ar-kansas students rests clearly on theshoulders of the state, not local commu-nities.

The court has the ultimate power andthe duty to review the system used bythe state to fund education in order toensure that the system complies with theconstitution.

Contrary to the contention of thestate, it is possible to define the educa-tional skills and capacities that everychild should master in order to receivean "adequate" education. Because thelegislature had refused to define thoseskills and capacities, the court listedseven capacities that it deemed to be es-sential under the state constitution.

In determining whether the educa-tion funding system was equitable, thecourt opted to look at "educational ex-penditures" instead of "educational rev-enues" as suggested by the state. In con-cluding that the finance system was in-equitable, the court pointed to a sharp"educational expenditure gap" betweenrich and poor school districts that thecourts said had "fostered a system of dis-crimination based on wealth."

Underpaid teachers, unsafe facilities,

a lack of basic equipment and labs, andlimited Advanced Placement (AP) courseofferings graphically reflect educationaldeficiencies caused by the inadequateand inequitable finance system. Thesedeficiencies have resulted in low studentachievement, high college remediationrates and poor educational outcomes forthousands of Arkansas students.

Money and educational expendituresmatter. "There is a direct correlationbetween dollars expended and the qual-ity of education a student receives," ac-cording to the court.

The only area in which the court sidedwith the state was on the question ofwhether the constitution required the

December 2002provision of pre-school education forlow-income students. The court said thatalthough early childhood education pro-grams could well provide educationalbenefits for children, the courts couldnot require the legislature to provide andfund such programs.

The court did not immediately orderthe legislature to take action to correctthe system, opting instead to give law-makers one more year to "chart a newcourse for public education" in Arkan-sas.

The Arkansas Public Policy Panel andthe Rural School and Community Trustfiled a friend of the court brief in the caseon behalf of rural schools and students.According to Bill Kopsky, director of theArkansas Public Policy Panel, "This de-cision squarely upholds the findings thatour state's education system is failing toprovide a quality education and fair op-portunities for our state's children. Thisdecision puts the burden on the Arkan-sas Legislature and the Governor to fixour educational crisis. The legal ques-tions have been answeredwe now havegiant political questions about how we'regoing fix our kid's education."

AdequateYearly ProgressFederal legislation (No Child Left Behind) requires schools to make "adequate

yearly progress" (AYP) toward a goal some consider unrealistic-100 percent ofstudents performing proficiently within 12 years as measured by reading and math-ematics tests in each grade 3-8 and once more during grades 10-12. As long asthe definition of "proficient" remains malleablethe states can choose their owndefinitionthe goal might be attainable.

But the annual rate of improvement in test scores is not the same for all schools.Schools that are performing at lower levels to begin with have to gain groundmuch faster than others if every school is to make 100 percent proficiency in thesame number of years. So low performing schools not only start behind, but haveto run faster if they are to avoid being classified as "in need of improvement,"thus triggering various sanctions.

The problem is likely to be most severe for schools with large numbers of poorchildren, such as those participating in Title I programs. But, this might be lessof a problem for such schools in rural areas.

Researcher Jaekyung Lee analyzed eighth grade mathematics scores from theNational Assessment of Educational Progress. He found that students who par-

continued on page 2

Rural teachers reimbursed for professional development costs VT - 81% (highest); AL - 39% (lowest).

47

Arkansas RuralEducation Profile

-Rural population: 1,269,221-Percent of total population: 47.5-Percent public schools in rural

communities: 44.4-Percent of students in rural schools:

30.5-Percent rural children in poverty:

18.4-Rural per capita income: 16,117

(6th lowest)-Percent of rural school expenditures

for Instruction and pupil support:63.1 (6th highest)

-Average number of students pergrade in rural schools:46 (17th lowest)

E-RateChampionAppointed

Dr. Brian Talbott has been reap-pointed by the Federal CommunicationsCommission to the Universal ServicesAdministration Company (USAC) Boardof Directors, the entity that implementsthe federal E-Rate program that helpsfund telecommunications services forschools and libraries. Appointed as a rep-resentative for schools, Talbott heads aUSAC committee responsible for deci-sions regarding most aspects of the E-Rate. His appointment was broadly sup-ported by education advocates, and is awelcome development for rural schoolsand communities. His commitment tothe E-Rate program and his backgroundand breadth of experience with respectto the educational use of telecommuni-cations is superb. He is the NationalExecutive Director of the American As-sociation of Educational Service Agen-cies (AAESA).

Adequate Yearly Progressfrom page 1

ticipated in Title I programs scored lower than others, in both urban and rural schools,but that the gap was much smaller in the rural schools. The gap was narrower amongrural students despite the fact that the non-Title I rural students scored higher thanthe non-Title I urban students. The Title I rural students far outperformed the TitleI urban students.

