why rural matters 2011-12

Why Rural Matters 2011-12The Condition of Rural Education in the 50 States

Marty Strange, Policy ProgramDirectorJerry Johnson, Ed.D.Daniel ShowalterRobert Klein, Ph.D.

A Report of the Rural School

and Community Trust Policy Program

January 2012

Why Rural Matters 2011-12The Condition of Rural Education in the 50 States

Marty Strange, Policy ProgramDirectorJerry Johnson, Ed.D.Daniel ShowalterRobert Klein, Ph.D.

A Report of the Rural School and Community Trust Policy Program

January 2012

Why Rural Matters 2011-12

The Condition of Rural Education in the 50 States

© 2012 by the Rural School and Community TrustAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America

Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of thispublication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means or storedin a database or retrieval system without prior written permission of the publisher.

The Rural School and Community Trust expresses appreciation to the VerizonFoundation for financial support to publish Why Rural Matters 2011-12.

A PDF version of this report is available at the Rural Trust’s website:www.ruraledu.org

Rural School and Community Trust4455 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 310Washington, DC 20008(202) 822-3919

The Rural School and Community Trust is a national nonprofit organizationaddressing the crucial relationship between good schools and thrivingcommunities. Our mission is to help rural schools and communities grow bettertogether. Working in some of the poorest, most challenging places, the RuralTrust involves young people in learning linked to their communities, improves thequality of teaching and school leadership, and advocates in a variety of ways forappropriate state and federal educational policies including efforts to ensureequitable and adequate resources for rural schools.

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1The Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1Gauging Rural Education in the 50 States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1New and Revised Gauges and Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3Notes on Report Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Importance Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5Student and Family Diversity Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7Educational Policy Context Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9Educational Outcomes Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13Longitudinal Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15Rural Education Priority Gauge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Conclusions and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19The Southern Hegemony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19The Special Education and Poverty Dichotomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20Spending and Fiscal Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20The Bottom Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

Maps of State Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

State-by-State Results (alphabetical by state) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Indicators (rankings of all 50 states on each indicator)Importance Gauge Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78Student and Family Diversity Gauge Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83Educational Policy Context Gauge Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88Educational Outcomes Gauge Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93Longitudinal Gauge Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98

WHY RURAL MATTERS 2011- 12 1

Introduction

Why Rural Matters 2011-12 is the sixth in a seriesof biennial reports analyzing the contexts andconditions of rural education in each of the 50

states and calling attention to the need for policymakers toaddress rural education issues in their respective states.

While it is the sixth in a series, this report is not simply anupdating of data from earlier editions. On the contrary,from one report to the next, we have deliberately altered thestatistical indicators and gauges to call attention to the vari-ability and complexity of rural education. Our intent inthese reports is not—as it is in many state-by-state analy-ses—to compare states in terms of their differing rates ofprogress toward an arbitrary goal. Rather, our intent is (1)to provide information and analyses that highlight the pri-ority policy needs of rural public schools and the communi-ties they serve, and (2) to describe the complexity of ruralcontexts in ways that can help policymakers better under-stand the challenges faced by their constituencies and for-mulate policies that are responsive to those challenges.

In 2008-09 (the school year used in this report), 9,628,501public school students were enrolled in rural school dis-tricts—20% of the nation’s total public school enrollment.Meeting the needs of more than 9.6 million children is achallenge that demands and deserves the attention of anation. It is also a challenge that calls for looking at issuesfrom multiple perspectives in order to develop informedunderstandings that move beyond overly simplistic notionsabout rural schools and the communities they serve.

The DataThe data used for Why Rural Matters 20011-12 were com-piled from information collected and maintained by theNational Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and theU.S. Census Bureau. All data used here are available to thegeneral public and may be downloaded in tabular formats.

To define “rural,” we used the 12-item urban-centric NCESlocale code system released in 2006. Rural schools and dis-tricts used in the report are those designated with localecodes 41 (rural fringe), 42 (rural distant), or 43 (ruralremote). While early versions of Why Rural Matters (i.e.,those preceding the 2009 version) used a combination ofschool-level and district-level data, improvements in theurban-centric locale code system (specifically, assigning dis-trict-level locale based upon the locale where the pluralityof students in the district attend school) have made it pos-sible for us to be consistent and use districts as the unit ofanalysis for all indicators except for the percentage of rural

schools and the percent change in number of rural schools.This consistency is particularly important because policydecisions impacting rural education (e.g., REAP funding)are made using district-level designations of rural status.

Because our longitudinal gauge includes indicators that usedata from years prior to 2006 (when the new locale codesystem was introduced) it was necessary to back-code inorder to assign locales to school districts for those earlieryears. To do so, we recoded the earlier data following thesame basic methodology as the current rural classificationsystem. Under the current system, a district’s locale code isdetermined by the locale category (city [locales 11-13], sub-urb [locales 21-23], town [locales 31-33], and rural [locales41-43]) of the school(s) where a plurality of students areenrolled. When we compare rural and non-rural schooldistricts using the 2008-09 data, we are comparing (1) dis-tricts where the total number of students enrolled inschools designated as rural (locale 41, 42, or 43) is greaterthan the number of students enrolled in any of the otherthree locale categories (city, suburb, or town) with (2) dis-tricts where the total number of students enrolled in anyone of the other three categories (city, suburb, or town) isgreater than the total number of students enrolled in ruralschools. To identify rural districts for years prior to 2006,we followed the same procedure using the school-levellocale codes that were in effect at that time. Thus, for yearsprior to 2006, rural districts are those where the totalnumber of students attending schools designated as locale 7or locale 8 (i.e., rural) is greater than the total number ofstudents attending schools in any one of the other threecategories (i.e., locales 1 and 2 [city], locales 3 and 4 [urbanfringe], or locales 5 and 6 [town]).

As in earlier versions of the report, Why Rural Matters2011-12 uses data only for regular local education agencies(local school districts and local school district componentsof supervisory unions). Thus we exclude charter school-only districts and specialized state- and federally-directededucation agencies focused primarily on vocational, special,or alternative education.

Gauging Rural Educationin the 50 StatesWe frame the report around five gauges measuring for eachstate (1) the Importance of rural education, (2) the Diver-sity of rural students and their families, (3) the EducationalPolicy Context impacting rural schools, (4) the EducationalOutcomes of students in rural schools in each state, and (5)the Longitudinal changes that have occurred in each state

2 WHY RURAL MATTERS 2011- 12

in certain key areas. Each gauge is comprised of five equallyweighted indicators—thus 25 indicators in all. Instanceswhere data were not available are denoted with N/A.

The higher the ranking on a gauge, the more important orthe more urgent rural education matters are in a particularstate.

The gauges and their component indicators are as follows:

Importance Gauge� Percent rural schools� Percent small rural school districts� Percent rural students� Number of rural students� Percent of state education funds to rural districts

Student and Family Diversity Gauge� Percent rural minority students� Percent rural ELL students� Percent rural IEP students� Percent rural student poverty� Percent rural household mobility

Educational Policy Context Gauge� Rural instructional expenditures per pupil� Ratio of instructional to transportation expenditures� Median organizational scale� State revenue to schools per local dollar� Salary expenditures per instructional FTE

Educational Outcomes Gauge� Rural high school graduation rate� Rural grade 4 NAEP scores (math)� Rural grade 4 NAEP scores (reading)� Rural grade 8 NAEP scores (math)� Rural grade 8 NAEP scores (reading)

Longitudinal Gauge� Increase in absolute rural student enrollment (1999-00to 2008-09)

� Percent change in number of rural students (1999-00to 2008-09)

� Percent change in number of rural Hispanic students(1999-00 to 2008-09)

� Change in percent rural student poverty (1999-00 to2008-09)

� Change in rural students as a percentage of all students(1999-00 to 2008-09)

While some of the indicators used in this report are thesame as in previous versions, several are not and so overallyear-by-year comparisons of a state’s ranking are not advis-

able because of their potential to mislead. The possibilitiesfor assembling indicators to describe the context, conditions,and outcomes of rural schools and communities are virtuallyunlimited. We acknowledge the complexity of rural Americagenerally and of 50 individual state systems of public educa-tion, and we recognize that perspectives offered by the indi-cators used here represent only one of many good ways ofunderstanding rural education in the U.S.

To illustrate the problematic nature of comparing a state’sranking on one report with the same state’s ranking inanother year’s report, consider Washington, a state thatranked 23rd in terms of overall rural education priority in2009 (within the second quartile, which we termed the“Major” priority category). By contrast, in the 2011 report,Washington ranks in the fourth quartile as 42nd in terms ofrural education priority, a change partly due to the new fifthgauge (Washington was ranked in the second quartile on theConcentrated Poverty gauge, but ranks in the fourth quartileon the Longitudinal gauge). To interpret Washington’s largedrop in rural education priority concern as a “success” mightmean overlooking the issues of severe poverty that may stillexist in rural pockets around the state.

Indiana, on the other hand, is a state that moved frombelow the national median at 32nd in terms of overall ruraleducation priority to a ranking of 18th (within the secondquartile, which we termed the “Major” priority category).Much of this shift between the two versions of the reportcan be attributed to the change in gauges. Indiana rankedin the third quartile on the Concentrated Poverty gauge,but has been one of the most volatile states in terms ofLongitudinal change in rural areas. Rather than interpret-ing this change as Indiana “climbing 14 places,” attentionshould be focused on the fact that Indiana’s student popu-lation is increasingly rural, and that the poverty rate isgrowing among these rural students. Making good policychoices for America’s rural school children requires care-fully considering the full state profile and the story told byeach indicator.

For each of the five gauges, we added the state rankings oneach indicator and then divided by the number of indica-tors to produce an average gauge ranking.i Using that gaugeranking, we then organize the states into quartiles thatdescribe their relative position with regard to other stateson that particular gauge. For the Importance, EducationalPolicy Context, and Longitudinal gauges, the four quartilesare labeled “Notable,” “Important,” Very Important,” and

i Gauge rankings are not calculated for states that have fewer thanthree of the five indicator rankings present. These instances aredenoted with an asterisk and a clarifying note.


