School and Community Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing Within Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale Region, and the Dilemmas of Educational Leadership in Gasfield Boomtowns

Abstract

Innovations associated with gas and oil drilling technology, including new hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques, have recently led to dramatic boomtown development in many rural areas that have endured extended periods of economic decline. The Marcellus Shale play, one of the world's largest gas-bearing shale formations, lies beneath approximately two-thirds of Pennsylvania, including some of the state's most economically lagging rural areas. Spurred by a state-level policy environment favorable to unconventional gas extraction, drilling activity in the last five years has rapidly increased, often with profound social, economic, and environmental implications for communities. In this paper we use schooling as a particular analytic lens for understanding the dynamics of natural resource boomtown development, community change, and how these changes may affect educational and instructional decision making. Using data from interviews and focus groups with educators and administrators in Pennsylvania communities experiencing intensive natural gas development, we discuss the multiple organizational, curricular, and educational dilemmas school leaders face in the context of both rapid, unpredictable community change, and an educational policy environment unfavorable to place-sensitive educational responses to local change.

Notes

See www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html.

Within Pennsylvania, Intermediate Units are meso-level educational administrative bodies that coordinate certain shared services across individual districts, such as vocational education.

Ironically, school district enrollments were largely unaffected and even continued to exhibit patterns of slow, long-term decline since most gas workers arriving to the area did not bring families with school-aged children (Kelsey, Hartman, Schafft, Borlu, & Costanzo, 2012; cf. Angel, 2014).

Wet gas generally refers to natural gas liquids, including compounds such as ethane and butane. The shift toward southwestern Pennsylvania by the gas industry was in part driven by plummeting natural gas (methane) prices and the demand for ethane in plastics manufacturing.

For CTCs, the story is quite different. CTCs had over time been informally assigned a second-class status as programming for students who were not academically inclined. As one Northern Tier educator told us, “When I was a kid growing up and the vo-tech building was built, it was a dumping ground for special ed.” However, with the emergence of the Marcellus Shale industry, CTC programs are far more frequently seen as tickets to high-wage employment, and the programs themselves are enjoying both increasing popularity and expansion in response to Marcellus Shale development.

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Brandn Green, Yetkin Borlu, and Leland Glenna to this work, which was funded in part through support from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, as well as Penn State's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, and the Children, Youth & Families Consortium.

Notes on contributors

Kai A. Schafft

Kai A. Schafft is an Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State University where he edits the Journal of Research in Rural Education and directs the Center on Rural Education and Communities.   His research broadly focuses on rural community development and the relationship between the well-being of rural schools and communities.

Catharine Biddle

Catharine Biddle is a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership at The Pennsylvania State University. Prior to her doctoral work, Catharine worked at several community-based educational nonprofits focusing on school and community development across the rural-urban continuum. She received her master's in Out of School Time Education and Leadership from Lesley University and her B.A. from Brown University. Her current research focuses on youth-adult partnership and youth activism in rural communities.