Why Rural Matters Addresses
Challenges of Rural Education in the 50 States
The Rural School and Community Trust has released Why
Rural Matters 2005, the third in its series of
reports that shine the spotlight on states in which rural
education should be, but often is not, a substantial priority.
As the country’s population continues to shift toward
urban centers and their suburban surroundings, issues
facing rural schools have become increasingly absent from
state-level policy discussions. Nonetheless, as the report
details, 27 percent of public school students attend schools
in communities smaller than 25,000, while 19 percent attend
schools in communities smaller than 2,500. These students,
though difficult to reach and track, are no less deserving
of high-quality education than their urban and suburban
peers. The report seeks to underline that fact while calling
attention to the disparities in resources, challenges,
and educational outcomes faced by rural schools in various
states.
The primary tool the authors use to demonstrate a state’s
focus on and success with rural education are four indicator
categories constructed specifically for the report. These
categories are (1) the importance of rural education in a
state; (2) the level of poverty within a state’s rural
communities; (3) the challenges, other than poverty, faced
by a state’s rural schools; and (4) the policy inputs
and outputs by which rural school success is determined. Each
of these categories is measured by a series of indicators
that the authors use to create a ranked list of states. The
higher a state’s ranking, the more urgently its rural
schools require focus in that area. Rankings from all four
areas were combined to create a “Rural Education Priority
Gauge,” which the authors used to emphasize those states
in which the educational context creates the greatest challenges
for rural schools.
Reported Results
Many states that ranked high on the “Rural Education
Priority Gauge” had relatively low percentages of rural
students in their schools. This reflects the enormous social
and economic challenges faced by rural schools in those states,
challenges that are often exacerbated because rural schools
are not the top priority of the state’s primary policymakers.
This means that, in addition to high rates of poverty, high
percentages of minority, ELL, or special education students,
and low adult education levels, these communities are very
frequently under-resourced and do not have a reservoir of
local wealth to tap. In contrast, many of the most rural states
in the country, even those that face strong demographic and
socioeconomic challenges, are much more likely to have successful
academic programs that are able to educate and graduate students.
The authors attribute this success largely to prevalence within
these states of small schools and districts, where local administrators
are able to make decisions with input from community members
and direct contact with teachers.
States such as these have substantially superior outcomes
when compared with many states that are predominantly urban.
These more urban states have very large gaps between their
indicators for poverty and other challenges and their indicators
for policy outcomes. In other words, these states achieved
less in their rural schools despite facing fewer disadvantages.
The authors attribute many of these problems to the “scale
of schooling.” Attempts by these states to impose urban,
large-district organizational structures on their rural schools
have resulted in less effective educational programs.
Policy Recommendations
In analyzing these results, the authors use their conclusions
to make a number of general policy recommendations that are
tied to the overall need for increased emphasis on rural education.
As might be surmised from their attribution of success in
rural education to the “scale of schooling,” the
report’s authors come down squarely against consolidation.
The authors advocate alternative ways of finding economies
of scale, notably emphasizing investment in technologies that
would improve a district’s distance learning capacity.
They state straightforwardly, “Policymakers cannot invent
too many ways to preserve the principal asset of rural education:
smaller schools.”
Other recommendations include using facilities as public
centers that could be equipped with technology and outreach
services that would improve the building’s significance
and worth for a rural community. The authors strongly advocate
for improved poverty and diversity weightings, arguing that
many states fail to account for the myriad challenges that
accompany high poverty and diversity, especially when they
are highly concentrated. Finally, the authors emphasize that
the declining populations of many rural areas are not a legitimate
reason to decrease the services rendered to the students that
are left behind in those areas, noting that improved schools
will be an essential part of any reversal of fortune for these
struggling communities.
The Rural School and Community Trust is an organization that
works to link rural schools in their quest for improvement.
Why Rural Matters is an important document for highlighting
the particular challenges faced by rural schools, especially
in states where they are an often neglected element of a vast
public education system. This report, as well as a state-by-state
reporting of its results, can be found on the Rural Trust
website.
Prepared by Nelly Ward, May 16, 2005
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