Rural Students Non-Rural Students Rural AdvantageTitle I StudentsNon-Title I StudentsGap

263278

15

238273

35

255

Lee also analyzed results for eighth grade math scores on Maine's EducationalAssessment test for the years 1990-98 to determine how many would have failed tomake adequate yearly progress. He identified rural and non-rural schools that were"low performing" and "high performing" in 1990, defined as those whose averageeighth grade math score was lower than 80 percent of the schools in the state andthose whose scores were higher than 80 percent. He set a hypothetical target foraverage test scores in the year 2002-12 years after the starting point, as called for inNCLB. That target was based on an assumed average annual gain actually made bythe state's schools during 1990-98.

For both rural and non-rural schools, the high performing schools who had tomake smaller annual gains to reach the hypothetical targets would have met theirAYP goal about two-thirds of the time during the 12 year period. Both groups of lowperforming schools, saddled with the more demanding AYP, would have met the AYPgoal only one-third of the time, on average. That would not have been good enoughto avoid being listed as "in need of improvement."

Lee presented his research at a November symposium sponsored by ACCLAIM,(the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment, and Instruction ofMathematics) a multi-university initiative supported by the National Science Foun-dation and based at Ohio University. See the Web site at: http://kant.citl.ohiou.edu/ACC LAIM/i n dex.htm# +

Getting It Done in RuralTennessee

The Campbell/Anderson Chapter ofSave Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM)has been working to improve their schoolsin a very rural area of Tennessee for thepast year. Members have focused on theresources offered to students at the highschool in Jellico, which serves about 500students in grades 9-12. Jellico is isolatedfrom the rest of Campbell County by JellicoMountain.

This fall, the Campbel VAnderson Chap-ter took a step forward in ensuring thatall Campbell County students receive a faireducation by convincing the CampbellCounty School Board to pass a budget thatincludes an extra teacher position at JellicoHigh School. The Chapter has been work-ing since February to guarantee that theschool board places a teacher in the PLATOLab at the School.

The PLATO Lab is a computer-basededucational tool that allows for individu-

alization of a student's curriculum basedon the individual's needs. It is also used tohelp prepare students for the statewideGateway tests and the ACT_ exam. BothJellico High School and Campbell CountyComprehensive High School (whichhouses about 2,000 students) have PLATOLabs. The difference is that this past schoolyear Jellico High School's PLATO Lab re-mained unused for its intended purpose,since the school simply didn't have enoughteachers to assign one to the lab. This fall,the Campbell/Anderson Chapter has madesure that Jellico High School's PLATO Labhas a teacher.

Save Our Cumberland Mountains(SOCM) is a 30-year-old grassroots orga-nization that works for social, environmen-tal and economic justice in rural Tennes-see. For more information, contact Tif-fany Hartung at (865) 426-9455 ortiffany @socm.org.

2 Rural Policy Matters, December 20024

www. ru raledu.org

First National Conference for RuralSchool Finance Held in Nebraska City

The Rural School and CommunityTrust (Rural Trust) and the University ofNebraska College of Law convened a na-tional gathering of school finance ex-perts, leading lawyers, rural advocates,and educators in Nebraska City, Ne-braska, on November 13-15, 2002, todiscuss ways to improve funding andeducational opportunities for studentsattending the nation's rural schools. Theconference, "Mobilizing Resources forRural Students," was the first nationalgathering ever to address the broad ar-ray of issues in this complex and rapidlyevolving legal and policy arena.

The group focused on why ruralschools and students matter, the uniqueneeds of rural poor and minority stu-dents, the experiences and perspectivesof activists and leaders in school financereform, and the specific impacts of theNo Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Speakers included lawyers who havewon court victories in a number of stateschool finance cases, leading legal schol-ars and finance experts on school financeissues, and citizen activists who havesuccessfully organized school financereform efforts and media campaigns.

The meeting's keynote speaker wasJudith Winston, former Undersecretaryof the Department of Education duringthe Clinton administration. During hertalk, Dr. Winston questioned whether theschool reform movement is congruentwith the lives of rural school children."Title I has evolved into whole school re-form, and high accountability, as op-posed to targeting disadvantaged schoolchildren," she said. However, she alsonoted that annual disaggregated reportcard data has "the potential to provideparents and communities with knowl-edge and power."

Local activists and school reformersreported that one consequence of NCLBis that high quality teaching strategiesare being put aside, as teachers tend to"teach the tests" so that their schoolwon't be punished for failing. Othersnoted that rather than more high stakestesting, a better strategy would be to tar-get funding towards existing resourcesand effective programs, such as highquality pre-school.

Debbie Phillips from Ohio Rural Ac-tion cited another negative developmentfor rural schools: increased school con-

solidation. States are pushing "massiveconsolidation with tempting school con-struction dollars, and communities arelosing their schools. They're 'improving'the schools out of existence."