“Crucial.” For the Student and Family Diversity and Educa-tional Outcomes gauges, the four quartiles are labeled“Fair,” “Serious,” “Critical,” and “Urgent.” It is important tonote that these categories are intended to be descriptive inonly the most general way. There is little substantive differ-ence between a “Crucial” ranking of 13 and a “Very Impor-tant” ranking of 14.

Lastly, we combined the five average gauge rankings todetermine an overall average rankingii, which we term theRural Education Priority ranking.

Certain states have retained a high rural education priorityranking from year to year despite the fact that we use dif-ferent indicators and gauges. For these states, rural educa-tion is apparently both important and in urgent need ofattention no matter how you look at it.

One final caution from earlier reports is worth repeating.Because we report state-level data for most indicators, ouranalyses do not reveal the substantial variation in rural con-texts and conditions within many states. Thus, while anindicator represents the average for a particular state, inreality there may be rural regions within the state that dif-fer considerably from the state average. This is especiallytrue for indicators like poverty and ELL status, since demo-graphic characteristics such as these tend not to be distrib-uted evenly across a state but are concentrated variously inspecific communities within the state. In the case of suchindicators, the statewide average may not reflect the realityin any one specific place, with far higher rates in someplaces and far lower rates in others. It is our hope in suchcases that the presentation of state averaged indicators willprompt more refined discussions and lead to better under-standings of all rural areas.

New and Revised Gaugesand IndicatorsIn an effort to refine and better reflect our thinking aboutthe contexts and characteristics of rural education, we madesome changes from previous reports with regard to theselection and configuration of indicators and gauges used.Why Rural Matters 2009 included 25 indicators organizedinto 5 gauges: Importance (5 indicators), Student and Fam-ily Diversity (5), Educational Policy Context, (5), Educa-tional Outcome (5), and Concentrated Poverty (5). The2011 report also includes 5 gauges, each comprising 5 indi-cators (for a total of 25 indicators). The major differencefrom the previous report to this one is the replacement of

the Concentrated Poverty Gauge with the LongitudinalGauge. However, there have been a few other changesmade among the indicators, and these are described below.

The Educational Policy Context Gauge contains one minoradjustment: the new indicator “state revenue to schools perlocal dollar” replaces the 2009 Why Rural Matters indica-tor “inequality in state and local revenue per pupil.” Thisimproved indicator measures the extent to which ruralschool funds come from the state versus local communities,with a measure of $1 indicating equal amounts of moneycoming from the state and local communities, greater than$1 indicating more state than local support and less than $1indicating more local than state support. Rural schools thatrely more heavily on local support are subject to greatervariation in support based on local economic conditions,property tax base, and industrial tax revenues. Such statesare likely to have greater disparities from one location toanother based on local conditions.

The Educational Outcomes Gauge was revised considerablyfrom the 2009 report, dropping two indicators characteriz-ing rural students’ NCLB proficiency in reading and mathand two composite (math and reading combined NAEPscores at each of two grade levels) and replacing them 4NAEP scores that separately report math and readingresults at grade four and grade eight. The rationale for thischange was twofold: (1) states vary widely in their stan-dards for proficiency, making the NCLB data difficult toanalyze and report, and (2) considerable variation in NAEPscores across grade levels and subject area strongly sug-gested the value in considering the individual scores (i.e.,grade 4 reading, grade 4 math, grade 8 reading, grade 8math) separately.

The Longitudinal Gauge appears for the first time in WhyRural Matters 2011-12. It uses five indicators to characterizechanges occurring over time (absolute change in the num-ber of rural students, percent change in the number of ruralstudents, percent change in the number of rural Hispanicstudents, change in percentage of rural poverty, and changein rural students as a percentage of all students). For eachindicator, we compared data from its first year of availabilityto 2008-09 data. Two indicators in particular—change inrural Hispanic populations and rural poverty—showed spo-radic state reporting at first, so we compared 2008-09 datawith the first year of reliable data from each state. On theother three indicators, we were able to use 1987-88 data tounderstand two decades of change in the key indicators.

The locale coding system changed significantly in 2006,making it inaccurate to compare raw “rural” data collectedunder the two distinct definitions. One solution would

ii Priority rankings are not calculated for states that have fewer thanfour of the five indicator rankings present. These instances aredenoted with an asterisk and a clarifying note.


have been to use the 2005-06 school year data as the mostrecent data for the longitudinal comparisons. However, wefelt that this would not provide an adequate examination ofcurrent trends, especially with regards to the burgeoningrural Hispanic population. Thus, to span as many years aspossible while preserving consistency, we recoded the ear-lier data according to the current rural classification system.In other words, for any given year, a district’s locale wasdetermined by which of the four locales (city, suburb, town,rural) contributed the most students. For example, a dis-trict with 3,000 students in suburban schools, 2,000 stu-dents in town schools, and 4,000 students in rural schoolswould be coded as a rural district for the purposes of thiscomparison.

Notes on Report MethodologyReaders familiar with earlier editions of Why RuralMatters will note the following considerations when read-ing the 2011 report.

First, the quartile categories used to describe states’ posi-tion on the continuum from 1-50 are arbitrary, and areused merely as a convenient way to group states into smallerunits to facilitate discussion of patterns in the results. Thus,there is very little difference between the “Urgent” labelassigned toMississippi based on its ranking of 13th on theStudent and Family Diversity Gauge and the “Critical” label

assigned to Louisiana based on its ranking of 14th on thesame gauge.

Second, again in this report we use regional terms loosely.Now, as then, the intent is not to confuse or obscure mean-ings, but to recognize nuances in regional identities and tobest represent the contexts within which we are discussingspecific relationships between individual states and sharedgeographic and cultural characteristics. With this intent, astate like Oklahoma may be referred to as a SouthernPlains state in some contexts and as a Southwestern state inothers. That is because Oklahoma is part of regional pat-terns that include Southern Plains states like Kansas andColorado, but it is also part of regional patterns thatinclude Southwestern states like New Mexico.

Third, the ranking system should not be interpreted to sug-gest that rural education in low-priority states does notdeserve attention from policymakers. Indeed, every statefaces challenges in providing a high-quality educationalexperience for all children. The highest priority states arepresented as such because they are states where key factorsthat impact the schooling process converge to present themost extreme challenges to schooling outcomes, and sosuggest the most urgent and most comprehensive need forattention from policymakers.


Table 1. National Rural Statistics

Importance GaugePercent rural schools: 33.0%Percent small rural districts: 49.9%Percent rural students: 20.2%Number of rural students (US Median = 131,129): 9,628,501Percent state education funds to rural districts: 20.4%

Student and Family Diversity GaugePercent rural minority students: 25.8%Percent rural ELL students: 3.7%Percent rural IEP students: 12.1%Percent rural student poverty: 41.0%Percent rural mobility: 12.7%

Educational Policy Context GaugeRural instructional expenditures per pupil: $5,657Ratio of instructional to transportation expenditures: $11.06Median organizational scale (divided by 100): 5,203Ratio of state revenue to local revenue: $1.31Salary expenditures per instructional FTE: $56,159

Educational Outcomes GaugeRural high school graduation rate: 77.5%Rural Grade 4 NAEP scores (math): 240Rural Grade 4 NAEP scores (reading): 222Rural Grade 8 NAEP scores (math): 284Rural Grade 8 NAEP scores (reading): 264

Longitudinal GaugeChange in absoute rural enrollment(median = 9,880): 1,735,666Percent change in rural enrollment: 22.2%Percent change in rural Hispanic enrollment: 150.9%Change in percent rural students in poverty: 9.8%Change in rural students as a percentageof all students: 2.6%

Results

The data for each state and state rankings for each indi-cator are presented in the charts and figures on pages

28-77. The results for each indicator are summarized and

discussed below. To provide some context and to aid inmaking comparisons, national level results are presented inTable 1.

Importance Gauge

Importance Gauge IndicatorsAbsolute and relative measures of the size and scope ofrural education help to define the importance of rural edu-cation to the well-being of the state’s public education sys-tem as a whole. In this section, we define each of theindicators in the Importance Gauge and summarize stateand regional patterns observed in the data.1

� Percent rural schools is the percentage of regularelementary and secondary public schools designated asrural by NCES. The higher the percentage of schools,the higher the state ranks on the Importance Gauge.

The national average is 33% but states vary considerably onthis indicator, from a low of 6.6% inMassachusetts to ahigh of 78.6% in South Dakota. More than half of allschools are rural in 15 states (in order, South Dakota, Mon-tana, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Nebraska,

Wyoming, Arkansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Iowa, Mis-sissippi, New Hampshire, and North Carolina) and at leastone in three of all schools is rural in 15 other states. In gen-eral, states with a high percentage of rural schools are thosewhere sparse populations and/or challenging terrain make itdifficult to transport students to consolidated regionalschools in non-rural areas. Predominantly urban states onthe East and West coasts and in the Great Lakes regionhave the smallest percentages of rural schools.

� Percent small rural school districts is the percentage ofrural school districts that are below the median enroll-ment size for all rural school districts in the U.S. (median= 537 students). The higher the percentage of districtswith enrollments below 537, the higher the state ranks onthe Importance Gauge.

At least half of all rural districts are smaller than thenational rural median in 22 states (Montana, NorthDakota, Vermont, Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma,

1 Hawaii is excluded from most of the indicators throughout this report because its organization as a single statewide district makes district-level data unavailable for rural communities.


Colorado, California, Alaska, Oregon, Maine, Kansas, NewMexico, Missouri, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois,New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Texas). Stateswith few or no small rural districts are located primarily inthe Southeast andMid-Atlantic—regions that are charac-terized by consolidated county-wide districts. West Vir-ginia, a state where over half of the schools are in ruralcommunities, does not have a single small rural school dis-trict thanks to a decades long state effort to consolidationlocal schools in countywide rural districts.

