Charter schools, though increasingly touted (and criticized) by educators, administrators and lawmakers, remains in some sense predominantly an urban mainstay. 56.5% of charters are located in a city, while only 10% of charter schools are located in urban areas, according to the National Center for Education Statistics data.

But the number of rural charters is on the rise; more than 200,000 students attend charter schools in rural areas, with California having the highest number at 114 schools. More than 200 rural charters have been opened since 2010, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Todd Ziebarth, the senior vice president of state advocacy and support at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said that while it would be a misconception that charter schools only teach students in urban areas, some charter founders in urban communities have benefited from improving charter laws in numerous states, as well as more access to federal charter school grants and increased familiarity within communities.

 “It’s not for the lighthearted and it’s a significant undertaking,” he said. “And perhaps people have gotten more comfortable with them and are willing to take the risk.”

Rural charter growth is increasing as knowledge of charter authorization grows among interested communities. However, the policy debate between advocates and critics of charter schools primarily focuses on issues raised in an urban setting, issues that may transform or be non-existent as rural communities open more schools.

“I think the model of the brand new school coming into compete will not be so common in rural areas,” Hill said. “There’s a chance to bring the charter school argument back to where it started. It started with local communities and educators freed from all the regulations, that you’d get more imaginative schools than what existed.”

Hill recently co-authored a Brookings Institution report about how charter schools can affect change in rural communities in the country with Terry Ryan, the CEO of the Idaho Charter School Network, which runs charter schools and advocates for their usage within the state. Idaho currently has 49 charter public schools, with 42 physical locations, six statewide virtual schools and one distant education academy serving more than 20,000 schools.

“The realization was that rural communities are struggling with access to high quality academic content,” Ryan said about the challenges of establishing charters in rural communities. “I think we’ve come to appreciate that that alone is not enough. I think we realize students need a teacher, a facilitator of their learning.”

CMOs unlikely to be widespread to rural communities

Many of the charter schools in urban environments are overseen by charter management organizations (CMOs), typically an NPO that manages a network of schools. CMOs such as KIPP or Success Academy Charter Schools tend to be the organization many urban educators think of when they hear charters, but those CMOs are unlikely to expand into rural communities on a wide scale.

Hill said CMOs tend to operate in urban areas because they have a strong recruiting mechanism that could be difficult to replicate when schools are potentially hundreds of miles apart. CMOs often build up their own teaching force with a specialized educational methodology, and it can be difficult to convince educators trained in that approach to move to rural areas to staff schools.

“On the other hand, if a community initiates it, it might work,” Hill said. “It might be that communities would ask (Success Academy CEO Eva) Moskowitz or whoever to build a school, but it’s going to be a small opportunity, and risky and not financially secure for a long time.”

Ziebarth said that many of the charter schools initiated in rural areas were started by local community members, often by those who were seeking alternative education approaches that were not available in districts. These were called independent charter schools, in contrast to charters under the auspices of a CMO.

 “The independent charters, the one-offs, sometimes they are started by people with a pretty deep connection in the community,” he said. “And I think it gives the schools a level of credibility that is different from a management organization coming in from the outside. It has a different feel to it.”

Many charter schools have materialized in areas where district schools were in danger or closing or consolidating; Ryan recalled some charter schools that opened in communities that had not had a school for 20 or 30 years.

“Parents and their students can make a decision about which approach works best for them,” Ryan noted. “They’re in effect using charter school dollars and the charter school concept, including an agreement between the district and the building, to create a model that was never available in that district.”

Future prospects

With President Donald Trump’s administration, the Department of Education has a strong advocate for charter schools with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but districts continue to face the prospect of funding cuts, which could also affect charters negatively. Ryan said that resources were a concern, but that the biggest challenge for rural charters was similar to rural district schools, which was procuring and retaining talent.

“I see a job posting and there may be one or two applicants whereas most of the teachers, when they’re coming out of universities are more interested in the large urban areas. There’s more opportunities there,” Ryan said, while noting that charters needed to consider utilizing technology, while states needed to consider their process of teacher certification. “No state has figured this stuff out.”

Hill expressed concern that some of the negative news emanating from rural communities, including issues of rural unemployment and declining health and mortality rates, particularly among rural white men, might act as a source of discouragement and might lead people to move out of these communities. He also noted the adoption of charter schools on a larger scale would likely be a gradual process in such areas.

“It’s a new phenomenon,” he said, “and will probably not grow like wildfire as rural communities catch onto the fact that they can use it.”