Nine out of top 10 most rural states have school choice
An argument used against expanding educational freedom, particularly in states with large rural populations, is that rural areas don’t benefit from school choice programs. The other argument is that education choice will hurt the rural school district if students leave for other learning environments.
But in states with robust education choice policies, the education options available in rural areas have increased, and there is no evidence that expanding education choice has negative effects in rural areas, according to a report by Jason Bedrick and Matthew Ladner with The Heritage Foundation. “Indeed, the best evidence suggests education choice policies spur rural schools to improve.”
While it is true that rural families often have fewer nonpublic school options than families in urban or suburban areas, the education marketplace is not static, point out Bedrick and Ladner.
For example, since Florida enacted its tax-credit scholarship policy 20 years ago, the number of private schools in Florida’s 30 rural counties has grown from 69 to 120. Meanwhile, private school enrollment in those counties has more than doubled, from 5,354 rural private school students in the 2001-2002 academic year to 10,965 students in 2021-2022, according to state data.
Rural areas are also seeing a rise of micro-schools (think 21st century meets one-room schoolhouse), and high-quality virtual schools are becoming more accessible. Under certain school choice policies, home education, a popular option in rural areas, can be blended with part-time school enrollment.
Support for choice policies is strong in rural areas. An October 2023 poll conducted by Arc Insights on behalf of yes. every kid. foundation. found that a majority (64 percent) of North Dakotans in rural areas support a school choice policy commonly known as education savings accounts (ESAs). Support spans not only the geographic spectrum but the political spectrum as well.
Indeed, nine out of the top 10 most rural states, as measured by 2020 rural population shares by the U.S. Census Bureau, have publicly-created private school choice programs:
- Vermont
- Maine
- West Virginia
- Mississippi
- Montana
- Arkansas
- South Dakota
- Alabama
- New Hampshire
Kentucky, ranked the 10th most rural state, and North Dakota, ranked number 11th, do not have private school choice or charter schools. The top two most rural states — Vermont and Maine — have the oldest private school voucher program in the U.S., both of which were enacted in the late 19th century for students in rural areas without public schools.
“Policymakers who want to increase education options for rural families should enact education choice policies, such as K-12 education savings accounts,” summarize Bedrick and Ladner. The arguments about education choice’s effect on rural areas — that it will not help those areas and that it will destroy the district school system — “are mutually exclusive. They cannot both be true, but they can both be — and indeed are — false.”