OPINION | DANA KELLEY: The rural difference

The government routinely recognizes differences between rural and urban areas. Furthermore, the government routinely appropriates funds on account of those recognized differences.

Rural Health Clinics get reimbursed for services at a higher rate than metro or suburban clinics. Why? Because the government realizes that patients in rural communities don't have the same access to primary-care services, and that there are often shortages of providers or services or both.

The policy remedy is to pay rural clinics differently than their urban counterparts. It's a simple construct, really: Rural areas and residents differ vastly from urban areas and residents. Why expect their primary-care situations to be the same?

They aren't, and that's why we have Rural Health Clinics.

The government recognizes differences in home-buying in rural areas, and structures federally backed mortgage programs accordingly. Rural residents who qualify can make a smaller down payment (sometimes no down payment at all) with a lower credit-score requirement than their city counterparts.

Compared to metropolitan incomes and home values, the rural chasm is often huge. Why would lending programs be the same for both? They shouldn't be, and that's why we have Rural Development and Rural Housing Loans.

The government acknowledges that rural areas face broadband penetration obstacles that don't exist in more populous areas. The distinct physical and logistical characteristics of low-population-density rural areas play a significant role in the cost of hard-wiring high-speed Internet networks.

Therefore government subsidies are offered in the form of grants and loans to Internet providers for the cost of construction, improvement or acquisition of facilities and equipment necessary to offer broadband service in rural areas. It would be silly to pretend that connecting spaced-out rural homes and businesses is even remotely similar to packed-in equivalents in larger cities, and that's why we have the ReConnect Program.

The government understands that rural areas are at a disadvantage when it comes to economic development, and provides guarantees on loans to small businesses from banks for fixed major assets, equipment and real estate.

With different scope and scale on all things financial, as well as frequent difficulties in workforce availability and education, small businesses in rural areas are handicapped in ways that urban small businesses aren't. Should guaranteed loan programs be the same for both?

No, and that's why the SBA offers relaxed regulations on 504 Loans for rural business development.

Time and again, in order to balance out the real differences between rural and urban lives and lifestyles, concessions are made, funding is enhanced and requirements are revised by the government.

But for some reason, that wisdom all goes out the window when it comes to rural education. Many believe progress will be elusive for our state unless we increase the number of college-educated residents. But that starts by improving K-12 schools.

Half (49 percent) of Arkansas schools are rural, and more than one-third of the state's students attend a rural school. Yet there is basically no analysis, evaluation or assessment by the state government or the Legislature that dives deep into identifying and addressing the unique needs of rural schools.

A leadership initiative that would pay huge educational dividends for our state is a commitment to devise and implement the best rural education system in the country.

What should a duly designated Rural School look like? The worst people to ask are big-city consultants, but that's been the education department modus operandi for decades.

Instead, let's ask rural teachers. Usually rural residents themselves, they are literally treasure troves of knowledge and information about how centralized education policy emanating from Little Rock does more harm than good at small rural schools.

They're also make-do problem-solvers at heart--who put students' interests first--and can be founts of ideas that fit and confront rural education's main challenges.

It's true that smaller schools cannot achieve the same efficiencies of scale as larger schools, but why is it a problem if rural schools cost more per pupil than urban districts? Rural health care costs more, too, from a government funding perspective. So does rural housing, rural broadband and rural economic and business development.

But it's flawed thinking to view dollars as the supreme metric anyway. Advantages smaller schools in rural areas enjoy over larger metro schools have never been quantified, and subsequently never reported or analyzed.

Remember baseball's Bill James and his "Sabermetrics?" Experts laughed when he said batting order didn't matter--until he helped propel the Red Sox to World Series victory.

Arkansas needs "Edumetrics" for insights beyond the same old, tired measures. Maybe create an index matrix including extracurricular participation, student volunteerism, disciplinary incidents and other aspects that are proven education performance enhancers.

Community support is a key ingredient to local school success; a valuable indicator might be a tax burden per capita calculation.

Rural schools have outsized importance to local economies compared with urban schools; there has to be a way to formulate a meaningful multiplier that factors that in for funding efficacy analysis.

A rural education system triumph wouldn't just be an Arkansas victory. It could inspire and aid many other rural states, too. That'd be another metric worth celebrating.


Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

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