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##  Rural School Busing. ERIC Digest.                                            

The familiar image of the yellow school bus making its way over a               winding country road serves as an emblem of rural education in the              United States. At the same time, its nostalgic connotations may                 contribute to the tendency to accept at face value the centralizing             and standardizing agenda that rural school busing enacts.                       Policymakers and school administrators have routinely attached                  positive connotations to this agenda--improvement of school                     conditions, a higher quality of instruction, and robustness of                  outcomes. But do the projected improvements actually materialize?               And, when they do, is there a hidden price tag? This Digest                     summarizes information that suggests that long bus rides are part of            the hidden costs of school and district consolidation. HISTORICAL             CONTEXTEven before the 1800s, families in small rural towns                 began to establish schools so that their children could learn to                read and write. For much of the 1800s, these schools were organized             informally, provided with little support or supervision from states,            and positioned to address community interests and needs. The school             year was short and attendance poor. Children, of course, walked to              these schools, and many children who lived in the countryside were              unable to attend. For many rural children, therefore,                           instruction--mostly practical in nature--came from parents, nearby              relatives, or neighbors. 
These circumstances did not, however,                mesh well with states' interests in compelling student attendance.              Policymakers and education leaders saw considerable value in using              the system of common schools to accomplish national political and               economic aims. To do so, they were willing to structure schooling in            ways that would affect the routines of family life and farm                     production, at a time when most Americans farmed or lived in the                country. As early as the 1880s, policymakers began to call for                  school consolidation as a way to improve the conditions of rural                schools. Without innovations in the mechanics and infrastructure of             transportation, however, these proposals had comparatively little               impact. 
By the 1930s, transportation technologies had caught up               with proposals to create new consolidated schools, and the smallest             rural schools began to close. Since that time, rural students have              been bused to increasingly larger schools, located at greater and               greater remove from their homes. In fact, consolidation has cut the             number of U.S. school "districts" by 91 percent since about 1930,               and the number of "schools" by 67 percent, while the number                     of "students" has simultaneously increased by 83 percent (Snyder &              Hoffman, 2001). 
The effect on rural school transportation budgets             is seldom appreciated. Today, school districts in rural areas spend             more than twice per pupil what urban districts spend on                         transportation (Killeen & Sipple, 2000, p. 18). THE EXPERIENCE OF             RIDING THE BUSDespite the fact that for more than half a century            generations of rural children have been riding school buses,                    educators know very little about that experience from the                       perspective of communities, families, or students. Important                    questions, however, concern the length of rides experienced by rural            students, the effects of those rides on school participation and                academic achievement, and the impact of widespread school busing on             rural ways of life. 
Rural educators, of course, know that many of             their students board buses early in the morning and arrive home in              the very late afternoon. Still, as Killeen and Sipple (2000)                    note, "on the national level ... no data or statistics exist which              account for the bus ride time for children" (p. 12). A recent                   study (Howley, Howley, & Shamblen, 2001), however, provided some                rudimentary comparisons between ride times for elementary students              in rural and suburban schools. (This study focused on rural and                 suburban locales because urban districts often make extensive use of            public mass-transport systems.) Overall, the study showed that rural            schoolchildren were more likely than their suburban counterparts to             have bus rides of 30 minutes or longer. Their rides also tended to              be more arduous, traversing poorer roads and more hilly or                      mountainous terrain than those experienced by suburban students. In             addition--for good or ill--rural elementary children were quite                 likely to be "double-routed," an efficiency measure placing them on             buses with middle and high school students. 
These circumstances               may seem to some educators a fair price for rural children to pay in            order to derive benefits from larger, more centralized schools. But             are there hidden costs? Certainly costs in academic terms would                 offer serious cause for concern. One of the best studies in the                 literature (Lu & Tweeten, 1973), now quite dated, confirmed a                   negative effect of duration of bus rides in Oklahoma on student                 achievement.(1) In the absence of more recent studies on achievement            impacts, the most reasonable basis for evaluating the costs and                 benefits of long bus rides comes indirectly from research addressing            the effects of large scale schools on the achievement of                        low-socioeconomic-status (SES) students. Findings from this research            are relevant because shorter bus rides have been found to be                    positively associated with smaller school size (Howley et al.,                  2001). Moreover, attention to the achievement of low-SES students               makes particular sense in rural locales, where so many families'                incomes fall below the national median (U.S. Department of Commerce,            1998). 
An extensive literature on the size of schools and                     districts, including those in rural communities, speaks quite                   clearly to the issue of achievement. As this literature shows,                  smaller size tends to improve the overall achievement of schools and            districts serving large proportions of impoverished students (e.g.,             Bickel & Howley, 2000; Howley & Bickel, 1999). Although these                   studies use school- and district-level data, they do provide a                  reasonable basis for making inferences about how well low-income                students who attend large, remote schools are likely to perform. And            this reasoning leads to the conclusion that such students' academic             achievement is likely to suffer. Whether rural students' long bus               rides directly contribute to this deleterious outcome, of course,               has yet to be shown. 
Long bus rides also take students away from              their homes and communities for many hours during each school day,              and this effect on children's lives has been studied in another of              the best studies in the literature (Fox, 1996; see also Spence,                 2000). In an investigation of rural Quebec families, Fox found that             long rides reduced the number and variety of household activities               and reduced students' sleep time, recreational time, academic                   attentiveness, and extracurricular participation. Moreover, Fox                 found that rural farm families were the ones most seriously                     inconvenienced, because their schedules were the least adaptable.               Fox's assertions, though rare, are not unique. Beaumont and                     Pianca (2000) report that school busing is part of a set of                     institutionalized school practices that contribute to the erosion of            neighborhood cohesion. "School sprawl" deprives rural and small-town            neighborhoods of children and their activities, but the possible                harm done to social capital and community cohesion by this removal              has not been studied. 
Such findings connect to theories of social             coherence and resourcefulness. For instance, the decision to close              small local schools restricts rural residents' engagement with and              support for schools (e.g., Spence, 2000). Moreover, when the two                major institutions of socialization--the family and the school--are             at odds, community integration and the well-being of community                  members tend to suffer (e.g., Peshkin, 1982). One might well                    theorize that rural school busing erodes the "social capital" of                rural communities (cf. Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1993). 
Clearly,                 school closure, school size, and length of bus ride are complexly               related issues. But, with an insufficient research base, their                  separate and combined effects are difficult to pinpoint. Important              as these dynamics may be, moreover, they are somewhat removed from              the direct experience of rural students who ride school buses. What,            then, in more concrete terms, is that experience like? THE RURAL              BUS RIDEA preliminary picture of the rural school bus ride has              been provided in a recent study by Howley (2001). Based on a                    five-state survey of elementary school principals, the researcher               discovered that most rural children experience rides of excessive               length. Whereas almost all such children (85 percent) experience                one-way bus rides of more than 30 minutes, approximately one quarter            of them experience one-way rides of more than 60 minutes. 
Not only            do long bus rides extend the length of the school day for many rural            children, so too do long wait times at school (i.e., before the                 start of and after the conclusion of the instructional day). On                 average, the morning wait time for rural students in the responding             schools was an estimated 14 minutes. Their average afternoon wait               time was 13 minutes. 
Rural students also travel to school over                relatively rough roads. Although there is considerable variation by             state, approximately 36 percent of rural bus routes traverse paved              major roads, about 43 percent paved minor roads, and about 20                   percent unpaved minor roads. Moreover, in many rural locales,                   sizable proportions of the roads used to transport children cross               hilly and even mountainous terrain. 
Given the challenging bus                 rides that rural students face, many districts appear to be taking              steps to ensure the safety and effectiveness of their transportation            systems. Approximately 50 percent of rural districts employ a                   full-time transportation director. Sixty-nine percent provide                   regular first-aid instruction to bus drivers, and about 77 percent              equip all of their buses with two-way communication                             devices. POLICY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE ISSUESThe effect of               the school bus on schooling is likely to be as profound as the                  effect of the automobile on shopping. Extant literature strongly                suggests that more is at stake in rural school busing than cost                 efficiency and safety. Rural and suburban differences exist widely,             but one study (Howley, 2001) documented widespread differences by               social class and ethnicity in the "rural" bus ride (e.g.,                       impoverished rural schools have longer rides than more affluent                 rural schools). Clearly, busing is not a neutral part of the school             day, but exhibits instead the systemic contradictions and                       complexities that structure American society generally. 
Studies               into the influence of length of bus ride are sorely needed,                     particularly into the relationship of long rides to student                     achievement (or, more broadly, school performance) and to levels of,            or the experience of, parental involvement. Lu and Tweeten's                    unreplicated study of the effect that riding the bus has on student             achievement, clearly the best in the extant literature, remains an              incentive for further study. 
In the meantime, community members,              school administrators, and policymakers can begin to connect the                findings about length of ride to those on the effects of smaller                school and district size. Three facts--that (1) rural students in               impoverished areas confront longer rides, (2) longer rides are a                function of larger attendance areas, and (3) smaller size benefits              lower-SES students--are significant, taken together. It seems                   unlikely that longer rides constitute an academic benefit for poor              students and communities. 
(1) Another study from the                          1970s (Thibeault, Zetler, & Wilson, 1977) found no such effect in               Montana; however, this study has several methodological flaws,                  rendering it inconclusive in this                                               discussion. REFERENCESBeaumont, C., & Pianca, E. (2000).                  Historic neighborhood schools in the age of sprawl. Washington, DC:             National Trust for Historic Preservation. Retrieved October 1, 2001,            from http://www.nthp.org/issues/schoolsSum.pdf 
Bickel, R., &                  Howley, C. (2000). The influence of scale on student performance: A             multi-level extension of the Matthew principle. Education Policy                Analysis Archives, 8(22). [On-line serial]. Retrieved October 1,                2001, from http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v8n22.html 
Coleman,               J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American            Journal of Sociology, 94 (supplement), S95-S120. 
Fox, M. (1996).              Rural transportation as a daily constraint in students' lives. Rural            Educator, 17(2), 22-27. 
Howley, C. (2001). The rural school bus               ride in five states. Randolph, VT: Rural School and Community Trust.            Retrieved August 31, 2001, from                                                 http://www.ruralchallenge.org/bus.html 
Howley, C., & Bickel,                  R. (1999). The Matthew project: National report. Randolph, VT: Rural            Challenge Policy Program. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED            433 174) 
Howley, C., Howley, A., & Shamblen, S. (2001). Riding the            school bus: A study of the rural versus suburban experience in five             states. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 17(1),                          41-61. 
Killeen, K., & Sipple, J. (2000). School consolidation and             transportation policy: An empirical and institutional analysis.                 Randolph, VT: Rural School and Community Trust. Retrieved August 31,            2001, from http://www.ruralchallenge.org/publications.html 
Lu,                Y-C., and Tweeten, L. (1973). The impact of busing on student                   achievement. Growth and Change, 4(4), 44-46. 
Peshkin, A. (1982).              The imperfect union: School consolidation and community conflict.               Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
Putnam, R. (1993). What                 makes democracy work? National Civic Review, 82(2),                             101-107. 
Snyder, T., & Hoffman, C. (2001). Digest of education                statistics: 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education,                 National Center for Education Statistics. Tables 87 & 3, retrieved              December 5, 2001, from                                                          http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/digest/list_tables.html 
Spence,                   B. (2000). Long school bus rides: Their effect on school budgets,               family life, and student achievement. Rural Education Issue Digest.             Charleston, WV: AEL, Inc. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED            448 955) 
Thibeault, R., Zetler, A., & Wilson, A. (1977). The                  achievement of bus transported pupils. Journal of Teaching and                  Learning, 2(3), 17-22. 
U.S. Department of Commerce. (1998). Money             income in the United States: 1997 with separate data on valuation of            noncash benefits (Consumer Population Reports No. P60-200).                     Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 
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Aimee                Howley is a professor and chair of the Educational Studies                      Department at Ohio University. 
Craig B. Howley is an adjunct                  professor at Ohio University, codirector of the ACCLAIM Research                Initiative, and associate director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on                 Rural Education and Small Schools. 
This publication was prepared              with funding from the Office of Educational Research and                        Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no.                   ED-99-CO-0027. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily                 reflect the positions or policies of OERI, the Department, or AEL.           **Title:** Rural School Busing. ERIC Digest.                                            **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC/CRESS, P.O. Box 1348, Charleston, WV 25325. Tel                            800-624-9120 (Toll Free). For full text:                                        http://www.ael.org/eric/digests/edorc01-7.htm.                               **Descriptors:**  Academic Achievement,  Bus Transportation,  Consolidated Schools,              Disadvantaged Youth, Elementary Secondary Education, Poverty Areas,              Rural Schools, School Districts, Socioeconomic Status,  Student                Transportation                                                               **Identifiers:** ERIC Digests,  Home School Proximity, Rural Suburban Differences             
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