Rural schools embrace advantages, face challenges
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Educating students in rural schools presents a few challenges along with several positive aspects, according to a study by the National Association of State Boards of Education.
The NASBE represents state and territorial boards of education in the United States, and they have studied the challenges of educating students in rural schools in an effort to help children succeed.
The demographic in the study included nearly 12 million rural students, and it wasn’t difficult to find those students since one-third of U.S. public schools are in rural areas.
First, the good news: rural schools have advantages. The study found that rural schools have smaller and more personalized learning opportunities and higher levels of community support. Arlee High School English teacher Anna Baldwin and 2014 Montana Teacher of the Year, agreed that smaller class sizes are a benefit.
She said that a high school English teacher in a Class C school averages about 75 students per day within six classes. She has a friend that also teaches six classes a day in Illinois, but in his Latin classroom, he teaches 190 students per day.
“If I had 190 students I would not be able to keep up with providing meaningful feedback on their writing – it would take hours upon hours to mark every set of essays I assigned,” she said. “So smaller class size is usually a significant advantage.” Baldwin said she feels rural schools also have a permanence to the population that allows people to develop connections.
“We don’t have a large population of transient kids – I don’t mean homeless; I mean kids who move around all the time,” she said. “Part of that is due to our small community — people tend to move away from small communities, not to them.” Many of her students have lived near the district for many years. “We enroll few new kids each year, and that means we get to know them and their families over time,” she said. “It’s easy for me to chat with a group’s teachers from previous years to ask for ideas or assistance in reaching those kids. I love the fact that I teach the children of former students, and I’m guessing that happens infrequently in larger, more urban districts.”
St. Ignatius Schools District Superintendent Jason Sargent said that smaller rural schools have an opportunity to provide personalized education with class sizes that allow teachers to know students on an individual basis, including student names. He said his school is able to participate in a program that offers individual intervention for at-risk students to support their educational well-being.
Rural schools also face their share of challenges. That doesn’t mean schools with a larger demographic in urban areas don’t have problems, but this particular study focused on helping to improve rural schools, and so they looked at the overall problems in an effort to help them improve.
The issues rural schools face include less opportunity to discover career opportunities, isolation makes it hard to find qualified staff especially foreign language and special education teachers, and with a smaller population, students are less likely to be motivated by a large number of higher-achieving peers, according to the study.
The study also explored other factors facing rural schools including cultural and virtual isolation, poverty and demographic shifts, and a lack of resources and assets.
“From large agricultural areas in Arkansas to Indian reservations in Montana, rural schools share a common characteristic: they are called to do more with less,” according to the study.
Superintendent Sargent said funding is one of his biggest challenges.
“We are big enough to still offer opportunities in our school, but it is becoming more difficult with limited funding,” he said.
The Mission district tried to pass a bond in the last election to supplement funding, like many rural schools are doing, but it failed. He said the school will continue working on the bond.
“We are currently trying to improve our career and technical facilities and opportunities,” he said. “If we can get a bond passed, we want to build a new shop, computer lab and family consumer science room with early childhood and human health jumpstarts.”
The study found that state policy needs to address four key actions to help rural schools: training to translate technology access into high-quality learning, helping rural communities form partnerships with local organizations, allow for increased funding flexibility, and provide incentives for districts to build connections between each other. The final recommendation addressed teacher turnover rates that tend to be higher in rural schools. The research stated that schools need support to proactively develop a comprehensive strategy to recruit, train, and retain the teachers, principals, and educational support staff needed to ensure all its students get an excellent education.
“Students, parents, educators, and community members in rural areas all seek the knowledge, skills, and dispositions in college, careers, and civic life,” conclude the report’s authors. “Through considering and enacting strong, forward-thinking policies, this aspiration will become reality for significantly more students.”
