The book is now ready to order! Find out more at https://kentuckymoonbow.com/ruraleducation
In our lives, we have been fortunate to live and work in some amazing places: the serene high deserts of New Mexico, the rugged Rocky Mountains of Montana, the prairie grasslands and coniferous forests of Northern Minnesota, and the lush Appalachians of Eastern Kentucky. These are beautiful and special locations, but perhaps more complex than we might guess from driving through or flying over. These are diverse places, with Native Nations, Muslim immigrants from Africa and South Asia, families who have settled from Mexico and South America, and African Americans families have who have been embedded for generations, as well as the white folks that we often associate with rural America. Yes, they employ farmers and miners, but they are increasingly the place where entrepreneurs and coders can live as well. But when it comes to policies and educations, the needs of places like these are rarely understood. Instead, we have a very blunt assessment of communities based on economic indicators. Far too often, the tools and “research-based strategies” we have to improve opportunity and education were developed in urban centers near big research universities. We assume that what works to help children in urban high rises in New York City can be applied to children in Appalachia, simply because many people in both groups are considered poor.
It is after 20 years as researchers and practitioners in rural communities, finding over and again that the ideas developed in urban places are a poor fit, that Geoff and I decided to write a book about rural education. We partnered with Harvard Education Press, and we are excited to share that Rural Education in America: What Works for Our Students, Teachers, and Communities is now officially in print. What an exciting journey this has been, from the beginnings of the idea to the writing process, to now holding a real, physical copy that represents the culmination of many years of work.
But while this process of writing and editing was unfolding, our world was also changing in dramatic and unexpected ways. We submitted the full manuscript for review on February 29th, 2020, as the news was increasingly covering the many deaths in Italy from a novel virus. Just a few weeks later schools across the United States closed in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Our local school in Appalachian Southeastern Kentucky, where our children attend, closed on March 17. And here we are, eight months later, and many schools—including our children’s school—have not reopened. As a nation, we stand uncertain about how the virus will impact us long-term, and we think it is more important than ever to have a clearer understanding of rural communities and rural education. For example, we have expected schools to transition to remote instruction, even though in communities like our own more than 30% of families do not have any access to internet, and a large percentage of those with internet at home lack the bandwidth needed to stream videos or participate in online video conferencing. As we move towards recovery, we do not know what children in rural communities will need to resume their education in a way that allows them to follow their path towards a good life and career. We cannot assume the pathway for recovery will be the same for everyone.
In this book, our goal is to bring the unique needs of rural communities into focus so that we can be more targeted and strategic in building greater opportunity. We began by creating a framework for understanding rural communities and narrowing in on their specific needs. We identify three forces that shape rural education, specifically economic vitality, community leadership, and population stability. Although we originally focused on education at large, we would expect that these forces would also have a big influence on how well communities weather a crisis like the coronavirus. From there, we move on to key issues in rural education that roughly follow a child’s developmental trajectory. These are early childhood education and care, literacy development, STEM education, and college and career readiness.
These three forces have a large impact on rural communities and schools. For example, low-income rural communities that are losing population have already watched their hospitals closed or downsized to limited specialities. This puts extra stress on the community during a pandemic, as has been seen in places like Gallup, New Mexico. Poor leadership and inadequate funding meant that the local community hospital was overhwelmed — Doctor’s Without Borders stepped in to help and literally set up three hotels to treat patients that could not get help.
Some of the issues we raise feel extra pertinent during a global pandemic, including:
The Digital Divide Violates Rural Students’ Civil Right to Education
Allen Pratt, Executive Director for the National Rural Education Association, wrote, “Without broadband connectivity, kids living in rural areas are being prepared to compete in a 21st Century economy with 20th Century tools.” Before the pandemic hit, we already knew that lack of access to high speed internet meant students were unable to complete homework assignments, and that there was a connection between internet access and STEM careers. We also knew that the digital divide was a big problem: according to a Pew research report, one-sixth of families with school-aged children do not have access to high-speed internet at home. Most of these children are from low-income backgrounds; nearly one-third of families earning below $50,000 do not have high-speed internet. Online access at home for rural African American and Hispanic students is even more grim; in remote rural communities 41 percent of African American students and 26 percent of Hispanic students have no internet access.