� Percent rural students is a measure of the relative size ofthe rural student population, and is calculated as thenumber of public school students enrolled in rural dis-tricts, whether they attend rural schools or not, divided bythe total number of public school students in the state.It excludes students attending rural schools that are notlocated in districts that NCES designates as rural. Thehigher the percentage of rural students, the higher thestate ranks on the Importance Gauge.

Just over 20% of all public school students were enrolled indistricts classified as rural. In only three states were overhalf the students enrolled in rural districts—Mississippi(54.7%), Vermont (54.6%) andMaine (52.7%). In thirteenother states, over one-third of all students were in ruralschool districts (in descending order, North Carolina,South Dakota, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, NorthDakota, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Hampshire,Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, andMontana). These states areconcentrated in five regions: Northern New England, theMid-South Delta, the Great Plains, the Southeast, andCentral Appalachia. States with the lowest proportionalrural enrollments are primarily urban states on the EastCoast and West Coast and in arid or mountainous Westernstates where the population resides mostly in cities andrural areas are very sparsely populated.

� Number of rural students is an absolute—as opposed torelative—measure of the size of the rural student popula-tion. The figure given for each state represents the totalnumber of students enrolled in public school districtsdesignated as rural by NCES. The higher the enrollmentnumber, the higher the state ranks on the ImportanceGauge.

More than half of all rural students in the U.S. attendschool in just 11 states, including some of the nation’s mostpopulous and urban states (in order of rural enrollmentsize, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Florida, Ten-nessee, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, andAlabama). The four states with the largest rural enroll-ments—Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Ohio—serveone-fourth of all rural students in the U.S. North Carolina

alone has more rural students than the Northern andSouthern Great Plains states of Montana, North Dakota,South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, andOklahoma—combined.

� Percentage of state education funds going to ruralschools represents the proportion of state PK-12 fund-ing that goes to school districts designated by NCES asrural. State funding as defined here includes all state-derived revenues that are used for the day-to-day opera-tions of schools (thus, capital construction, debt service,and other long-term outlays are excluded). The higherthe percentage of state funds going to rural education,the higher the state ranks on the Importance Gauge.

It’s no surprise that states ranking high on percent ruralschools and percent rural students also rank high on thisindicator. In general, most states provide a slightly dispro-portional amount of funding per pupil to rural districts(based on comparing the percentage of each state’s fundingthat goes to rural districts with the percentage of the state’sstudents that are enrolled in rural districts). This is proba-bly because many state formulas take into account thehigher fixed costs per pupil of small districts, and because inthe most rural states, rural poverty levels are high, anotherfactor considered in many state funding formulas. This rela-tionship between percent rural students and percent ofstate funding deteriorates in most states where the percent-age of rural students in very low, however. That may bebecause rural poverty is relatively low in many of thesestates, and state funding formulas that take poverty intoaccount will deliver less to rural districts for that reason.And this relationship is not universal among states withhigh percentages of rural students. In Mississippi, forexample, 54.7% of students attend a rural school district butonly 47.2% of state funding goes to these districts. And onlyNew Mexico and Louisiana have higher rates of rural stu-dent poverty thanMississippi.

Importance Gauge RankingsTo gauge the importance of rural education to the overalleducational system in each state, we average each state’sranking on the individual indicators, giving equal weight toeach (see Table 2).

The top quartile in the Importance Gauge is shared bystates in the Prairie/Plains (South Dakota, Montana, NorthDakota, Oklahoma, and Iowa), the South (North Carolina,Alabama, andMississippi), Northern New England (Maineand Vermont), Central Appalachia (Kentucky and Ten-nessee), and the Pacific Northwest (Alaska).

The seven Northern New England and Prairie/Plains stateshold six of the top seven positions because they score gen-


Table 2. Importance Gauge Cumulative Rankings

How important is it to the overall public education sys-tem of the state to address the particular needs ofschools serving rural communities? These rankings rep-resent the average of each state’s score on five indica-tors. The higher the average ranking (i.e., the closer toranking number 1), the more important it is for policy-makers to address rural education issues in their state.

Crucial Very Important Important Notable

VT 10.0 AR 18.0 TX 24.6 OR 32.0ME 10.4 NE 18.6 WY 25.6 WA 32.0SD 10.8 KS 19.0 WI 26.2 CA 32.6MT 13.0 NH 19.0 IN 26.4 FL 34.0NC 13.4 SC 19.2 NM 27.4 NJ 37.8ND 13.4 MO 19.6 AZ 27.6 CT 38.2OK 13.8 GA 20.2 CO 27.6 DE 40.4MS 14.0 WV 21.2 MI 27.8 MD 40.4AL 17.0 ID 22.6 IL 29.4 NV 40.4AK 17.2 VA 23.0 PA 29.4 UT 41.2KY 17.2 OH 23.6 NY 30.4 MA 42.4IA 17.6 MN 24.2 LA 31.0 RI 43.2TN 17.6 HI N/A

erally very high on all the indicators except the “number ofrural students,” on which none of them ranks higher than19th (OK) and four rank in the bottom quartile.

The five southern states (including the CentralAppalachian states of Kentucky and Tennessee) are clus-tered toward the bottom of the quartile because all rank35th or lower in the percentage of small rural districts. Mis-sissippi ranks highest on that indicator among this groupwith only 5.7% of its rural districts below the nationalmedian in enrollment. Bigger rural schools and districtsare the general rule in these states, primarily as a result ofschool and district consolidation.

Over half of all rural students (5.5 mil. or 57%) are in statesranked in the top quartile for the “number of rural stu-dents” indicator. But only three of those states (NorthCarolina, Tennessee, and Alabama) are among the topquartile in the overall Importance Gauge, and only twomore (South Carolina and Georgia) are in the second quar-tile. Eight of the 13 states with the largest rural studentpopulations rank below the median on the overall Impor-tance Gauge.

These eight states—California, Texas, Florida, Virginia,and four contiguous Mid-East States, Michigan, New York,Ohio, and Pennsylvania—are large states where the heavy

urban population dwarfs even a relatively large ruralpopulation.

They rank low on the Importance Gauge despite rankinghigh on “number of rural students” indicator simply becausethey rank low on almost every other indicator in the gauge.For example, they average a ranking of 33rd on the “per-centage of rural students” indicator, and none of them rankshigher than 18th on that indicator (Virginia).

These eight states provide schooling to 3.5 million rural stu-dents (36%). By contrast, the 13 states in the top quartile ofthe Importance gauge serve 2.6 million (27%).

Student and Family Diversity Gauge

Student and Family Diversity Gauge IndicatorsEach Why Rural Matters edition has examined the role ofstudent diversity in rural education. This is because of thewell-settled conclusion that socio-economic factors affectboth student and school academic achievement. The“achievement gaps” between students based on economicstatus, race and ethnicity, language, intellectual capacitymeasured in a variety of ways, and transience (i.e., residentialstability) are widely discussed. We set aside for now the issueof whether we are measuring achievement that matterswhen we measure these gaps. In the Student and FamilyDiversity Gauge, we are comparing rural student and familycharacteristics across the 50 states on terms that policy mak-ers have often defined as relevant to state and national edu-cation goals. In this section, we define each of the indicatorsin the Student and Family Diversity Gauge and summarizestate and regional patterns observed in the data.

Percentage of rural minority students represents the num-ber of rural minority students (per NCES categories:American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander,Black, Hispanic) divided by the total number of rural stu-dents. The higher the percentage of rural minority students,the higher the ranking on the student and family diversitygauge.

This indicator tells us about the relative size of the ruralminority student population in each state. Educationalresearch and state and federal accountability system havedisaggregated data to disclose sizable differences in the aca-demic performance of minority students as compared towhite students, but policies to address gaps are often inade-quate or non-existent. Identifying the states with thelargest (relative) rural minority student populations callsattention to the states with the greatest need for policyaction to support the closing of achievement gaps based onrace/ethnicity.

Note: numbers are rounded


Nationally, 25.8 percent of rural students are children ofcolor. But the range among states is very large, from 3.2percent in Rhode Island to 82.6% in New Mexico. Eightypercent of rural students of color attend school in the 18states with rural minority student rates above the nationalaverage.

Rural minority students are becoming more concentratedin certain states. In four states (New Mexico, Alaska, Ari-zona, and California) white students make up less than 50%of the rural student population and students of color collec-tively make up more than 50%. More than one in three ruralstudents is a student of color in nine other states (indescending order, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Mississippi,North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, andDelaware). In WRM 2009, there were eight states with atleast one-third but less than half of their students in ruraldistricts. Georgia has been added to that list of states.Over 69% of all rural minority students in the U.S. attendschool in these 13 states that either are majority-minorityor have a rural minority student rate of over one-third. InWRM 2009, 12 states had that high a concentration ofrural minority students and they constituted only 58% of allrural minority students.

States vary considerably with regard to the racial and ethniccomposition of their rural minority student populations.One of the states with the largest percentages of ruralminority students (Alaska) has a rural population predomi-nantly comprised of Alaska Natives. Others like New Mex-ico, Arizona, and Oklahoma, rank high because ofcombinations of Hispanic and American Indian popula-tions. In the South, states rank high primarily on the basisof their sizable African-American populations (Louisiana,South Carolina, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Florida).Perhaps the nation’s most ethnically diverse state, Califor-nia’s rural minority student population is predominantlyHispanic.

� Percentage of rural ELL students represents the num-ber of rural students who qualify for English LanguageLearner (ELL) services, expressed as a percentage of allrural students in the state. The higher the percentage ofrural ELL students, the higher the state ranks on the stu-dent and family diversity gauge.

Nationally, 3.7 percent of rural students are English Lan-guage Learners, but the range is from zero percent in Ver-mont to 18.1 percent in California. Eighteen states haveabove the national average ELL rate. States ranking high onthis indicator have large Hispanic and/or AmericanIndian/Alaskan Native populations living in rural areas (inorder, California, Alaska, Texas, and Arizona,). Data ismissing for several states, including New Mexico which his-

torically leads in this indicator by a wide margin over allother states. Most of the high ranking states are in theWest, with only Florida and North Carolina among the topquartile located east of the Mississippi River.

