Congress approved special grants for rural schools a few years ago because the federal money often is based on school-district population and the grants going to low-enrollment schools (fewer than 600 students) were so small that they didn’t buy much and achieved even less. But by giving these schools the option of combining grant money and applying it to a single issue – technology improvements, teacher training, drug education – the grants were then large enough to matter, the students benefited in a substantial way and, as a bonus, school districts regained some local control.

The Senate, impressed by this sensible idea, wanted this year to raise the grant funding under the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP) from approximately $162 million to $175 million. President Bush has a smaller number in mind: Zero. He proposes under what should be the current budget to wipe out REAP along with some other domestic spending, saying they no longer are affordable. This is a terrible idea, and it would be surprising if members of his own party in Congress went along with it.

Last year, 116 rural Maine schools received a total of nearly $2 million in REAP money, schools that normally would get only a few thousand dollars – not enough to hire a reading specialist or renovate a classroom – were able to combine grants and improve the education of their students. Before, recalled Sen. Susan Collins, who wrote and guided the passage of REAP, one Maine school district was awarded an enrollment-based grant of $28 to fund a Safe and Drug-free School program. Under REAP, that money would go toward a limited list of approved programs – one hopes programs that produce grant awards worth more than $28.

REAP was approved as part of the president’s No Child Left Behind Act. Last April, nearly two dozen senators, including, Sens. Collins and Olympia Snowe, urged committee leaders to fund REAP at its fully authorized level of $300 million. The senators pointed out that, “The smallest and highest poverty rural districts are those that will have the greatest difficulty meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. … The rural funds will be used to attract teachers, purchase technology, upgrade curriculum, and other measures necessary for rural districts to meet the new expectations.”

The expectations remain, but now, at least in the administration’s budget, some of the money is gone. The administration never said that no child would be left behind in big towns or cities but forgotten in rural America. Congress should see that the $175 million is returned to the budget, and that rural schools are given the opportunity to compete and succeed.