Rural schools, often a footnote in discussions about education reform, got a share of the spotlight in the 2003 Brown Center Report on American Education. The news was mostly good: rural schools typically score above average on state tests of student achievement, despite spending less per pupil than suburban or city schools. And rural high schools have lower drop-out rates.

But while rural high schools manage to graduate a higher percentage of students than suburban or city schools, they send a significantly smaller percentage on to four-year colleges.

Rural School Snapshot

The 2003 Brown Center Report on American Education looked at rural school performance as part of its annual study of national trends in achievement among public school students. The report notes that rural schools face particular challenges compared to suburban and urban schools:

• They have less money to spend per pupil than other schools: $5,734, compared to $6,229 for suburban schools and $6,575 for urban schools.
• They are also significantly smaller, with a mean school size of 392 students, compared to 665 and 663 for suburban and urban schools respectively. That can reduce the ability of many rural high schools to offer a full range of advanced placement and International Baccalaureate courses.
• Teachers in rural schools are more often required to teach several subjects, which makes it near impossible for many such schools to meet the requirement of the No Child Left Behind law that secondary school teachers major in the subjects that they teach.
• A greater percentage of their funding comes from state rather than local sources, which puts them at a disadvantage when, as now, state budgets are being slashed.

On the other hand, given that both poverty and race have been linked to school achievement, rural school demographics would tend to favor higher achievement:

• A smaller percentage of students in rural schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunch than in urban schools, 39 percent compared to 57 percent. The percentage is lowest in suburban schools: 32 percent.
• While this varies enormously by state, on average rural schools enroll smaller percentages of minority students. About 80 percent of rural school students are white, compared to 37 percent in urban schools and 66 percent in suburban schools.

And, rural schools are popular in their communities. Recruiting teachers is difficult, but keeping them seems to be less of a problem.

• A 2002 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll found that rural residents gave their schools higher grades than either suburban or urban residents, with 53 percent awarding their schools an A or a B, compared to 52 percent of suburban residents and 32 percent of urban residents.
• A recent study found that rural schools have lower teacher turnover than other schools nationally.

The Bottom Line: Achievement

“Rural schools in the earliest grades score pretty well,” noted Loveless. An analysis of 2002 scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that in reading, rural fourth graders achieve at a level close to that of suburban students. In addition, data from 14 states show that in 11 of the states, rural school students do better than average on state-administered achievement tests.

While rural school students in 12 grade do a bit better than urban students on the NAEP, the gap between rural and suburban students grows wider. “They begin to tail off in high school. There appears to be something in rural high schools that might be a problem.”

Loveless also noted that among students from all types of schools, student achievement gains are much stronger in the early grades, especially in math. “There seems to be something about adolescent culture that makes it very hard to impress achievement gains on these students,” said Loveless, who added that the job of convincing teens to value academic achievement “is the next tough nut to crack” in the effort to improve achievement.

“I’m not one of those who believes that things like smaller high schools will make a big difference,” said Loveless. “I think what’s required is a cultural change, and that is very hard to achieve.”

The Step Not Taken

One of the signal achievements of rural educators is success in holding on to their seniors until graduation day. Here, rural schools outperform both suburban and urban schools, with 94.6 percent of students who start the year as seniors going on to graduate in June. That compares to rates of 92.5 percent for suburban seniors and 89.7 percent for urban seniors.

All of which makes it particularly striking that the percentage of seniors who not only graduate from high school but apply to college is the lowest among rural schools: 54.3 percent, compared to 61.6 percent among suburban seniors and 56.5 percent among urban seniors.

“It seems that there is a loss of potential here that we should be concerned about,” said Loveless. Loveless noted that the report doesn’t answer the question of why so many qualified rural high school seniors are deciding against college, though it cites a recent University of Chicago study which suggested that for rural students, the desire to stay close to home after high school can lead to a decision to forego a four-year college.

Loveless speculated that rural teens may also not have a good understanding of what a four-year college offers, as compared to a local community college. “You have to expand kids’ worlds,” said Loveless, suggesting that web-based learning might provide a window to a wider world for rural students.

Resources:

• Read the Brown Center report on line. [1]
• The Rural School and Community Trust (tk) has information and resources on rural education. [2]