At this point, the only access that many children have to schooling is through the internet. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution guarantees children access to a “free and appropriate public education.” Where is the educational access now? Is it free, if it requires families to purchase internet? What will be the solution moving forward, and particularly if it takes years to develop a vaccine? Currently, broadband infrastructure is not treated like a national emergency, but it is, in fact, limiting the rights of children and creating huge gaps in access to education. With no clear end to the virus in sight, we need to make broadband infrastructure a national priority. This is especially true since children in high poverty settings are the most likely to have their schools closed due to the pandemic.
Rural Communities are Left Out of Urban-biased Statistical Models
In many of our social programs, we rely on statistics to tell us what the best approaches. However, the strength of a statistical model is based on the number of people measured. This means that rural communities are often left out of educational policy dialogue because small populations make them so difficult to capture. In fact, we don’t even have a very clear understanding of what constitutes “rural,” as you can see from the graphic that shows how often rural areas are lumped into urban definitions. But even when we have a very clear sense of rural, the approaches used to measure and understand progress often falter in small communities. Any rural teacher can tell you that reliably measuring student progress year-to-year can be challenging in areas with a small population of students. But, even more troubling, there are many students who are almost completely absent from our empirical knowledge base, including migrant students, rural racial minorities, and rural students with disabilities. Now, it will be difficult to understand how some of these populations are impacted by school closures and what their needs are moving forward.
As you can see from this map, rules about what constitutes “rural” can lead to very rural places being labeled urban. This further complicates our understanding of students and their needs. In a dataset, these children would be treated as if they were urban, and this misunderstanding becomes part of the analysis and recommendations.
Additionally, many places are now using statistical models to determine when it is safe for children to attend schools. Incidence rate mapping works really well in population-dense communities, but is far trickier in rural communities. For example, when there is an outbreak at a prison or a long-term care facility, it can swamp the data captured in small communities, making it difficult to understand if there is community spread. Going by incidence alone, children in these communities will be kept away from school, even if there is little risk beyond the one facility. We may need better models to understand the risks of school attendance in rural communities. This is a major issue in rural states that use incidence rate mapping in small populations as a cut-point for receiving educational services.
Schools Play an Oversized Role in Serving Rural Communities
Rural schools provide far more than just curriculum and teaching. Many provide food for evening dinner, and breakfast and lunch over the summer. They offer clinics where children get vaccines and treatment for illness, and sometimes even glasses. When a school is closed, there is a whole constellation of services that are far harder to obtain. Plus, school is a safety net for children, particularly in places where the stress of poverty sometimes lead to substance abuse. We have seen opioid-related deaths increase by 30% during the pandemic, a problem that looms large in rural America. We have to understand that the children who live in homes impacted by opioids are also under increased stress, and realistically there are children who are fundamentally unsafe, and we may not know unless they require emergency medical attention.
In the face of an economic recession, schools will have budget cuts. There is a good chance that some of the auxiliary programs will be the first to go. And yet schools will be in the forefront of helping children overcome time spent in quarantine. Yet at the same time, rural schools receive disproportionately low funding, compared to urban districts.
Rural Communities and Schools have Tremendous Strengths
But we want to emphasize that one thing we have found, over and again, and that is the strengths of rural schools. This is intuitive to us, since we grew up in and live in rural communities. But many do not know how strong-knit communities can be, and what committed and excellent teachers there are. We are certain that if anyone has the heart and resilience to deal with the issues at hand, it is rural schools and rural teachers. You may be surprised to learn that social mobility can also be greater in rural communities, or that rural communities can also be more socially and racially integrated. Rural America can provide a test case for our country of how to overcome obstacles in a way that helps many different kinds of people.
Strengths of rural communities
We are glad to be tackling these topics in an era when the national mood on rural communities is mixed, and sometimes quite negative. We believe that the first step in healing a rural-urban divide is better understanding. Providing a quality education to all children is a universal value that connects our entire country, whether a person lives in the Massachusetts Bay or amongst the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains. At the same time, the infrastructure and supports in place for rural communities can be vastly different from each other. Until we begin to better understand the needs of rural communities better, our rural schools are going to continue on in the shadows, expected to implement education in a way that was designed for urban realities. We can do better than that. After all, we know from history that our country is the strongest when all groups of people are thriving.
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Sky and Geoff Marietta are passionate about rebuilding Main Street businesses in Appalachian Kentucky. Look for some of our blog posts below, or find out more about our start here.
