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Rural Areas Perceive Policy Tilt

Urban Bias Seen on Stimulus, But Ed. Dept. Vows Balance

Hamlet, N.C.

When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talks about using merit pay to attract the best teachers to the classroom, he probably doesn’t have in mind a place like Richmond County, N.C.

In this rural community where the unemployment rate is nearly 14 percent and there’s no movie theater for miles around, school administrators say money isn’t the recruitment tool it is in the big city.

And when Mr. Duncan talks about states’ needing to embrace charter schools to give parents more educational options, he may not be envisioning places like South Dakota or Montana, where half the school districts have just a few hundred students—and little demand...