RVA model a vision of rural education’s future

Where you happen to live should not impact the quality of your children’s education.

That belief is fundamental to Wisconsin’s commitment to providing access to free public education for all young people in the state. It is a concept that is at the core of the state’s equalization aid formulas— formulas made overly complicated by people playing politics.

This concept recognizes that education has always been the proverbial silver bullet that provides opportunities for individuals and communities to rise and take hold of their futures.

Unfortunately, the reality is something different. Small, rural school districts struggle to keep programs going or to offer the sorts of high level and specialized classes that will help the top students reach their full potential. District size also impacts the amount of resources a school has available. Bigger schools get more resources allowing them to take advantage of economies of scale in sharing costs.

While popular with politicians and absentee property owners, decades of school revenue caps have led to rural districts being hobbled at being competitive for top teachers and from serving the needs of their students. While there were experiments in correspondence programs, instructional television and other distance learning programs, they had severe limitations due to the technology at the time.

With the growing expansion of high speed internet networks and a leap forward in technology, the Rural Virtual Academy burst onto the scene in 2005 as a partnership of Medford, Rib Lake, Prentice, Abbotsford and Colby school districts, serving 17 full time students.

In the 16 years since it was formed, the RVA consortium has grown to include 40 school districts, 1,500 fulltime students and an additional 4,000 part-time students through the District Connect program.

Through the RVA, and particularly the District Connect program, students are able to tap into top notch educational programs taught by some of the best teachers in the state regardless of if they live in the big city or deep in the northwoods of Wisconsin. District Connect allows participating districts to tap into classroom resources and even to have RVA teachers using technology to deliver lessons to students in the brick and mortar classrooms in their home communities. This presents not only amazing opportunities for students, but a real savings for cash-strapped rural schools being able to provide for educational needs at a fraction of the cost of hiring their own staff. This allows districts the ability to offer the level of education which attracts the best and brightest students and their families.

The promise to Wisconsin’s young people is to use education as a means to break down barriers and provide each student with the opportunity to reach for the stars. Programs such as RVA’s District Connect are the future of education in Wisconsin and will only grow in importance in future years.