� Percentage of rural IEP students represents the per-centage of rural students who have an IndividualizedEducation Plan (IEP) indicating that they qualify forspecial education services. The higher the percentage ofIEP students, the higher the state ranks on the Studentand Family Diversity Gauge.

Students with Individualized Education Plans require addi-tional services only party supported by supplemental fed-eral funds, placing additional responsibilities on state andlocal funds. It is generally believed that higher poverty ratescorrelate to a higher incidence of IEPs, but these staterankings do not support that hypothesis. Among the topquartile (in this case, 14 states because three tie for 12thplace) in rural IEP rates, only two (KY and WV) rank inthe top quartile in rural student poverty rates while six rankin the bottom poverty quartile (Illinois, Massachusetts,New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island).

� Percentage of rural student poverty is the percentage ofstudents who qualify for federally-funded free or reducedpriced meal programs. The higher the rate of rural stu-dents eligible for subsidized meals, the higher the rank-ing on the Student and Family Diversity Gauge.

Subsidized meal rates are the most commonly used meas-ure of student poverty in educational research. It is a meas-ure with recognized limitations however—participationrates are affected by factors that are unrelated to poverty,including student and families’ willingness to apply andschools’ efforts to secure applications. Participation ratesare generally lower in the upper grade levels than the ratesin lower grade levels predict. It is nevertheless the mostwidely accepted approach to describing economic stressamong student populations.

Forty-one percent of rural students nationwide participatein federally subsidized meal program, ranging from 7.2 per-cent in Connecticut to 80 percent in New Mexico. Morethan half of all rural students face poverty in ten states: indescending order, New Mexico (80%), Louisiana (69%),Mississippi (63%), Arkansas (58%), Oklahoma (57%), Ken-tucky (57%), South Carolina (57%), West Virginia (53%),Alabama (52%) and Georgia (52%). In WRM 2009 wereported the first nine of these ten as having rural povertyrates above 50% (and in almost the same order). Georgia isan addition. These are essentially contiguous southern andsouthwestern states (the addition of Tennessee at 47% stu-dent poverty would make them a solid block). The lowest


rural poverty rates are in predominantly urban Northeast-ern states and someMidwestern states.

� Percentage of rural student mobility represents thepercentage of households with school-age children whochanged residences within the previous 12 months, perU.S. Census figures. Mobility is a measure of economicstress that disrupts consistency in teaching and learningand has been associated with lower academic achieve-ment in the research literature. The higher the mobilityrate, the higher the state ranks on the Student and FamilyDiversity Gauge.

Nationally, one in eight rural students has changed resi-dence in the past 12 months, from a low of 5.5 percent inConnecticut to a high of 21.8 percent in Nevada. Westernstates rank highest on this indicator—Nevada, Arizona andAlaska lead. Eleven of the top 13 states are west of theMississippi River. The Eastern states with the highest ruralmobility rates are Florida (16.4) and Georgia (15.7%).States with the lowest mobility/most stable rural house-holds are located in the Northeast, including all of NewEngland and Pennsylvania, New Jersey, andMaryland inthe Mid-Atlantic. Among the lowest quartile, only North

Table 3. Student and Family DiversityGauge Rankings

How important is it to the overall public education sys-tem of the state to address the particular needs ofschools serving rural communities? These rankings rep-resent the average of each state’s score on five indica-tors. The higher the average ranking (i.e., the closer toranking number 1), the more important it is for policy-makers to address diversity issues in rural communitiesin their state.

Urgent Critical Serious Fair

FL 8.2 LA 18.0 VA 23.8 NY 30.4OK 8.3 MT 18.0 KS 24.2 NJ 32.0NM 11.0 SD 19.2 ND 26.0 PA 32.0AZ 11.8 CO 19.5 NE 26.0 RI 33.7AK 12.0 ID 20.4 WV 26.2 WI 34.0NV 13.0 AR 20.6 TN 26.4 OH 34.4CA 13.8 KY 20.8 IN 26.6 MA 35.8SC 14.8 NC 20.8 MI 27.8 MD 36.0OR 16.0 DE 21.0 IL 28.0 IA 36.4TX 16.2 UT 21.8 MO 28.2 NJ 37.8AL 17.0 WY 22.0 ME 28.3 CT 42.0GA 17.2 WA 22.8 MN 30.2 VT 43.8MS 17.5 HI N/A

Dakota (9.0%) and Wyoming (8.8%) are west of the Mis-sissippi, andMinnesota (8.7%) is bisected by it.

Ten of the 13 states in the top quartile on the Student andFamily Diversity Gauge lie entirely south of the 37th paral-lel and the other three (California, Oregon, and Alaska) areon the Pacific Coast. Among the indicators, “percent ruralminority students” carries the most weight, with nine of the13 top quartile states for the gauge also scoring in the topquartile on that indicator. But poverty and mobility werealso heavy contributors with eight of 13 in the top quartilealso in the top quartile on those indicators. By contrast, onlytwo of the states in the top quartile also place in the topquartile in terms of the percentage of rural students whoreceive special education services. In fact, another five ofthe states in the gauge top quartile are in the bottom quar-tile for the special education indicator.

We ran correlation statistics among these five indicatorsand found that special education rates were negatively cor-related to all the other indicators (ranging from r = -0.24for poverty to r = -0.55 for ELL). All other correlationsbetween indicators on this gauge were positive and gener-ally above r = 0.5 (except the correlation between povertyand ELL, which was r = 0.23). We suspect that the specialeducation rates reflect the willingness and capacity todeliver the services more than the incidence of need forthe service.

Educational Policy Context Gauge

Educational Policy Context Gauge IndicatorsFor this gauge, we use indicators that describe the charac-teristics of the public schooling system that are the result ofpolicy decisions. And we focus on policy decisions that arehighlighted in educational research as being closely relatedto student achievement and other measures of studentwell-being. Illustrating the variations in state policy con-texts suggests—in relative terms—the extent to which cur-rent policies are helping or hindering rural schools andstudents. In this section, we define each of the indicators inthe Educational Policy Context Gauge and summarize stateand regional patterns observed in the data (note: Hawaii isexcluded from this gauge because its organization as astatewide district makes analysis impossible). On each indi-cator, the higher the ranking (closer to #1), the greater theconcern that policy is not optimal for rural education.

� Rural instructional expenditures per pupil representsthe state’s total current expenditures for instruction inrural public school districts divided by the total numberof students enrolled in those same districts. The lowerthe rural per pupil expenditures, the higher the state

Note: Numbers are rounded


ranks on the Educational Policy Context Gauge and thegreater the concern about rural education policy.

This indicator allows us to make comparisons among stateswith regard the amount of money, per pupil, that goestoward teaching and learning in rural schools.

The national average of $5,657 per pupil is much closer tothe low end of the range ($4,169 in Idaho) than to the highend ($10,300 in Alaska and $10,214 in New York).2 JoiningIdaho are 13 other states that spend less than half of theamount Alaska or New York spends per pupil for instruc-tion in its rural school districts (Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma,Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, Colorado, Illinois,Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina).Twelve of these 14 lowest spending states are below thenational average in Total Taxable Resources Per Capita(TTRPC), a measure of state fiscal capacity annually esti-mated by the U.S. Treasury Department for use in variousfederal funding formulas. Only Colorado and Illinoisamong these states are above the national average inTTRPC.

The highest spending states are either states with very smallrural districts (Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska, New Hamp-shire, Nebraska, Maine), or Northeastern urban states witha relatively small rural education sector (Massachusetts,Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, andDelaware). Ten of these twelve are well above the nationalaverage TTRPC. Only Vermont andMaine are below theTTRPC national average.

� Ratio of instructional expenditures to transportationexpenditures is a measure of how many dollars are spenton teaching and learning for every dollar spent on trans-porting pupils. The lower the ratio, the more money thatis being channeled toward transportation and away frominstruction, and the higher the ranking on this indicator.

Variations in pupil transportation costs are affected byunavoidable issues related to geography and terrain, but alsoresult from policies and practices related to the size andlocation of schools and school districts, personnel decisions,and the permissible length of bus rides for students. Thisindicator is an important factor in the educational policycontext because extraordinary transportation costs are aburden that shifts money away from programs andresources that directly impact student learning.

On average, rural school districts nationally spend about$11.06 on instruction for every dollar spent on transporta-tion, but there is considerable variation among states. Atthe low end, West Virginia spends only $6.92 on instruc-tion for every transportation dollar spent; at the other endof the spectrum, nine states spend more than double that—Alaska ($27.52), Vermont ($16.62), Nebraska ($16.59),Texas ($16.53), North Carolina ($16.11), Oklahoma($15.52), California ($15.00), Tennessee ($14.73), andGeorgia ($14.73). Six of these nine states are in the top halfamong states in percentage of rural school districts that arebelow the median enrollment size for all public school dis-tricts in the U.S. Five are in the top nine on that indicator(in descending order, Vermont, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Cali-fornia, and Alaska).

Regional patterns are not immediately apparent for thisindicator. Indeed, comparisons of states with similar geog-raphies and terrains reveal substantial differences: NorthDakota spends nearly $4 less on instruction per transporta-tion dollar than its neighbor South Dakota; North Carolinaspends well over $6 more on instruction per transportationdollar than its neighbor Virginia. Nor is the relationshipbetween spending on instruction and transportation afunction of the overall per pupil spending on instruction.The correlation between these two indicators is a relativelyweak 0.22. The most likely factor influencing the ratio ofinstructional spending to transportation spending is school(not necessarily district) size. A small catchment areameans lower transportation spending, even in geographi-cally large districts. West Virginia has only countywide dis-tricts, many serving isolated mountain communities. Thestate pressed for closure of many of the schools in thesedistricts and urged consolidation into single countywidehigh schools. Transporting students dispersed across manyisolated communities to a single school has doubtless been afactor in having the nation’s lowest ratio of instruction totransportation spending per pupil.

By contrast, many of the states with the highest ratio ofinstruction to transportation spending are states with verysmall schools in cluster settlements where smallness iseither necessary or preferred. Among the top quartile onthis indicator are six states that rank in the top quartile onthe percentage of rural schools that are below the nationalmedian enrollment size, or in the bottom quartile on themedian organization scale indicator, or both (Colorado,Kansas, California, Nebraska, Vermont, and Alaska). Manysmall schools in geographically small districts or in sparselypopulated large districts where most of the population isconcentrated in clustered small towns keep transportationspending from eroding classroom spending.

2 This indicator is not adjusted for geographic cost, which in thecase of Alaska is significant. However, the next highest spendingstate is New York, with only slightly less per pupil expenditure oninstruction and a rural cost of living that is not dramatically differ-ent from most lower-48 states.


� Median organization scale is a measure that capturesthe combined effects of school and district size. Wecompute the organizational scale for each rural school bymultiplying school enrollment by district enrollment. Forsimplification in reporting, we then divide the result by100. The figure reported for each state represents themedian of organizational scale figures for every ruralschool in the state. The larger the organizational scale,the higher the state scores (the greater the level of con-cern) on the Policy Context Gauge.

School and district size exert influence over the schoolingprocess both individually and in combination with oneanother. Specifically, larger size has been linked with unde-sirable schooling outcomes, particularly among impover-ished and minority students. By including this indicator, weintend to provide a relative measure of the scale of opera-tions for rural education in each state.

The range on this indicator is dramatically wide: Florida,the highest ranking state, has a median organizational scalethat is more than 5,000 times larger than the lowest rank-ing state, Montana. Large organizational scale is character-istic of the South; 11 of the top 14 states on this indicatorare in the Southeast and two others in the Mid-Atlantic.Many are states where countywide districts and regionalhigh schools are the norm. Among the top quartile on thisindicator, only Nevada is west of the Mississippi River. Thelowest ranking states are mostly in the Great Plains and theWest, where small independent districts prevail.

� Ratio of state revenue to local revenue in rural districtsis a measure of dependence on local fiscal capacity and anindirect measure of the extent to which state revenue is asignificant factor in equalizing revenue per pupil acrosscommunities of varying levels of wealth and poverty. Alow ratio means a relatively small amount of state aid andan increased likelihood of inequitable funding. The lowerthe ratio, the higher the state scores on the indicator.

This indicator needs to be read with a great deal of cautionbecause it does not take into account whether either stateor local revenue is adequate to support schools. A high ratioof state to local revenue may mean the funding system isequitable only in that it provides inadequate funding levelseverywhere. A low ratio is a clearer signal that the schoolfunding system relies on local fiscal capacity and whetherminimally adequate or not, is very likely inequitable. Thereader should also recall that these data relate only to theproportion of revenue from state versus local sources in therural districts of a state. Including the non-rural districtsmight alter the numbers considerably, in part because theindustrial and commercial property tax base per pupil isusually lower in rural areas, and because much of the agri-

cultural or forest land values in rural areas are withheldfrom the school tax base by various forms of preferentialassessment.

The national average ratio of state to local revenue in ruralschool districts is 1.31, meaning state government supplies$1.31 in funding to rural districts for every $1.00 they gen-erate from local tax revenues. The low is Rhode Island,where rural districts receive only $0.31 for every dollar oflocal revenue they produce. There are only a few rural dis-tricts in Rhode Island, however, and they are mostly highwealth districts. The second lowest state/local revenue ratiois Nebraska, which at 0.45 is the state with a large ruraleducation sector that gets the lowest level of state aid rela-tive to local tax revenue. The state where rural schools getthe most state aid relative to local tax revenue is New Mex-ico with a ratio of 5.98.

The highest ranking states on this indicator (meaning thelowest level of state aid relative to local revenue) fall intotwo distinct groups: Northeastern states with relatively lowlevels of rural poverty and high levels of rural property val-uation (Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, NewJersey, andMassachusetts); andMidwestern/Great Plainsstates with low to moderate levels of rural poverty and alargely agricultural property tax base in rural areas(Nebraska, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mis-souri, Iowa, and Colorado). The first group includes manystates that spend relatively high levels per pupil in theirrural schools (all five are among the top nine in ruralinstructional expenditure per pupil) while five of the sevenin the second group are relatively low spenders in theirrural schools (they rank in the bottom half in rural instruc-tional expenditure per pupil). Pennsylvania is the only stateamong the top quartile on this indicator that does notclearly fit in either of these two groups.

The lowest ranking states (the states in which rural schoolsget relatively high levels of state revenue compared to localrevenue) are more difficult to categorize. Seven of the lead-ing 13 are in Appalachia, the South or Southwest, somewith prominent countywide rural districts (Alabama, Ken-tucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia) and others withsmall independent rural districts (Arkansas, Oklahoma, andNew Mexico). Eight of the 13 (including all seven of thosein the South, Southwest and Appalachia) rank among the25 states with lowest levels of salary expenditure perinstructional FTE (see below) and all are below averagefiscal capacity states.

� Salary expenditures per instructional FTE in ruraldistricts is the total dollar amount spent on instructionalsalaries divided by the total number of instructional staffmembers, and is used here as a proxy for teacher salaries.


The lower the rural salary expenditure per FTE (or full-time equivalent, a measure that accounts for staff whoonly work part-time or who are assigned to more thanone school), the higher the state’s ranking on the PolicyContext Gauge and the more urgent the concern for thecondition of rural education.

In many states, rural school districts are simply at a compet-itive disadvantage in the market for teachers. There aremany factors in this challenge, but low teacher salaries iscertainly among them.

Nationally, the average salary expenditure per instructionalFTE in rural districts is $56,159, ranging from $40,675 inNorth Dakota to $85,842 in New Jersey.

States with the lowest rural salary expenditures accordingto this indicator are primarily in the Southeast and theMidwest/Great Plains (in order from lowest salary: NorthDakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas,Tennessee, Mississippi, Nebraska, Montana, Alabama,Idaho, Kansas, and Florida). Seven of these rank in the topquartile on the Importance Gauge. All but Nebraska andSouth Dakota are below the national average in state fiscalcapacity per capita.

States with the highest rural salary expenditures are locatedprimarily in the Northeast, the West, and theMid-Atlantic(in ascending order from lowest salary in the group:Nevada, Delaware, Washington, Wyoming, Virginia, Mas-sachusetts, Rhode Island, California, Maryland, New York,Alaska, Connecticut, and New Jersey). Nine of these statesare among the 11 states with the lowest percentage of stu-dents attending rural districts and in the bottom quartile onthe Importance gauge. Only Virginia and Alaska rank in theupper half among states in percentage of students attendingrural school districts. Only Wyoming, Virginia, New Yorkand Alaska are not in the bottom quartile on the Impor-tance Gauge. All of these states are above the national aver-age in state fiscal capacity per capita.

Rural teachers seem to be paid better in states where theyrepresent a small portion of a largely urban teaching force,where there is relatively high fiscal capacity.

The indicators that contribute most to the “crucial” rankingof the states in the top quartile are “rural instructionalexpenditures per pupil” (8 of 13 are in the top quartile onthis indicator); “ratio of instructional to transportationexpenditure per pupil” (8 of 13); and state expenditures perinstructional FTE (6 of 13). The 13 “Crucial” states varymost in their ranking on the median organizational scaleindicator, ranging from #1 Florida to #47 North Dakotawith an average ranking of 21st.

Table 4. Educational Policy ContextGauge Rankings

Given the educational policy context in each state,how crucial is it that policymakers take steps to addressthe specific needs of schools serving rural communities.These rankings represent the average of each state’sscore on five indicators. The higher the average rank-ing (i.e., the closer to ranking number 1), the moreimportant it is for policymakers to address rural educa-tional issues within that state.


FL 12.6 CO 20.6 RI 24.8 NH 29.6IN 15.4 UT 21.0 IA 25.2 MA 30.4AZ 15.8 KY 21.2 NJ 25.4 MN 30.6IL 16.0 NV 21.8 GA 26.0 NY 30.8LA 17.0 ID 22.0 DE 26.4 KS 31.4ND 17.0 SD 22.2 ME 26.6 CA 31.8MS 17.6 VA 22.8 OK 26.6 WA 32.2AL 18.4 SC 23.4 OR 26.6 NM 32.4MO 18.6 MD 23.6 NE 27.8 WY 34.6OH 19.0 AR 24.4 WI 28.6 VT 42.4TN 19.4 NC 24.4 CT 29.2 AK 47.2WV 19.6 TX 24.6 MI 29.2 HI N/APA 19.8 MT 29.2

Five states in the top quartile are in the South or Southwest(Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, andMississippi)and five are in the Prairie/Plains Midwest (Missouri, Illi-nois, Indiana, North Dakota and Ohio). The other threeare Appalachian (Tennessee, West Virginia, and at leastpartially, Pennsylvania).

Six states in the top quartile for the gauge rank 30th orlower on the “state dollars per local dollars” indicator, indescending order, Louisiana, Arizona, Mississippi, Ten-nessee, West Virginia, and Alabama. These are states whereschool funding systems depend relatively more on statethan local sources of revenue. In these states, state revenueamounts to between $1.73 (in Louisiana) to $2.51 (in Ala-bama) for every dollar of local revenue.

These low rankings on the state aid indicator are overcomeby high rankings on most of the other indicators in thisgauge. All six rank 15th or higher on the organizational scaleindicator, reflecting the tendency of these states to favorlarge schools and large districts. All of them but Louisianaand West Virginia rank 17th or higher on instructionalexpenditures; all but Tennessee andMississippi rank 15thor higher on the ratio of instructional to transportationspending; and all are in the top half on salary expenditure



per FTE instructional staff. In these states, centralizedfunding systems have produced large schools in large dis-tricts with transportation costs eating up instructionalresources, resulting in low teacher salaries and low instruc-tional spending in rural schools. In some respects, thesestates demonstrate why some rural school advocates dis-trust centralized school funding systems. They may producea more equitable distribution of a less adequate level offunding.

All five of the Prairie/Plains states in the “Crucial” quartilerank 21st or higher on the state/local revenue indicator, and18th or lower on the organizational scale indicator—smallerschools and smaller independent districts in states whosefunding systems depend heavily on local revenue. All fiveare in the top quartile with low instructional expendituresper pupil, but only Missouri and North Dakota rank in thetop quartile due to low teacher salaries. Except for NorthDakota, these are big states where urban and suburbancompetition for teachers is intense and where rural districtsmust depend on local tax dollars to attract teachers. Theymay cut corners on other instructional expenditures.

It should be noted that all of the top quartile except Illinoisand North Dakota are below the national average in totaltaxable resources per capita. These are predominantly lowfiscal capacity states.

At the bottom of this gauge are five Northeastern states(Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York,and Vermont), three Great Plains states (Montana,Wyoming, and Kansas), three Far West states (Alaska, Cal-ifornia, and Washington), twoMidwestern states (Michi-gan andMinnesota) and one Southwestern state (NewMexico).3 Their low ranking collectively is most attributa-ble to their high instructional expenditure per pupil. Sevenof the 14 are in the bottom quartile on that indicator, andanother four are in the third quartile. But 11 of the 13 arealso in the bottom half on the organizational scale indicator(andMassachusetts at 21st andMichigan at 24th are not faraway from the bottom half ). Nine of the 14 have aboveaverage statewide fiscal capacity (Kansas, Michigan, Mon-tana, New Mexico, and Vermont do not). In general, theseare states with relatively small schools and districts, highinstructional expenditures, and relatively strong fiscalcapacity.

Educational Outcomes Gauge

Educational Outcomes Gauge IndicatorsThis gauge includes indicators describing student academicachievement as measured by national assessments and byschools’ success in graduating high school students. In thissection, we define each of the indicators in the EducationalOutcomes Gauge and summarize state and regional pat-terns observed in the data.

� Rural high school graduation rate is measured usingthe Cumulative Promotion Index model developed byChristopher Swanson of the Urban Institute.i The lowerthe rural graduation rate, the higher the state ranks onthe Educational Outcomes Gauge and the more seriousthe concern for the policy environment.

There is considerable debate among researchers about thebest approach to computing graduation rates, and none ofthe many approaches are considered definitive. It is gener-ally believed that state self-measures of the graduation rateare inflated. The Swanson model accounts for year-to-yearretention en route to graduation, as opposed to simplydividing the number of graduates in a given year by adenominator serving as the presumed number of potentialgraduates.

This year, we were unable to compute results for Maine,Nevada, and South Carolina5. This is a significant limitationbecause South Carolina has often appeared at the top ofthis indicator with the lowest rural high school graduationrate.

On average nationwide, the rural high school graduationrate is 77.5 percent. But as in past reports in this series, therange on this indicator is wide—from 60% in Louisiana toover 96% in New Jersey (or 95% in more rural SouthDakota). The most urgent quartile on this indicatorincludes mostly states from the Southeast, Southwest, andAppalachia. Two Intermountain states (Colorado andUtah) as well as Alaska also break the top 13. Among these,only Alabama, Alaska, and New Mexico rank in the topquartile in the Importance Gauge, but seven rank in the topquartile on the Student Diversity Gauge.

It should be noted that three states for which we cannotcalculate a score on this indicator—Hawaii, Nevada, andSouth Carolina—score high enough on all other indicatorsin this gauge to rank in the top quartile on the gauge. It islikely that these states also have low graduation rates.States with the highest rural graduation rates are primarilythose with very low levels of student and family diversity,especially in the Prairie/Plains. The exception is California

3 There are 14 listed in the bottom quartile because of a three-waytie between Connecticut, Michigan, andMontana for 36-38thplace.

4 See www.urban.org/publications/410934.html for a detaileddescription of the methodology.

5 As well as usual, Hawaii, which we are unable to compute on manyindicators because it operates as a single statewide district.


which ranks seventh in terms of rural student and familydiversity and has a 95% rural graduation rate.

� Rural NAEP Scores. We turn now to student achieve-ment outcomes as measured by average rural districtreading and math scores at the 4th and 8th grade level onthe National Assessment of Educational Progress. Thelower the average score on each of these four indicators,the higher the ranking (the greater the concern) on theEducational Outcomes Gauge. The NAEP is adminis-tered and compiled by the U.S. Department of Educationand offers assessment data for state-by-state compar-isons, including comparisons of rural schools as a sub-group within states.

The results from indicator-to-indicator vary so little onthese four indicators that we discuss them here as a unit.

Eight states rank in the top quartile in all four indicators:Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi,New Mexico, and West Virginia. California and SouthCarolina rank in the top quartile on three of the four indi-cators and narrowly miss on the fourth. Oklahoma ranks inthe top on three and ranks 18th on the fourth. Georgiaranks in the top quartile on two indicators and no betterthan 16th on the other two. Arkansas ranks in the top quar-tile on two indicators and no better than 19th on the othertwo. Rural students in these thirteen states were consis-tently poor performers on NAEP at both grade levels andin both subject areas.

Nine of these states are in the top quartile on the StudentDiversity Gauge, two more are in the second quartile onthat gauge, and Hawaii would be in the top quartile if itwere not organized as a single state district and thereforecould not be ranked on that indicator.

There is a similar homogeneity in the states whose ruralstudents score highest on NAEP assessments. SevenNortheastern andMid-Atlantic states are in the bottomquartile (i.e., highest scores, least cause for concern) on allfour indicators: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts,New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.These are mostly states scoring low on the Rural Impor-tance Gauge and Very low on the Rural Student DiversityGauge. Colorado and Ohio score in the bottom quartile onthree of the four indicators; Kansas, Minnesota and NewYork on two; and Wisconsin on one.

Dropping the state test scores as indicators in this gaugeand relying instead on all NAEP scores bumped Georgia,Arkansas, and Nevada into the top quartile from the sec-ond, third, and fourth quartiles respectively. Also, usingNAEP only allowed us to score Hawaii because NAEP

scores are at the school level (Hawaii operates as a singlestatewide district). It also entered the top quartile.

Tennessee, Kentucky and Washington moved from the topto the second quartile. New York dropped all the way fromthe top to the fourth quartile, a leap that is accounted forby changing the indicators to eliminate state performanceindicators, which are more rigorous in New York than inmost states. The inclusion of state test scores in our previ-ous report punished New York (and Washington)Nine of the 13 states ranking in the top quartile on theOutcomes Gauge also rank in the top quartile on the Stu-dent and Family Diversity Gauge. Five rank in the topquartile on the Policy Gauge. Only four rank in the topquartile on the Importance Gauge. Alabama andMissis-sippi scored in the top quartile on each of these other threegauges, while Alaska and Oklahoma scored in the top quar-tile on the Diversity and Importance gauges and Arizonawas in the top quartile on the Diversity and Policy gauges.

It appears that outcomes for rural students are mostaffected by the level of socio-economic diversity, and thatboth policy and the relative importance of rural educationin the state are less related to outcomes.

Table 5. Educational Outcomes Gauge Rankings

Given the educational outcomes in each state, howurgent is it that policymakers take steps to address thespecific needs of schools serving rural communities?These rankings represent the average of each state’sscore on five indicators. The higher the average rank-ing (i.e., the closer to ranking number 1), the moreimportant it is for policymakers to address ruraleducational issues within that state.

Urgent Critical Serious Fair

MS 3.4 CA 17.8 MI 25.6 CO 34.6NM 3.8 TN 17.8 ME 28.3 WI 34.6AK 4.4 OR 18.0 DE 28.4 NY 35.6HI 4.8 ID 19.0 UT 28.6 OH 36.4LA 5.4 NC 19.2 MT 29.6 KA 37.8WV 5.6 VA 20.2 RI 30.2 MN 38.8AL 6.4 KY 20.4 SD 31.4 PA 40.6AZ 6.4 WA 21.0 IN 32.2 VT 41.2SC 10.3 TX 22.2 IA 32.8 MD 42.2GA 11.4 FL 22.8 ND 33.2 NH 42.4AR 14.6 WY 24.6 NE 33.4 M 44.8OK 16.0 MO 24.8 IL 33.8 NJ 47.0NV 17.3 CT 47.2



Longitudinal GaugeThis gauge measures the extent to which states’ educationalsystems are becoming more (or less) rural in character andwhether the state’s rural districts are more or (less) stressedby socio-economic challenges in school year 2008-2009than they were in school year 1999-2000.

Longitudinal Gauge Indicators

� Change in number of rural students (1999-2000through 2008-2009). This indicator measures thechange in the number of students in rural school districtsin the state. The larger the increase, the higher the rank-ing on this indicator because rural education is becominga larger absolute part of the state’s education system.

There was a net national gain in rural student enrollmentfrom school year 1999-2000 through 2008-2009 of over1.7 million students, about 70 percent of total public schoolenrollment increase nationally for that period. In all, 31states increased rural enrollment a combined total of nearly2.2 million while 18 states had combined losses of nearly450,000 rural students. The top quartile states on thisindicator had a combined increase of over 1.8 million, withTexas leading with a gain of over 369,000. The top quartilestates were mostly in the South, Southwest, and Appalachia(only California and Illinois were not). The top five stateson this indicator (in this order: Texas, Georgia, North Car-olina, Tennessee, and Arizona) had rural student enroll-ment gains of over 1.1 million, more than half the total gainof all gaining states.

Ten of the 18 states that lost rural enrollment are in NewEngland (all six states) and the Northern Plains (NorthDakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, andMontana), althoughthe largest net rural enrollment decline was inMichigan(declining nearly 78,000). Interestingly, five of the top sixstates on the Importance Gauge lost enrollment (indescending order of losses: Maine, Montana, North Dakota,Vermont, and South Dakota) and seven of the 13 ranked inthe bottom quartile on the Importance Gauge also lostenrollment (in descending order of losses: Massachusetts,Washington, Connecticut, New Jersey, Oregon, RhodeIsland andUtah). The five high-importance states losingenrollment each lost fewer than 15,100 rural students. Fourof the seven low-importance states were among the top sixlosing enrollment, each losing over 43,800 students.

� Percent change in rural enrollment (1999-2000through 2008-2009). This indicator measures the rateat which rural enrollment in the state is changing. Thehigher the rate, the higher the ranking on this indicatorbecause rural education is growing more rapidly.

Nationwide, rural school district enrollment grew by over22 percent from 1999-2000 through 2008-2009. Thiscompares with a 1.7% enrollment increase among all non-rural districts.

In eight states, rural enrollment more than doubled. Forthe most part, sharp percentage increases were experiencedin states that have a high absolute number of rural students.

Eighteen states experienced a declining rural enrollmentduring this time period, ranging from a high of minus 64.3%in Massachusetts to a low of minus 1.5% in Utah. Amongthe 13 with the sharpest rates of decline in rural enrollment,12 were also among the top losers in number of rural stu-dents (only Rhode Island among the top percentage loserswas not among the top number losers, for the obvious rea-son that there are very few rural students in Rhode Island.About half of these are small-population, sparsely settledstates that rank relatively high in percentage but low innumber of rural students in 2008-09.

Ten states appear among the top quartile in both the num-ber and percentage rural enrollment growth indicators(Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Missis-sippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, andTexas. All of these states are in the Southeast or Southwestexcept California.

� Change in rural percent Hispanic enrollment (1999-2000 through 2008-2009). This indicator measuresthe rate at which Hispanic enrollment in rural districts ischanging. The higher the rate the higher the ranking onthe indicator because rural education is becoming morediverse and rural districts must respond to a wider rangeof socio-economic challenges.

Rural Hispanic student enrollment increased nationally by150 percent over the time period, and by more than 200percent in each of the top 13 states. Only Massachusetts, astate with a very low number of rural Hispanic students,experienced a decrease.

Among the top quartile on this indicator, rural Hispanicenrollment grew from a low rate of 209 percent in Mary-land to a high rate of 578 percent in West Virginia. Exceptfor Arizona, all of these states started the period with a rel-atively low base Hispanic enrollment in rural districts. Still,the rate of growth is impressive. In declining order, thestates with the highest rate of rural Hispanic studentenrollment increase between 1999-200 and 2008-2009are: West Virginia (578%),Mississippi (530%), South Car-olina (447%), Illinois (437%), Alabama (397%), Kentucky(367%), Alaska (334%), Arizona (325%), Virginia (296%),North Carolina (293%), Arkansas (277%), Georgia (231%),


andMaryland (209%). These are primarily Southeasternand Appalachian states.

The states in the lowest quartile in the rate of rural Hispanicenrollment growth are mainly inNorthernNew England, theGreat Plains, and the Pacific Northwest. But even in some ofthese states, the growth over 10 years was 26-80 percent.

� Percent change in rural students living in poverty(1999-2000 through 2008-2009). This indicatormeasures the rate at which the level of student poverty inrural districts is changing. The change is measured inpercentage point gain or loss; that is, if the rural districts’student poverty rate increases from 25% to 30%, the indi-cator would report a five percentage point gain (not a20% gain in percentage points, as in [30-25]/25). Thehigher the rate, the higher the ranking on the indicatorbecause rural districts are facing greater socio-economicchallenges. Poverty is measured by eligibility for federallysubsidized meals.

The percentage of rural students living in poverty increasedover this time period by 9.8 percentage points, from 31.2percent to 41.0 percent. Rural districts in 42 states experi-enced an increase in the percentage of rural students livingpoverty, from a low of 0.3 percentage points in Connecticutand Rhode Island to a high of 28.7 percentage points inArizona (more than doubling the 1999-2000 rate). In 20of these, the increase was at least five percentage points.

The poverty percentage point increases were largest in theSouthwestern states of Arizona (28.7) and New Mexico(24.0); the Southern states of Louisiana (13.7), Georgia(11.2), and Arkansas (8.9); and the Mid-Western states ofMichigan (13.2), Indiana (9.5), Ohio (9), andMissouri(8.3). Nevada (10.4), Alaska (8.9), Maine (8.2), and Ore-gon (7.8) round out the top quartile.

More than other indicators in this gauge, the poverty ratetends to be cyclical, and the beginning and end of theperiod are merely two points in time, not necessarily indica-tive of a continuous trend. Start and end points that arefairly close might indicate stability over time, but it is alsopossible that within the range of dates there were high orlow extremes that are masked by similar start and endpoints. However, when the movement from start to enddates is very large, it likely represents a significant trend.

This fact coupled with the fact that five of those states inthe top quartile of this indicator are also in the top quartilefor poverty rate in 2008-09 (Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia,Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oregon) evidences a deepen-ing of rural poverty, especially in the South and Southwest.It is particularly notable that the two sharpest increases

(Arizona at 28.7 percentage points and New Mexico at 24percentage points) occurred over a truncated time periodas the earliest data we could get for meal rates for thesestate was from 2002-03.

The poverty rate in rural school districts declined in only sixstates, from a low of minus 0.9 percentage points in NorthDakota to a high of minus six percentage points in NorthCarolina (there were no data available for Tennessee andHawaii). These declines were in some states with highpoverty rates (Mississippi and West Virginia) as well as instates with relatively low poverty rates (all ranking between22 and 33 on the rural student poverty indicator). But ingeneral the declines were too small to warrant notice as atrend, although the six percentage point decline in NorthCarolina might offer some encouragement.

� Change in rural students as a percent of all students(1999-2000 through 2008-2009). This indicatormeasures a change in the share of a state’s total studentenrollment that is in rural districts. The change is meas-ured in percentage point gain or loss; that is, if the ruraldistricts’ share of a state’s enrollment increases from20% to 25%, the indicator would report a five percentagepoint gain (not a 25% gain in percentage points, as in [25-20]/20). The larger the increase in share, the higher theranking on this indicator because the performance ofrural students is becoming increasingly important to theoverall performance of the state’s educational system.

Rural enrollment as a percentage of total enrollmentnationally increased 2.6 percentage points over the timeperiod, increasing in 28 states overall and by more than sixpercentage points in 15 states. The largest gain in enroll-ment share was 19.7 percentage points in Tennessee; thesmallest was 0.2 percentage points in Indiana. Again, lead-ing gains in rural enrollment share are mostly in the Southand Southwest (only Alaska andMinnesota among those inthe top quartile are not in those regions). Six of those inthe top quartile are also in the top quartile in the “percent-age of rural students” indicator in the Importance Gauge,and five are also in the top quartile on the “number of ruralstudents” indicator in the Importance gauge. Many of thestates where rural students’ share of enrollment is growingfastest are also states where they are high in percentage andlarge in number.

Rural enrollment share declined in 21 states during theperiod. The lowest rate of decline was minus 0.2 percent-age points (Colorado) and the highest was minus six per-centage points (Washington). Every New England state islosing rural enrollment share (and all but New Hampshireare in the bottom quartile). Among the five New Englandstates in the bottom quartile are Maine and Vermont, both


in the top quartile on the percent rural students indicator,and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, all ofwhich are in the bottom quartile in percent rural students.Other prominent regions where rural enrollment share isdwindling are the Northern Plains (Montana, Nebraska,andNorth Dakota), the Pacific Northwest (Oregon andWashington), and theMid-Atlantic (New Jersey andNewYork). Seven of the states in the bottom quartile (losingrural enrollment share fastest) are also in the bottom quar-tile on the number of rural students indicator, and seven(not the same seven) are in the bottom quartile on percentrural students indicator. Ten of the 13 states where ruralenrollment share is falling fastest are states where either thenumber or the percentage of rural students, or both, is low.

Table 6 shows the cumulative ranking on the indicators inthe Longitudinal Gauge. The top quartile states are all inthe South and Southwest, except for Alaska. The top quar-tile represents a contiguous block of states running fromVirginia to Arizona, excepting only Texas, which ranks 15th,barely missing the top quartile.

Tennessee deserves special attention here. On two indica-tors, there is no data for Tennessee (percent change in ruralHispanic students and percentage point change in ruralstudent poverty). Ordinarily, we would not rank a statewith data for two of five indicators missing. But we madean exception here because on the other three, Tennesseeranked 4th, 2nd, and 1st.

Among the other top quartile states, Arizona and Georgiaranked in the top quartile on all five indicators, earningthem a gauge ranking of 2nd and 3rd respectively. SouthCarolina, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, and North Carolinawere in the top quartile on four indicators. All of themexcept Alaska missed the top quartile only on the percentagepoint change in rural student poverty indicator. Alaskamissed the top quartile only on the increase in rural studentenrollment indicator where it ranked 26th. Arkansas, NewMexico, and Louisiana made the top quartile on three indi-cators included in the Longitudinal Gauge, and Florida andVirginia ranked at the top on two indicators.

In the bottom quartile on the Longitudinal Gauge are fourof six New England states (Maine ranks 37th and NewHampshire ranks 36th, missing the bottom quartile by oneand two rankings respectively). Northern Plains statesNorth Dakota andMontana are also in the bottom quartile.North Dakota and Connecticut both ranked in the bottomquartile on all five indicators in the gauge.

We should note an interpretation issue with respect to theLongitudinal Gauge. The gauge indicators that reflectgrowth in the number of rural students and their share of

Table 6. Rural Longitudinal Gauge Rankings

A high ranking on the Longitudinal Gauge means thatrural education in a state is growing absolutely; isgrowing at a faster rate than other states; is growingas a share of the state’s total enrollment; is experienc-ing increases in rural student poverty; is experiencingincreases in Hispanic student enrollment; or somecombination of the foregoing. Taken as a whole, ahigh ranking on this gauge means that rural educationis becoming more important to the overall perform-ance of the state’s elementary and secondary educa-tion system, and that it presents growingsocio-economic challenges.


