As I mentioned earlier in the week, the 2018 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association has been happening over the last few days. The sixteenth and final blog entry related to K-12 online learning session from AERA 2018 that I am posting is:
Rural School Closure and Consolidation
In “All of a Sudden, Rural Is on Everyone’s Mind”: Rural Education After Trump
Tue, April 17, 12:25 to 1:55pm, Millennium Broadway New York Times Square, Third Floor, Room 3.02-3.03
Abstract – Rural communities face increasing pressure for school closure and consolidation as well as increasingly charter-friendly federal and state policies under the Trump administration (Klein, 2017). School choice policy is couched within a complex web of educational policy, economic disparities, and an accepted, long-established, cultural disdain of rural people (Wray, 2006). The legislative expansion of school choice policy is the enactment of an ideological shift– from an understanding of the purpose of education as a democratic project to a neoliberal vision of schooling guided by efficiency, consumerism, and economic competitiveness (Shannon, 2007). A policy environment highly favorable to vouchers, cyber schools, and brick and mortar charter schools has been the outcome of this shift.
A neoliberal vision for schools, and its associated policies, however, does not map neatly onto rural schools and communities. The project to make schools more efficient and competitive, via closures, consolidations, and charters, is challenged by the role that rural schools play in the maintenance of the social fabric of rural communities and the central role that rural schools play in the maintenance of a community’s social safety net (DeYoung, 1995; Lyson, 2002; Peshkin, 1982). Rural schools are closed, consolidated, and, sometimes, reopened as charter schools amid this complexity. As a result, rural community members must seek the best option for their children, however “best” is defined.
Questions for Discussion:
How have rural communities experienced closures, consolidation, and charters?
What might the impact be of increasingly pro-charter school policy on rural communities?
Author
Karen Eppley, The Pennsylvania State University
This session was in a larger symposium that was described as:
“All of a Sudden, Rural Is on Everyone’s Mind”: Rural Education After Trump
Tue, April 17, 12:25 to 1:55pm, Millennium Broadway New York Times Square, Third Floor, Room 3.02-3.03
Session Type: Symposium
Abstract
This interactive symposium invites participants to talk across differences regarding the explicitly political nature of teaching, learning, and research. Within a context of new political importance of rural communities, this symposium engages rural educators and researchers in meaningful and constructive conversations about the impact of the current political context on their work. Rural scholars will facilitate small group discussions about the contextualized definitions of rurality, the new relevance of rural places to the political process, the implementation of current policies in rural places, and changes in the intellectual atmosphere of colleges and universities since the election.
The other presenters in this session were (with the one I’m blogging about being the last in the symposium – i.e., after these other four):
- Rural Differences and Different Ruralites – Michael J. Corbett, Acadia University
- The “Rural Vote” – Amy Price Azano, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
- Rural Education and National Policy in 2018 – Devon G. Brenner, Mississippi State University
- Anti-Intellectualism and the Rural College Student – Carrie Freie, The Pennsylvania State University – Altoona
The session was not a traditional symposium. They actually divided the room into three circles and then had each presenter do about 5-8 minutes of material, finish with a series of questions, and then we would spend 8-10 minutes talking in the groups that we were moved into with one or more of the symposium leaders.
In terms of the actual portion that included cyber schooling in the abstract, she began by talking about the tension between the reality that school choice and neo-liberal education policy are focused on competition, while rural education often focuses on the notion of community. The discussion questions she presented were:
- How have rural communities experience closures, consolidation, and charters?
- What might the impact be of increasingly pro-chapter school policy on rural communities?
So the session really didn’t have any focus on cyber schooling, it was just mentioned as a possible school choice option and not even mentioned by the presenter.
While having nothing to do with K-12 distance, online, and/or blended learning, it was very fascinating to sit in a room with folks interested in rural education and talking about the last presidential election – and what I believe was a real lack of understanding of what happened (and almost a defensiveness about rural America being blamed for what happened in 2016).
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