In rural towns like Hartsville, S.C., school ‘choice’ doesn’t make sense. Here’s why.
School “choice” — charter schools, vouchers, etc. — is one of the hallmarks of modern school reform, especially in urban areas. But one issue that never seems to get much, if any, attention, is how it would work in rural areas. According to a new PBS documentary film, 180 Days: Hartsville,the answer is not at all well.
This post about what the film shows was written by one of its producers, Sam Chaltain, a former teacher and D.C.-based writer and strategic communications consultant whose work focuses on the changing nature of teaching and learning in America. He was the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning communities. He also spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. He has taught in public and private schools in New York, and was a visiting lecturer at Beijing Normal University in China.
In the small town of Hartsville, South Carolina, which sits just about two hours from anywhere you’ve ever heard of, Monay Parran and her two young sons – 8-year-old Ja’quez, and 11-year-old Rashon – begin each day in the darkness of the pre-dawn hours.
Parran, a single parent who works two minimum-wage jobs in two towns that are almost an hour apart, must drop her boys off at the bus stop early enough to make it to her first job on time. By the time she sees her sons again, after her second shift wraps up, it will be almost midnight.
This is the daily cycle for scores of families, who must make ends meet while living below the poverty line. It’s a cycle that results in young people who are often overtired and undernourished. It’s also a widespread reality that is largely invisible to most Americans, and made more complex by the distances rural families must traverse to access foundational resources like a school, a hospital – or even a minimum-wage job.
Beginning March 17, the particular struggles – and successes – of families like Ms. Parran’s will be given close attention via a new PBS documentary film, 180 Days: Hartsville (I am one of its producers), a project that was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate: Let’s Make it Happen initiative. Viewers will experience a year in the life of one small Southern town, two schools that work primarily with low-income children, and one family’s efforts to break the generational cycle of poverty.
What the film will also make visible, albeit indirectly, is our national preoccupation with the needs of cities, and the extent to which many of our most hotly debated national strategies for school reform – from charter schools to online learning – simply aren’t viable in towns like Hartsville, where transportation costs alone circumscribe the choices many rural families can make, and where many residents still have no Internet access. In places like these, if you want to transform the schools, you are going to In rural towns like Hartsville, S.C., school ‘choice’ doesn’t make sense. Here’s why. - The Washington Post: