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Battling Declining Enrolment in the Upper Midwestern United States: Rural Schools in a Competitive Society
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47381/aijre.v27i2.122Keywords:
school climate, neoliberalism, educational marketplace, ruralAbstract
This paper examines the effects of declining student enrolment and population loss on one rural school district in the United States, as well as the district’s strategies to mitigate these effects. In the state of Wisconsin, the relationship between student enrolment and school funding destabilises rural school districts experiencing population decline and forces them to depend on local property taxes to make up the difference. In order to achieve community financial and political support, the school district in Forest Lake, Wisconsin, emphasises choice, transparency and new managerial practices. Using data from a year-long ethnographic study, the following analysis explores neoliberal educational policies at the state level that shape local educational policies and practices in Forest Lake. The Forest Lake school district is mired in a paradoxical situation in which being competitive in the educational marketplace equates to disrupting established school-community relations. The findings imply that required participation in an educational marketplace shifts the priorities of a rural school district to a focus on competition and financial security over the well-being of the school community.References
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Au, W. (2011). Teaching under the new Taylorism: High-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(1), 25–45.
Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Buras, K. L. (2011). Race, charter schools, and conscious capitalism: On the spatial politics of whiteness as property (and the unconscionable assault on black New Orleans). Harvard Educational Review, 81(2), 296–330.
Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide. New York, NY: Routledge.
Connell, R. (2013). The neoliberal cascade and education: An essay on the market agenda and its consequences. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2), 99–112.
Corbett, M. (2015). Towards a rural sociological imagination: Ethnography and schooling in mobile modernity. Ethnography and Education, 10(3), 263–277.
DeYoung, A. J. (1995). Bridging multiple worlds: The school superintendent as change agent in a rural and poor school district. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 11(3), 187–197.
Egan-Robertson, D. (2013). Wisconsin’s future population: Projections for the state, its counties, and municipalities, 2010–20140. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Administration Demographic Services Center.
Ford, M. R. (2015). Governing for results on a postcollective bargaining Wisconsin school board. Journal of School Choice, 9, 529–550.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Gewirtz, S., & Ball, S. (2000). From "welfarism" to "new managerialism": Shifting discourses of school headship in the education marketplace. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21, 253–268.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654.
Hansen, A. (2016, March 25). [Forest Lake] schools discuss salary schedule for employees. Price County Review.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Kemp, S. (2016, January/February). A perfect storm. Wisconsin School News, 14–17.
Kimball, S. M., Heneman, H. B., Worth, R., Arrigoni, J., & Marlin, D. (2016). Teacher compensation: Standard practice and changes in Wisconsin. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Lipman, P. (2011). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lipsky, M. (2010). Street-level bureaucracy, 30th anniversary edition: Dilemmas of the individual in public service. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lynch, K. (2014). New managerialism: The impact on education. Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory, 5(3). Retrieved from http://concept.lib.ed.ac.uk/index.php/Concept/article/view/271/255
Meyers, S.L. (2016, January 28). Study: Wisconsin’s rural school districts face declining enrollment, less funding. Wisconsin Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.wpr.org/study-wisconsins-rural-school-districts-face-declining-enrollment-less-funding
Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Peshkin, A. (1978). Growing up American: Schooling and the survival of community. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Rey, J.C. (2014). The rural school superintendency and the need for a critical leadership of place. Journal of School Leadership, 24, 509–536.
Robenstine, C. (2000). How school choice can change the culture of educational leadership. Contemporary Education, 71(2), 26–30.
Sherman, J., & Sage, R. (2011). Sending off all your good treasures: Rural schools, brain-drain, and community survival in the wake of economic collapse. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 26(11), 1–14.
Tieken, M. C. (2014). Why rural schools matter. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-classifications/
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. (2016a). Categorical Aid. Retrieved from http://dpi.wi.gov/sfs/aid/categorical/overview
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. (2016b). Open Enrollment Funding. Retrieved from https://dpi.wi.gov/open-enrollment/funding
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. (2016c). Public Student Enrollment Data. Retrieved from http://dpi.wi.gov/cst/data-collections/student/ises/published-data/excel
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18-08-2017
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How to Cite
Seelig, J. L. (2017). Battling Declining Enrolment in the Upper Midwestern United States: Rural Schools in a Competitive Society. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 27(2), 77–92. https://doi.org/10.47381/aijre.v27i2.122
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