Recent polling shows strong support for educators and schools in Missouri and across the country throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

More than three in four parents in a nationwide survey said they are satisfied with how their kids' schools handled the pandemic, and endorse the quality and performance of their teachers.

Jason Roberts, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel, said most parents understand the reality of public education, despite the political climate suggesting otherwise.

"There's a lot going on in Missouri around this, with legislation on divisive topics, on critical race theory, on book bans, on banning the 1619 Project," Roberts outlined. "There's even legislation to allow for the recall of board members if you disagree with them."

He noted Missouri's attorney general has sued roughly 35 school districts for instituting mask mandates, but added many of those districts requiring masks have been able to keep from shutting down during COVID surges.

The poll finds one of parents' biggest issues is the teacher shortage, with 65% indicating they are concerned about it. Roberts noted Missouri already had a teacher shortage, which is getting worse. He pointed to recent state polling showing about 50% of educators are ready to leave the profession.

"When you have half of your teachers saying, 'I'm looking for something else, I'm ready and willing to walk,' and then, you have people in Jefferson City making decisions that say, you know, 'We're going to make your job even harder,' we only incentivize vacating classrooms," Roberts asserted. "And that only stands to hurt children."

In the national poll, 75% of parents expressed concerns about shortages of counselors and nurses, and more than 70% worry about students falling behind, academically or socially. Nearly 70% also said they are concerned about inadequate funding for schools, and 65% about low teacher pay.

Ohioans are paying close attention to the fast-tracking of Senate Bill 295 through the Statehouse during the lame-duck session.

The proposed legislation could have significant consequences for schools with low ratings on state report cards. Critics argued the bill's heavy reliance on standardized test scores would unfairly penalize districts.

Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, voiced his concerns in testimony to the Senate Education Committee.

"Instead of offering significant support, Senate Bill 295 proposes significant punishments that will most likely destabilize schools where many great things are happening," DiMauro contended. "Even if those successes are not revealed on data printouts of standardized test scores."

Supporters of the bill argued drastic measures are needed for struggling schools but opponents countered standardized tests often reflect poverty, not performance. They point to community-based solutions, like Ohio's 21st Century Community Learning Centers, as effective alternatives.

The bill would also override collective bargaining agreements, potentially forcing schools to replace more than half of their teaching staff. Educators worry the approach could worsen the statewide teacher shortage while failing to address root causes of underperformance.

Lonnie Dusch, chemistry teacher at Princeton High School and the local union president, criticized the reliance on standardized tests as a measure of success.

"The schools can be doing spectacularly well and just struggling on those standardized tests," Dusch pointed out. "Because those are high-stakes tests that we've seen, again and again, don't ever actually measure the growth that our students are seeing."

The fate of the bill remains uncertain but its implications are drawing debate over how Ohio addresses challenges in education. Many advocates are calling for long-term investments in wraparound services and community partnerships, rather than punitive measures, as a pathway to sustainable improvement in schools across the state.

North Dakota students will soon be on holiday break. When they return, state lawmakers are expected to debate giving families financial support related to school choice.

The controversial idea might look different this time, but similar arguments remain.

School vouchers have been a thorny issue, with a number of conservative-led states pushing to set aside funding for families to enroll their kids in private schools.

Opponents say that needlessly takes away money from public schools. A voucher bill was vetoed in North Dakota in 2023, but school choice backers are crafting a different plan.

Sheila Peterson is a public-school physical education teacher at Wachter Middle School in Bismarck who is monitoring what's happening.

"Every kid has the fundamental right to a good education, that is so important," said Peterson. "So, if we're saying there's something that's missing and there's monies available, why aren't we funding our public education system to provide those pieces that are missing?"

Peterson, a member of the union ND United and the 2024 North Dakota Teacher of the Year, suggested beefing up mental health services, or focusing on reducing class sizes.

She said that might help renew or restore faith in public schools.

A lawmaker drafting a bill says it wouldn't be a voucher program, but instead an Education Savings Account, where parents would get money to pursue a variety of support services.

State Sen. Michelle Axtman - R-Bismarck - plans to introduce the ESA bill, and said such a marketplace is superior to vouchers, which she called an outdated approach to improving school choice.

Axtman said her measure would cover all students, including those from public systems, who might need extra support in rounding out the education they're getting.

