Rural American students in education
Rural American students in education. In most developing countries the rural pupils and students perform poorly. There are reasons for that. Some places do not have enough schools to accommodate all rural pupils and schools. In some places schools are located long distances from residential areas and so students have it hard to access schools and thus leading them to their failure. While that is the situation in developing economies let us have a look at the American situation.
Students from America’s rural communities graduate from high school at rates higher than the national average. Fully 80 percent of them finish 12th grade, just a shade below the 81 percent who graduate from more prosperous suburban schools. Making up about 14 percent of the school-age population, rural students also score better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress than do students in cities. And then something goes wrong.
Rural residents and rural American students
Residents of rural communities attend college at rates remarkably lower than those in both urban and suburban areas. Just 19 percent of rural Americans hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with an average of 33 percent nationwide. Right after high school, 59 percent of rural residents go on to college, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, compared to 62 percent of urban graduates and 67 percent of suburban graduates. When rural students do go to college, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, they are more likely to drop out.
Obstacles to rural residents in rural American students
Numerous obstacles have historically kept rural residents from earning degrees and other credentials beyond high school. And many of those obstacles are the same ones facing low-income urban populations: The blue-collar jobs that awaited them didn’t require a degree; their parents and other relatives hadn’t gone to college; their K-12 schools, chronically short of teachers, left them unprepared; they have problems with money, child care, and health.
Differences in rural American students
But there is one substantial difference between rural high school graduates and their urban and suburban counterparts: Rural students lack access. According to the Urban Institute, about 41 million adults live 25 miles away from the nearest institution of higher learning. And 3 million residents of these “higher education deserts” lack broadband internet.
The American story’s details can be obtained from the underneath link:
https://focus.luminafoundation.org/in-rural-america-too-few-roads-lead-to-college-success/
In another study carried out in America about rural education in the country, the following are the results of the same
In a study published in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences in May, we examine the rural education landscape in great detail. We explore three primary questions:
Do student achievement and learning rates vary across different types of rural districts? Specifically, do we see differences by region of the country, relative geographic isolation, and characteristics of the local economy?
Do any educational differences across rural districts simply reflect differences in demographic factors, such as socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic composition?
How do patterns of average academic performance and learning rates differ for rural versus nonrural students? Do these patterns vary for different student groups?
To pursue this project, we leverage the SEDA dataset, which provides measures of educational opportunity for nearly all schools and districts in the United States. We focus on two measures: average third-grade achievement and learning rates from third to eighth grade.
A community’s achievement score corresponds to local third-grade students’ average standardized test score, while its learning rate indicates achievement changes across grade levels or how much the average student learns each year. For this post, we focus on achievement, which we interpret as a reflection of students’ early childhood educational opportunities; this includes both school experiences and out-of-school resources often tied to a community’s average socioeconomic status.
First, however, we must define what exactly constitutes “rural” education. Of an average nationwide enrollment of 3.75 million students per grade, approximately 715,000 (19 percent) attend “rural” schools; 540,000 (14 percent) attend “rural” districts; and 553,000 (15 percent) are in “rural” counties. Some students appear in multiple categories, and some do not.
What is the status of educational opportunity in rural America?
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