Charter school advocate: Rural schools can better succeed with freedom to choose different educational goals

Education pundit and charter-school proponent Michael McShane says policymakers and researchers can't improve rural education if they don't have a good understanding of it and the more than 9 million children who attend rural schools. McShane is research director of EdChoice, an organization dedicated to promoting school choice, and has just published a book examining rural education.

Modern education reform has not considered the unique needs of rural schools, instead using a one-size-fits-all approach that badly serves rural schools, McShane writes for Forbes, and says would-be rural school reformers should heed two tips.

The first is to focus on the strengths of rural communities to improve education, such as "leveraging trust, pride and cohesion." Rural communities have long-resented and resisted the efforts of urban dwellers who come to their towns and try to fix schools without understanding the communities. But building on rural communities' greater social cohesion is a better approach, McShane writes.

The second is to broaden the goals of education. In order to better prepare rural students for adulthood, schools shouldn't just try to improve math and reading scores on standardized tests. Many rural communities disagree on the best goals for students though. A good education often leads the best rural students to leave town for college and never come back, so some communities want to make sure there are jobs available in town and prepare students for them. Some communities want to make sure students have better schooling in technical or trade areas. Each community should have the freedom to decide for itself what the best goals for students are and how to accomplish that, McShane writes.

"What we can do is try to collect and disseminate as much information as possible so that those families, schools, and communities can make informed decisions about what courses and programs to offer," McShane writes. "We can create flexibility in funding streams that allow schools to offer as broad a range of courses and programs as they can so that each student can find the path most appropriate to his or her goals and abilities. And, we can work with both industry and institutions of higher education to make better links between K-12 schools and the opportunities that follow them so that fewer students fall through the cracks."