Tried and true: The rural school curriculum in the age of accountability

Educational Forum, The, Fall 2003 by Howley, Aimee

Educators who advocate authentic curricula designed to promote deep and meaningful learning often justify this approach by arguing that it contributes to the self-determination of individuals and communities. By connecting progressive educational practices to liberatory aims, these educators are consciously setting out to offer an alternative to the social reproduction often attributed to an essentialist curriculum. To many rural educators, the benefits of freeing students from the vicious sorting that consigns them either to marginal social roles in rural places or to jobholding in cities seem obvious. These benefits may be less apparent to rural community members. In fact, many of the descriptions of initiatives to develop place-based curricula reveal that these efforts are primarily carried out by educators who are assisted by representatives of elite community groups (Wither 2001).

RESPONDING TO CURRICULUM NEEDS OF RURAL SCHOOLS

Rural educators face challenges when they work to provide curriculum offerings that are academically rigorous yet responsive to students' and communities' interests and needs. In recent years, pressures associated with accountability have constituted an additional-and sometimes extraordinary-challenge.

Under most accountability provisions, the state develops academic content standards, which are used as the blueprint for achievement tests administered at specified grade levels to public school students. These test results can determine whether or not students will graduate from high school, whether a school will receive an award or a sanction, and whether a school district will remain self-governing or risk state takeover. Given these high stakes, the easiest-and perhaps most prudent-course of action is often to "align" curriculum with the state standards. While alignment may ensure that no essential content is overlooked, it certainly cannot help rural educators meet the interests and needs of their particular students and communities. What options are available to those with a stake in rural schools?

Rural schools can make judicious use of curriculum alignment, which does not typically involve replacing a local curriculum with one geared toward state standards. On most curriculum issues, states and communities likely will find that they agree more than they disagree. In a report of local curriculum development in a small city in Nebraska, Swidler and Hoffman (2000) explained that the standards created by a group of local citizens turned out to be comparable to, and in some cases more stringent than, those set by the state.

An extensive and inclusive discussion of rural curriculum ought to include parents and other community members as well as educators. Historically, rural communities played a decisive role in school governance; rural residents remember when citizens enjoyed direct involvement in the community school. More recently, however, school standardization and consolidation have eroded community engagement with school planning and evaluation.