In late April, education officials from several rural states sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, lamenting some of the challenges that they are having in meeting the requirements of the Race to the Top grants and other educational program grants.

In part to prove that they remain committed to reform, education officials from 11 rural states will be convening this week in South Dakota in order to come up with some alternative solutions for turning around ailing schools that suit rural areas.

Tom Oster, South Dakota’s Secretary of Education, told us that the meeting will have three main items on the agenda.

• Opportunities to combine their resources and avoid duplication. “What is each state doing that other states need, so we aren’t duplicating?” Oster asks. Rural states, he explains, are creating lots of items—plans, education strategies, curricula, etc—that they could share or mutually build on.
• Other rural issues for the Education Commission of the States agenda later this summer.
• The reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), including in particular the challenges for them associated with competitive grants such as Race to the Top, as ESEA transitions toward more competitive grants.

Relative to the third item, Oster explains that rural states can be at a disadvantage when it comes to the competitive grant process. They don’t have grant writers on staff, for example. Or, as became apparent in the Race to the Top, certain competitive grant criteria or models may be unsuitable given rural education resource limitations. With its 123,000 students, South Dakota has a smaller enrollment than Chicago, according to Oster. Vermont and North Dakota have fewer students than that. “We are being asked to do things on a statewide level to compete with states like Texas and California. Texas has 300,000 juniors!” he says.

All in all, Oster is hoping for a dialogue about ways to better design educational reforms so that rural states can participate. He’s hoping that future education efforts can improve on the shortcomings he sees in existing efforts. “My biggest gripe with the Race to the Top application was that one size doesn't fit all.”

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