West Virginia was one of the firststates to bring a school financing law-suit, and according to Linda Martin ofChallenge West Virginia, the result hasbeen massive school consolidation withabout 80 percent of those closed beingelementary schools. A result of the con-solidation has been two-hour (one-way)bus rides for children, including elemen-tary school children, tremendous schooldropout, and loss of extracurricularschool activities. "Consolidation be-comes inequity," she concluded.

Native American activists cited theunique challenges of advocating forschool reform in Native American com-munities. Elaine Salinas of the RuralSchool and Community Trust said thatin addition to widespread poverty, thereis a lack of understanding of the politi-cal realities of being Native American.Reservation schools don't have propertytax bases. How do you increase school

continued on page 4

Tennessee's Lottery for Education PlanOn election day last month, Tennes-

see became the 38th state to change itsconstitution to allow a state-run lottery.The lottery will likely be modeled afterGeorgia's much-touted lottery that fundsthe state's Hope Scholarships.

Proponents of a Tennessee lottery ar-gue that though lotteries are not a "cureall" for education woes, they provide atleast some much-needed cash to im-prove public schools. However, it is al-most certain that funds from the pro-posed lottery will be earmarked for col-lege scholarships for Tennessee students,similar to the Georgia scholarship pro-gram. Funds will almost certainly not beused to increase teacher pay, improveschool facilities, or pay for books andsupplies at the K-12 level.

www.ruraledu.org

Critics of Georgia's Hope Scholarshiphave argued that the entire lottery sys-tem robs the poor and gives to the rich.They point to recent research showingmost of the money used to purchase lot-tery tickets comes from the poorest citi-zens, while the majority of Hope Schol-arships goes to middle and upper classstudents. Students attending the stateuniversity system increasingly comefrom families with more than $200,000in annual income. A recent New YorkTimes article (10/31/2002) describes howone student made use of her Hope Schol-arship: a car, trips to Italy, Switzerlandand Argentina, some stock investments,and possibly some future real estate.Some university professors quipped thatthe $1.7 billion dollar scholarship pro-

Rural Policy Matters, December 2002

43

gram has had the biggest effect onGeorgia's automobile retailers. Re-searchers at the University of Georgiahave found that so far only five percentof the money has gone to students whowould not have otherwise gone to col-lege.

Merit awards such as Georgia's HopeScholarships, have also created some le-gal controversy. Harvard's Civil RightsProject reported that students from thewealthiest high schools were more thantwice as likely to receive scholarshipsthan those from a state's poorest schools.Yet relatively little lottery money is go-ing to school improvement:-



Randolph, VT 05060

Rural StateFinder

Want a quick list of the most ruralstates? How about states with only onetelephone area code? Alaska, Delaware,Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, NorthDakota, New Hampshire, South Dakota,Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.Or states with one member of the U.S.House of Representatives? Alaska, Dela-ware, Montana, North Dakota, SouthDakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. Dela-ware is the only suspect on that list.

We take a more sophisticated ap-proach in our update of Why Rural Mat-ters, our landmark analysis of the rela-tive importance of rural education ineach state, and of the urgency with whichpolicy makers in each state should giveit their attention. We use 19 statisticalindicators in this update, due out in Feb-ruary 2003..

School Finance Conferencefrom page 3

funding? Many Indian children have dualcitizenship, and school systems don'tunderstand the need for Indian nations'sovereignty. In addition, there is theunique historical experience of the Bu-reau of Indian Affairs boarding schoolsystem that has resulted in a strong dis-trust of public school systems. Salinascited the need to train teachers with un-

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PAIDE. Barre,VT

Permit No. 2

21 10ERIC CLEARINGHOUSE ON RURAL ED. AND SMALL SCHOOLSAPPALACHIA EDUCATIONAL LABORATORYPO BOX 1348CHARLESTON WV 25325-1348

derstanding of cultural context, and anew paradigm in general for Native edu-cation.

Legal experts presented panels on thenuts and bolts of school finance litiga-tion, and agreed that school finance law-suits don't provide a panacea, primarilybecause courts don't usually provide theremedies. It is absolutely critical, theyagreed, that advocates for school financereform must have a winning politicalstrategy to accompany the legal strat-egy. According to Marty Strange, policydirector for the Rural School and Com-munity Trust, "winning in court is notenough. You must have a political strat-egy to go with it or legislatures will buryyou."

Paul Cillo, a former Vermont legisla-tor who helped spearhead Act 60,Vermont's school finance r n measure,described in detail the political strategythat went along with state Supreme Courtrulings on inequity. With a combinationof luck and political tenacity, a remedy wasin the pipeline when the court decisionscame down. Vermont's Act 60 repealedlocal school taxes and, instead, initiatedvariable rate statewide property taxes inproportion to local per pupil spending.

Some of the papers presented at theconference will be published in a spe-cial edition of the Nebraska Law Reviewdedicated to the legal issues affecting thefunding of rural schools.

50

Rural Policy MattersDecember 2002 ISSN 1537-4696










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