By Bob Klein, Karen Eppley, Sara L. Hartman, Dan Showalter, and Jerry Johnson October 30, 2024 Let’s agree to forget about Wednesday. Maybe we brush our teeth, maybe go to work. Maybe we do neither. Perhaps we decide to leave our loved ones, perhaps our young kids, to fend for themselves. They’ll probably be fine getting to school on their own, eating well, staying safe. Plus, there are six other days where we can show up responsibly. Wednesday won’t mind. Or will she? If we divided every school-aged child in the U.S. evenly among the days of the week, Wednesday would be the child who attends a rural school. 7.3 million public school students are enrolled in rural school districts. And then, there is a one-in-seven chance that she would live in a home with a household income below the federal poverty line. Nearly 10 million Wednesday children live in the United States, and they need our attention. The 10th edition of Why Rural Matters was published in 2023 by the National Rural Education Association (NREA). It uses publicly available data to detail the contexts and conditions of rural education in the United States with accessible state-by-state insight. Throughout Why Rural Matters’ history, it has served policymakers at local, state, and national levels, researchers, as well as families and others with an interest in promoting equitable educational opportunities for children who attend rural schools in the United States. States are ranked on 25 different statistical indicators in five major categories. These categories are aggregated to assess the relative urgency for action in each state, resulting in what we call a state priority ranking. Virginia ranks 19 among the states, meaning that only 18 states have more pressing concerns for rural education than Virginia. The overall priority ranking is the result of comparative scores in the five gauges below. Importance The report calculates the diversity of a state’s rural student population by looking at the likelihood that two rural students, chosen at random, would identify as different races. Virginia ranks 12th in the United States on this measure, with a 42% likelihood that two students chosen at random would be of different races. Finally, 12.7% of Virginia’s rural school students live in homes with household incomes below the federal poverty line. The report also includes measures of states’ rural multilingual (ML) learner populations. Virginia rural school districts serve 7,186 ML students, 3.2% of the state’s total rural enrollment. Virginia’s absolute and proportional ML enrollment is higher than the neighboring states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Policy The educational policy context in Virginia is very concerning, with only six states ranking of greater concern on this gauge. Virginia’s rural students tend to attend large schools in large districts. The challenge of having fewer and larger rural schools is seen in the fact that Virginia spends only $9 on instruction to every $1 spent on transportation, which is the 10th lowest in the United States. Two of its neighbors, West Virginia and North Carolina, represent more extreme cases of instructional-to-transportation dollar ratios. West Virginia has the poorest instruction to transportation ratio, spending $6.40 on instruction relative to every transportation dollar, while North Carolina spends $15.14 on instruction for every dollar spent on transportation. Only six states had lower relative spending on transportation. In both cases, the high and low, the ratios varied according to the relative size of schools and districts. Educational Outcomes Only four states have more pressing needs for educational outcomes than Virginia. In particular, Virginia has the third highest “poverty gap” in eighth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In other words, if you compare the reading scores of rural Virginia students who live in homes with household incomes below the poverty line to the reading scores of rural Virginia students who live in homes where the household income is above the federal poverty line, there’s a big difference – so big that only two states, Illinois and Mississippi, have greater disparity. Relatedly, Virginia had the 7th lowest NAEP reading scores for rural students in the United States. Access to Supports for Learning and Development Virginia’s rural students have lower access to broadband Internet than rural students in other states. Not only is broadband a key affordance for learning, but the United Nations identified internet connectivity as a human right. Yet almost one in six rural students have no access to broadband in Virginia. Access to public preschool has positive impacts on future educational markers, but only 26% of Virginia’s rural pre-school aged students were enrolled in public preschool. In the case of both broadband access and pre-school enrollment, only eleven states had poorer access. In more positive news, only 3.6% of rural school children in Virginia were without health insurance, with only six states having a lower percentage of uninsured students. The data used in the 2023 Why Rural Matters report come mostly from the 2021-22 school year: a year that due to the COVID-19 pandemic was unlike any other in several generations. Despite the unique conditions around the 2023 report, it reflects some consistencies in terms of what the data reveal about the impact of prioritizing equity (or not prioritizing equity) for rural learners and, as a result, which states tend to appear at the top of the priority list. Over the 20-year history of the report, for example, Mississippi has been the leading priority state every year of the report, except for 2009 when it was number three. Nevertheless, “zooming in” on the details can be as important as the “wide angle” picture when it comes to acting to improve rural education. The latest report therefore includes for the first time a data dashboard that allows readers to explore the data themselves and a communications toolkit to share customized findings. Even the states that are low on the priority list, such as Wyoming, have work to do if every rural child is to receive equitable learning opportunities. The report and associated tools are designed to foster and focus conversations by generating questions and giving readers both a broad picture of rural education in the United States as well as pictures that are “cropped” at state levels where the most impactful policies and practices are often decided. That rural matters is likely clear to readers of this blog. Why rural matters may also be clear, though the why may be more personal. Yet if we are to advance the case that every student matters to our collective future, the report offers a starting point and common statistical vocabulary to begin developing a shared sense of Why Rural Matters. Dr. Bob Klein (Eastern Illinois University), Dr. Karen Eppley (Pennsylvania State University), Dr. Sara L. Hartman (Ohio University), Dr. Daniel Showalter (Eastern Mennonite University), and Dr. Jerry Johnson (East Carolina University) are the rural education experts who co-authored the Why Rural Matters 2023: Centering Equity and Opportunity Report. We thank them for their generosity in sharing this data and analysis with our readers. Subscribe here! * indicates required Email Address * /* real people should not fill this in and expect good things – do not remove this or risk form bot signups */
