Washington, D.C. — As the private school choice movement gains nationwide traction at the behest of the Trump administration, rural communities are experiencing direct harms from the movement’s diversion of public school funds to voucher programs and other privatization strategies. Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. public school students attend school in a rural area, meaning 9.8 million students’ educational outcomes are on the line.
Rural schools face a plethora of unique challenges, including diseconomies of scale, limited resources, budget constraints, commute challenges, and more. New analysis from the Center for American Progress shows how private school choice efforts disproportionately hurt these rural communities, with case studies from West Virginia, Indiana, and Vermont. Key findings include:
- Only 34 percent of rural families have access to a private school within 5 miles of their home, compared with 92 percent of urban families. A mere 5 percent of rural students are enrolled in private schools, compared with 10 percent nationally.
- In West Virginia, the majority of public schools are rural, yet nearly 70 percent of private schools are in suburban and urban areas; a voucher program established in 2021 predominantly serves these areas.
- In Indiana, state tuition support for public schools grew by only 12 percent between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, leaving rural districts to struggle with inadequate state support. Meanwhile, choice scholarship funding soared by more than 93 percent over the same period.
- In Vermont—the most rural state in the country—some families use vouchers to send their students to private schools located outside of the state or even the country. Data from the 2020–21 school year reveal roughly $1.5 million in state taxpayer money was spent paying for student tuition outside of the state or country, including $120,000 going to private schools in Quebec, Canada.
“The private school choice movement is especially harmful to our rural students and communities, threatening outcomes for over 9.8 million students across America,” said Paige Shoemaker DeMio, senior policy analyst for K-12 Education Policy at CAP and author of the report. “Instead of pulling precious resources away from these rural schools, we should be looking for ways to increase support and provide opportunities that will improve students’ academic achievement.”
Read the report: “How the School Choice Agenda Harms Rural Students” by Paige Shoemaker DeMio
For more information or to speak with an expert, contact Mishka Espey at [email protected].