New research paints an alarming picture of the crises facing rural students

Key points:

Many rural communities still face multiple crises of educational loss, economic outcomes, unemployment and mental health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Why rural is important 2023 report.

The report examines the needs and inequalities affecting 9.5 million students attending public schools in rural areas (more than one in five students nationally). The report critically examines how educational supports and resources are distributed for the well-being of rural students.

Any issue that affects rural families and communities also affects rural children, including all aspects of education, mental health and physical well-being.

“For more than 20 years, the Why rural is important “The report series has been the go-to resource for policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and others who want to understand the contexts and conditions of rural education in all 50 states,” said Dr. Jerry Johnson of the University of East Carolina, researcher and co-author of the Why rural is important report.

“He Why rural is important The report provides NREA state leaders, policymakers, and communities with the information and data needed to take action in their state capitals, advocating for the needs of rural students and highlighting the strengths of rural schools,” said Allen Pratt , Executive Director of the National Rural Education Association. (AREA).

Key findings include:

Rural schools

• At least half of public schools were rural in 13 states.
• At least a third of public schools were rural in 14 states.
• About half of all rural students attended school in 10 states.

Access to school counselors and psychologists.

• Rural school districts had an average of 310 students served by a school counselor or psychologist compared to a ratio of 295 to 1 in non-rural districts.
• Seven states had rural districts with ratios less than 400 to 1 (Minnesota, California, Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana, Indiana, and Michigan).
• Children in rural Michigan had the highest ratio: an average of 574 students for every school psychologist or counselor.

Most Rural Gifted and Talented Programs Demonstrate Gender Equity

• Nationally, more than half of students in gifted and talented programs in rural districts were women. Rural Rhode Island had the highest percentage of women in gifted and talented programs at 62.4 percent. However, variations between states showed that more work is needed.
• In three states, women's participation in gifted programs in rural schools is at least eight percentage points lower than men's: Alaska (40.0 percent vs. 60.0 percent), New Hampshire (45.0 percent, 4 percent vs. 54.6 percent) and Wyoming (45.7 percent). compared to 54.3 percent). And women were greatly underrepresented in rural gifted math programs and competitions.
• More pressing than gender equity was the absence of gifted and talented programs in some rural schools. Of the 24,736 public rural schools in the United States, 10,071 (40.7 percent) appeared to offer no specific programs for gifted students.

More Access to Gifted and Talented Programs Needed for Black and Hispanic Students in Rural Districts

• Although 17.1 percent of students in rural schools identified as Hispanic, only 9.1 percent of students in gifted programs in those same schools were Hispanic.
• Similarly, 10.6 percent of the rural school population identified as Black, but only 5.2 percent of the gifted student population in rural schools was Black.
• In contrast, 64.8 percent of rural students were white, but 77.4 percent of rural students enrolled in gifted programs were white.

Additional topics found in the report include:

• Rural areas appear to offset some of the impact of poverty on educational outcomes.
• Many rural areas still lack basic Internet access.
• Students in rural school districts are more likely to graduate from high school than their non-rural counterparts.

The Rural Schools and Communities Fund produced the first Why rural is important report in 1999. Research and publication of the report passed to the NREA in 2023.

“Working in some of the poorest and most challenging places, the Rural School and Community Trust engages young people in learning linked to their communities, improves the quality of teaching and school leadership, and advocates in a variety of ways for state education.” and federal appropriate. policies, including efforts to ensure equitable and adequate resources for rural schools,” said Robert Mahaffey, executive director of the Rural School and Community Trust, a national nonprofit organization that addresses the crucial relationship between good schools and thriving communities.

More students attend rural schools than the 100 largest school districts in the United States combined. Nearly one in seven rural students lives in poverty, one in 15 lacks health insurance, and one in 10 has changed residences in the previous 12 months. The problems affecting rural families and communities extend to children in rural areas. This broader picture points to the importance of including all aspects of students' mental, emotional, and physical well-being in the national discourse.

However, rural schools and students often seem invisible because many policymakers lack personal experience in rural schools and have not yet developed a full understanding of the spatial inequalities facing rural communities. Spatial and educational equity is conceptualized in two ways in the National Research Agenda in Rural Education: 1) spatial inequity, or how equity challenges relate to place, and 2) how equity, or rather inequity, relates to the diverse identities and social circumstances present within the school and community rural.

After years of measuring racial diversity through the inadequate lens of “white and non-white,” researchers used the Rural Diversity Index launched in 2019. Why rural is important report. The index shows that by randomly choosing two students from a school in a rural district in the United States, there would be approximately a one in three chance that the students would identify as being from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. The most recent statistics describing that probability are 33.4 percent in 2023, up from 31.9 percent in the 2019 report, underscoring the increasingly diversified landscape of rural America. Additional key findings from the report are as follows:

In 50 states, rural districts receive a disproportionately larger share of school funding due to the higher relative costs of running rural schools. However, fourteen states provided disproportionately less funding to rural districts: Nebraska had the most significant disparity, followed by Vermont, Rhode Island, Iowa, Delaware, South Dakota, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota. .

Why rural is important was published by NREA and its partners to examine how educational supports and resources for student well-being are being distributed, shedding light on which rural children most need additional support. The report offers a state-by-state look at a variety of factors affecting the education of rural students. It was distributed today at the National Forum for the Advancement of Rural Education (NFARE) conference and published in the NREA website, including data on the condition of rural education in each state.

This press release originally appeared online.

Laura Ascione is the editorial director of eSchool Media. She graduated from the prestigious Philip Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

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