"Whether that be a summer STEM camp," said Axtman, "or occupational therapy for a need, or dyslexia services, or just tutoring in math, or a language course that isn't offered in a rural community."

Axtman stressed that her plan wouldn't divert money from K-12 funding.

Aimee Copas - executive director of the North Dakota Council of Education Leaders - said she is leery of ESAs, but said they could be meaningful if lawmakers ensure fairness in distributing aid.

Plus, she said North Dakota already does a good job in tapping into the spirit of school choice.

"We probably have more school choice and opportunities," said Copas, "than almost any state in the nation. "

She pointed to the adoption of the Learning Continuum model, where public districts are given flexibility to offer more personalized forms of education.

She said apprenticeship programs are another good example.

By Jon Marcus, Brianna Atkinson, Molly Minta and Amy Morona for The Hechinger Report.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for West Virginia News Service reporting for The Hechinger Report-Public News Service Collaboration

Although she won a scholarship to Mississippi State University, two hours' drive away, Shamya Jones couldn't get there because she had a new baby and no car.

So she enrolled instead at a local community college, then transferred to the four-year campus closest to her home in the rural Mississippi Delta - Delta State University.

She planned to major in digital media arts, but before she could start, Delta State eliminated that major, along with 20 other degree programs, including history, English, chemistry and music .

"They're cutting off so much, and teachers [are] leaving," Jones said. "It's like we're not getting the help or benefits we need." The cuts "take away from us, our education."

That kind of frustration is growing. Rural Americans already have far less access to higher education than their counterparts in cities and suburbs. Now the comparatively few universities that serve rural students are eliminating large numbers of programs and majors, blaming plummeting enrollment and financial crises. Many rural private, nonprofit colleges are closing altogether.

"We are asking rural folks to accept a set of options that folks in cities and suburbs would never accept," said Andrew Koricich, a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. "It's almost like, well, 'This is what you get to learn, and this is how you get to learn it. And if you don't like it, you can move.' "

When programs at rural colleges and universities are eliminated, "It's not just, if this institution doesn't do it, another one can pick up the slack," Koricich said. "It's that if this institution doesn't do it, it just does not happen. It is not offered. It's not an option."

While large-scale cuts to majors in the years during and since the Covid-19 pandemic have gotten some attention, what many have in common has been largely overlooked: They're disproportionately happening at universities that serve rural students or are in largely rural states.

Rural-serving institutions are defined by the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges, which Koricich directs, as those that share such characteristics as being located in counties classified as rural and a certain distance from metropolitan areas.

Even some flagship universities that serve rural places are making big cuts. The most widely reported were at West Virginia University, which is eliminating 28 undergraduate and graduate majors and programs, including most foreign languages and graduate programs in math and public administration. The University of Montana is phasing out or has frozen more than 30 certificate, undergraduate and graduate degree programs and concentrations. A similar review is under way at branch campuses of Pennsylvania State University.

But most of the cuts have occurred at regional public universities, which get considerably less money from their states - about $1,100 less, per student, than flagships - even as they educate 70 percent of undergraduates who go to public four-year schools. These kinds of schools are also more likely than other kinds of institutions to enroll students from lower-income families and who are the first in their families to go to college.

St. Cloud State University in Minnesota is cutting 42 degree programs, for example, including criminal justice, gerontology, history, electrical and environmental engineering, economics and physics. The University of Alaska System scaled back more than 40, including earth sciences, geography and environmental resources and hospitality administration. Henderson State University in Arkansas dropped 25. Emporia State University in Kansas cut, merged or downgraded around 40 undergraduate and graduate majors, minors and concentrations.

The State University of New York at Fredonia is dropping 13 majors. SUNY Potsdam is cutting chemistry, physics, philosophy, French, Spanish and four other programs. The University of North Carolina Asheville is discontinuing religious studies, drama, philosophy and concentrations in French and German.

Among the many other regional public universities that are dropping programs and majors are Missouri Western, Eastern Kentucky, Arkansas State, Dickinson State in North Dakota and the University of Nebraska at Kearney. North Dakota State University has proposed cuts to 14 programs; the university did not respond to questions about the status of that plan.

"Some institutions have no other options" than to do this, because of financial problems and plummeting enrollment, said Charles Welch, president and CEO of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and a former president of both Henderson State and the Arkansas State University System.

