The Corporatizing of Rural Schools
“As of 2009–10, there were a mere 785 rural charter schools across America, representing just 16 percent of the national charter schools sector, and most of these schools were located in ‘rural-fringe’ communities, just outside of more populated areas. But about 1.2 million students live in “rural-remote” communities, those areas farthest away from larger towns and cities. Just 111 charter schools across the country are in these areas (and 11 of these are online or ‘virtual’ charter schools).”
This statement is found in the report A New Frontier: Utilizing Charter Schooling to Strengthen Rural Education, released in January of 2014. In it, school reform leader Andy Smarick, of the Fordham Institute and the Bellwether Education Foundation (funded by Bill Gates, Teach for America and Goldman Sachs), outlines the challenges to opening charter schools in rural areas, and how policymakers can overcome them. This report is indicative ongoing corporatization of education and privatization of public schools in urban and suburban environments, however rural areas have remained relatively immune as rural schools generally have too few students and can be too remote to make charter schools or voucher schemes profitable.
Recently, advances in technology have changed the landscape and opened up rural schools to neoliberal venture philanthropy. Venture philanthropy, is described by Kenneth Saltman in The Gift of Education as “Educational philanthropy that appears almost exclusively in mass media and policy circles as selfless generosity poses significant threats to the democratic possibilities and realities of public education.” The result is generally to increase private control of public schools, limiting union power, and relaxing teacher certification standards, despite a lack of evidence that any of these strategies have been effective.
The charter school movement has gained support from both Democrats and Republicans as the policymakers in general have accepted the business model of improvement and believe choice and competition will produce better education results. Urban school The Corporatizing of Rural Schools:
