Today, many rural educators believe that the push for efficiency has gone too far. The emerging view is that rural and small schools are inherently more expensive to operate than other schools. Population sparsity, the appropriately small scale of rural schools, and the special needs of rural students and communities need to be accommodated with flexible regulation and ample economic support. Many rural educators hope that schooling will be recognized as an essential investment in an infrastructure that will support the kind of economic development that many rural communities have never experienced. Such thinking may have influenced the passage in 1988 of a new school finance law in Colorado, which establishes a classification based on eight types of school districts.
Much work needs to be done, however, to provide empirical justification for any particular typology.
The long history of interest by rural communities in their schools contrasts markedly with the more recent history of inadequate funding for rural schooling. When the expectations of rural schools were different, their funding was not perceived to be inadequate. Such problems indicate a failure of policy to comprehend what rural schools, and the communities and cultures that stand behind them, are really like. Equalization of funding, or even a comparatively high level of funding for rural school districts, will not change the disparity of rural and urban cultures and economic activity. As cultural journalists, they not only learn basic skills in a meaningful context, but they begin to understand and critique the world in which they live, according to Wigginton.