At Delta State, for instance, enrollment is down by nearly a quarter since 2014.

A drop in tuition revenue stemming from that decline created an $11 million hole in the university's budget, President Daniel Ennis, told the campus last year. When Ennis got to Delta State, he also found the university was overestimating its revenue from facilities and merchandise.

"At a certain point there's going to be less of everything - personnel, money, equipment and opportunities - because we have to right-size the budget," Ennis said.

But the American Association of University Professors, which represents faculty, said in a report that administrators are exploiting these problems to close programs "as expeditiously as if colleges and universities were businesses whose CEOs suddenly decided to stop making widgets or shut down the steelworks."

Many of the programs affected are in the humanities and languages, making those disciplines less available to rural students than they are to urban and suburban ones.

These subjects "do much of the work of helping students dream beyond their realities," said Michael Theune, who chairs the English Department at Illinois Wesleyan University, a private, nonprofit school that is also eliminating majors. "We are paring down the sense of the vastness of our world and the possibilities of university students to experience it differently."

But Welch said states are often simply trying to reduce duplication among campuses in the same systems and compensate for having less financial support than flagship universities receive.

"The challenge that our institutions have is that they tend to be lower resourced than institutions in urban areas, or flagship institutions. They can't rely on big endowments," Welch said. The pandemic, he said, "threw a whole additional layer on top of what those institutions were already facing."

Some rural-serving public universities and public universities in largely rural states have now undergone repeated rounds of cuts. Youngstown State University in Ohio, for instance, axed Italian, religious studies and other majors in 2021, then six more three years later. In all, more than 25 programs have now been eliminated there, many of them in the humanities.

The university points out that there were no students at all in 10 of those majors. But students and faculty say it was still important to offer them.

"It is easy to just write us off as, 'Oh, well, do they really need that school?' when there are so many other majors," said Owen Bertram, a senior theater major whose program has so far escaped the cuts. "But I don't think it's that simple."

His classmates who will be affected by the changes "are such creatives at heart, and they all came here because they loved what they were doing," said Bertram, who is also student government representative for the university's College of Creative Arts. He said it's hard to watch these students struggling with the questions, "Do I stay?" "Do I leave?" "Is it worth it?"

For rural students, there are few other places to go. About 13 million people live in higher education "deserts," the American Council on Education estimates, mostly in the Midwest and Great Plains, where the nearest university is beyond a reasonable commute away.

"It is creating a second class of people to say, 'You pay your taxes just like everybody else does. You vote like everybody else does. But you just can't have the same choices as everybody else, because there aren't enough of you here,'" Koricich said.

"In a lot of rural places, the idea of choice is sort of a fiction. If you only have one option, you don't really have choice."

In many cases, this particularly affects low-income and Black students. At the University of North Carolina Greensboro, for example - another institution in a largely rural state, which is in the process of phasing out 20 degree programs, including anthropology and physics - more than half the students are low-income and 35 percent are Black, according to the university.

"UNCG should be a place where anyone should be able to come and get an affordable education in whatever they want," said Holly Buroughs, a physics major who started a petition protesting the cuts.

"Is a first-gen student like me going to come next year and not see the UNCG that I fell in love with and the opportunities I had?" asked Azariah Journey, a second-year graduate student in history who comes from a rural town in Kentucky.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen private, nonprofit universities and colleges in rural areas or that serve large proportions of rural students have closed outright since 2020; some of the rural private institutions that remain are also axing majors.

The proportion of rural high school graduates going to college at all is falling. Fifty-five percent enroll right after high school, down from 61 percent in 2016, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Dominick Bellipanni is one of the last remaining music students at Delta State as the department is being phased out. He received a scholarship, which he isn't sure he would have gotten if his only options to study piano had been at the state's larger, more competitive universities.

Bellipanni is from Indianola, a once-busy crossroad 30 minutes from the university, where he grew up hearing stories about businesses that once operated there but closed.

"Used to be, used to be, used to be," he remembered people telling him.

Now he's hearing that again.

His professors talk about how there used to be more music recitals, more scholarships, more money, said Bellipanni, who said he plans to leave the Mississippi Delta when he graduates.

"All you hear is, 'We used to have this, because we used to have more students.'"


Jon Marcus, Brianna Atkinson, Molly Minta and Amy Morona wrote this article for The Hechinger Report.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.


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