Did it ever occur to you that what rural communities really need is a privately managed charter school to compete with the community school? Apparently the idea sounds swell to Andy Smarick, who doesn’t think that communities should have any public schools.

Smarick worked as deputy commissioner of education in Chris Christie’s administration in New Jersey and before that worked in the George W. Bush administration and for various Republican legislators and conservative policy centers. He currently works for Andrew Rotherham at Bellwether Education Partners.

He is a proponent of charters everywhere, as the report under review shows.

The review by Craig Howley of Ohio University for the National Education Policy Center is critical of the premise that rural areas need charter schools. Howley says:

“While it is presented in a fashion similar to scholarly research, serious omissions and distortions make New Frontier little more than a political lobbying document targeting rural regions (even the most urbanized states have rural regions). Especially problematic are the inadequate support or explanation for New Frontier’s premises and its presentation of superficial and misleading use of research, particularly rural education research. In the end, it is little more than an advocacy document with premises that predetermine its recommendations: how to establish more charter schools in rural regions. Missing research and slanted representations render the document useless as a source of objective information. New Frontier is propaganda—neither a thoughtful inquiry nor an honest report.”