Why Rural Matters: The Need for Every State To Take Action on Rural Education.

This is the first in a series of reports on the context of rural education in the 50 states. We believe it is the first attempt to describe the importance of rural education in each of the 50 states, and to suggest the urgency with which policymakers should address the needs of rural schools and communities. One fourth of U.S. schoolchildren go to schools in ru­ ral areas or small towns of less than 25,000 population. Fourteen percent go to school in even smaller places with fewer than 2,500 people. But these children, and the com­ munities and schools they live and study in, are largely unnoticed in the national debate over the direction of Ameri­ can education. While policymakers, advisors, and schol­ ars debate-and they should-the wisdom of alternative policies for urban schools, and for special education stu­ dents or second language learners, or for poor and minor­ ity students, we rarely read serious analysis of the particular policy issues faced by students who live in rural places. This void is not a matter of indifference as much as it . is a matter of constituency. Rural people are so widely dis­ persed that they are politically invisible. They are a demo­ graphic and political majority in only five states (Maine, Mississippi, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia) and a handful of congressional districts. Even in states with a numerically large rural population, rural people are often a particularly small demographic minority. California has 2.2 million rural people-more than all but seven states­ but they constitute less than 8% of California's population. Rural people are scattered among many jurisdictions, with varying degrees of local control. They are citizens of remote places too numerous to count, each with distinguish­ ing socioeconomic characteristics that make fact finding difficult and conclusions elusive.