Giving Compass' Take:

• Charter schools have the opportunity to create innovative laws that could address critical issues that only rural school districts face.

• What are some examples of the creative tactics that charter schools can employ to increase access to education in rural areas?

• Read more about school choices for rural America. 

Rural students often lack access to opportunities afforded to their urban and suburban peers. Math and science classes are often less advanced than their titles would imply; barely half of rural districts offer any Advanced Placement courses, compared with 97 percent of urban districts, and even fewer offer International Baccalaureate courses. There is little help for the growing number of children in rural schools who speak limited English. Rural schools also face high transportation costs and often struggle with city-oriented state and federal administrative requirements and limitations on use of funds.

Stronger charter school laws can help meet rural students’ needs by allowing communities to innovate in ways that traditional districts cannot because of regulatory constraints on hiring, spending, allocation of time, and class offerings.

State laws can be changed to encourage rural districts and charter school supporters to work together to break barriers that will benefit their children and communities. An outstanding example is Beyond Textbooks, an online community of 118 partners in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Wyoming, and Kentucky that allows more than 14,000 teachers to share materials online, across vast geographic spaces as well as school types and sizes. This has been transformative for many rural school districts and rural charter schools.

Read the full article on stronger state charter school laws by Terry Ryan at The 74.