TN 1.0 KY 15.8 MD 24.6 OR 35.0AZ 4.0 TX 15.8 WY 25.8 VT 35.0GA 6.2 IL 18.6 NV 26.8 UT 35.4SC 6.2 OH 18.8 CO 27.2 MI 35.8AL 8.0 CA 19.4 KS 27.6 NE 36.8AK 12.0 MN 20.0 NY 27.8 ND 41.0AR 12.4 IN 20.6 WI 29.6 NJ 42.0NM 13.4 OK 21.0 WV 30.0 MT 42.4LA 14.2 IA 21.2 SD 30.2 WA 42.4MS 14.8 MO 22.2 PA 30.8 RI 43.0FL 15.0 DE 22.4 NH 31.6 MA 45.0NC 15.2 ID 23.8 ME 34.0 CT 45.4VA 15.6 HI N/A


the state’s total enrollment are ranked so that “more is bet-ter.” That is, the bigger the number and the faster thegrowth rate, the higher the ranking, reflecting the need forpolicy makers to pay more attention to rural schools andstudents. However, this discriminates against states whereeconomic stress in rural areas is causing declining enroll-ment, giving these state a lower ranking on the longitudinalgauge. Many states in the Great Plains and Northern NewEngland exemplify this reality. The rural schools and stu-dents in these states need attention, too.

Rural Education Priority GaugeFinally, we average the cumulative rankings on the fivegauges (Importance, Student and Family Diversity, Educa-tional Policy Context, Educational Outcomes, and Longitu-dinal) to create priority rankings that reflect the overallstatus of rural education in each state. The rankings for theRural Education Priority Gauge are presented in Table 7.

While the states ranking in the top (termed “Leading”)quartile on the Rural Education Priority Gauge havechanged very little compared to our Why Rural Matters


Table 7. Rural Education Priority Gauge Rankings

Rankings here represent the combined average rankingfor each state on the five gauges (Importance, Studentand Family Diversity, Educational Policy Context, Educa-tional Outcomes, and Longitudinal). The higher theaverage ranking (i.e., the closer to ranking number 1),the greater the need for policymakers to address ruraleducation issues within that state.

Leading Major Significant Notable

MS 7.6 NM 17.6 CO 25.6 MN 32.8AL 7.8 TX 19.2 MT 25.6 PA 32.8AZ 9.2 ID 19.8 OR 26.2 MI 33.6SC 11.6 VA 20.0 ME 26.4 WA 34.6LA 13.8 WV 20.2 OH 26.8 WI 34.8AK 14.4 SD 20.6 IA 28.0 VT 36.0OK 14.4 NV 21.4 DE 29.4 MD 36.4AR 14.6 MO 22.0 WY 29.6 NH 36.8GA 14.6 IN 23.0 UT 30.6 NY 37.2FL 15.2 ND 23.0 NE 30.8 RI 38.6NC 15.4 CA 24.4 KS 31.4 NJ 40.2KY 15.8 IL 24.8 CT 45.0TN 17.0 MA 45.4

HI N/A


2009 report, the regional patterns that have been presentthroughout this entire series of reports have become, ifanything, even more clear.

Two states that were in the Leading quartile in 2009dropped barely into the second (termed “Major”) quartilethis year—New Mexico (from 5th to 14th) and Idaho(from 13th to 16th). They were replaced by Georgia (upfrom 15th to tied for 8th) and Arkansas (up from 22nd totied for 8th). These changes, attributable in part tochanges in the data for these states and in part to changesin indicators used, make the South, Southwest andAppalachia the regions with the clearest need for policy-maker attention to rural education. All of the states rankedin the top quartile, except Alaska, are below the 39th paral-lel (a line running approximately from Washington, D.C.through Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Reno). But for Ken-tucky, they would all be below the 37th parallel, whichtellingly does not go near any large city.

Most of the states in the LeadingQuartile have been thereone or more times in our previous reports. Many of themhave been there in every report. Nomatter how we changethe indicators and gauges used tomeasure high priority ruraleducation needs, these states consistently surface near the top.

Moreover, nine of the 12 states in the Major quartile borderstates in the Leading quartile. Only Idaho, North Dakota,and South Dakota do not.

The regional pattern extends as well to the third quartile(termed “Significant”) and even more so to the fourthquartile (termed “Notable”). Nine of the states in theNotable Quartile are clustered in the Northeast, three arein the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Michigan and Wiscon-sin) and the other is Washington.6

Only the two highest ranking states on the Rural EducationPriority Gauge—Mississippi and Alabama—rank in the topquartile on all five underlying gauges. Among the fivegauges, the newest one, the Longitudinal Gauge, con-tributes most to the highest rankings on the Priority Gauge.Eleven of 13 states in the Leading Quartile on the PriorityGauge also placed in the top quartile on the LongitudinalGauge. The Educational Outcomes Gauge had nine topquartile states in the Leading Quartile on the PriorityGauge; the Student and Family Diversity Gauge had 8; theImportance Gauge 7; and the Policy Gauge 6.

In the Notable (bottom) quartile on the Priority Gauge,only Massachusetts ranked in the bottom quartile on all fiveunderlying gauges and only Connecticut and New Jerseyranked in the bottom on four. The Diversity Gauge con-tributed most to low ranking on the Priority Gauge. Ninestates ranking in the Notable Quartile on the PriorityGauge also ranked in the bottom quartile on the DiversityGauge. The number of states ranking in the bottom quar-tile on the other four gauges and also in the bottom quartileon the Priority Gauge were: Outcomes, 8; Importance, 6;Longitudinal, 6; and Policy, 5.

The Policy Gauge thus contributed least to both high andlow ranking on the Priority Gauge.

There were cases where states ranked very high or very lowon one gauge but consistently the opposite on other gauges.Two examples: Florida ranked first on Diversity and PolicyGauges but 41st on the Importance Gauge, while Vermontranked first on the Importance Gauge and in the no higherthan 37th on any other gauge. In Vermont, rural educationis important but not stressed or distressed. In Florida, ruraleducation does not measure up as highly important, butthere are issues the state needs to address.

6 The Notable Quartile has 14 states, one of which, Hawaii, is actu-ally unranked because as a single district state there is no rural dataon most of the indicators. We include 13 ranked states in theNotable quartile because Pennsylvania andMinnesota, tied for37th on this gauge, were placed in the Notable rather than Signifi-cant Quartile.


Conclusions and Implications

Over 9.6 million students are enrolled in ruralschool districts, over 20 percent of all publicschool students in the United States. Another 1.8

million students are enrolled in rural schools that are not indistricts classified as rural. Together, these 11.4 million stu-dents who attend either rural schools or rural districts com-prise over 23% of public school students. Of those attendingschools in a rural district, two in five live in poverty (andthat rate has increased by nearly a third in nine years), onein four is a child of color, and one in eight has changed resi-dence in the past 12 months.

Moreover, both the scale and the scope of rural educationin the United States are growing. Between school years1999-2000 and 2008-2009, rural districts (excludingrural schools in non-rural districts now) enrollmentincreased by well over 1.7 million students, a growth rate forthe period of over 22 percent. During the same time period,non-rural enrollment increased by only 673,000, a 1.7 per-cent increase. Seventy percent of the national schoolenrollment increase was in rural districts. As a result, therural share of national public school enrollment increasedfrom 17.4 percent to 20 percent.

Rural enrollment increases were not universal, but werewidespread among the states. In all, 31 states increased ruralenrollment by a combined total of nearly 2.2 million while18 states had combined losses of nearly 450,000 rural stu-dents. To a large degree, sharp percentage increases in ruralenrollment were experienced in states that have a highabsolute number of rural students. Among the 13 states inthe top quartile in percentage increase, eight are in the topquartile in number of rural students: Alabama, California,Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ten-nessee, and Texas.

These enrollment gains were particularly strong in the mostrural states in the South and Southwest. Ten states areamong the top quartile in both the number and the per-centage of rural enrollment growth indicators (Alabama,Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, NorthCarolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas). All ofthese states except California are in the Southeast orSouthwest. The top five states with rural enrollmentincreases—Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, andArizona—had a total gain of over 1.1 million, more thanhalf the total gain for all states that gained rural enrollment..It is also clear that rural minority students are becomingmore concentrated in certain states. Nationally, 25.8 percent

of rural students are children of color. But the range amongstates is very large, from 3.2 percent in Rhode Island to82.6% in New Mexico. Eighty percent of rural students ofcolor attend school in the 18 states with rural minority stu-dent rates above the national average. In four states (NewMexico, Alaska, Arizona, and California), white studentsmake up less than 50% of the rural student population andstudents of color collectively make up more than 50%.More than one in three rural students is a student of colorin nine other states (in descending order, Louisiana, Texas,Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina,Oklahoma, Georgia, and Delaware). Over 69% of all ruralminority students in the U.S. attend school in these 13states where students of color represent more than onethird of the rural student enrollment. Two years earlier, 12states had that level of rural minority student concentrationand they constituted only 58% of all rural students of color.

All of these developments make it increasingly difficult forpolicy makers to ignore the challenges that rural schoolsand the students they serve present to state and nationalgoals of improving achievement and narrowing achieve-ment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

Still, the invisibility of rural education persists in manystates. Many rural students are largely invisible to state pol-icy makers because they live in states where education pol-icy is dominated by highly visible urban problems.Consider this. On the one hand, there are 16 states inwhich over one-third of public school students are enrolledin rural school districts. On the other hand, more than halfof all rural students live in just 11 states. But, only fourstates are in both of these categories—Alabama, Georgia,North Carolina, and Tennessee. Most rural studentsattend school in a state where they constitute less than 27percent of the public school enrollment, and a third are instates where they constitute less than 20 percent.

It is ironic that rural education seems “important” notwhere rural people are, but where urban people are not.

The Southern HegemonyThere has been a considerable consistency in the final pri-ority rankings of states throughout the Why Rural Mattersseries. Changes we make in selected indicators usually hassome effect. Moving from “declining enrollment” as a meas-ure of instability to “rural mobility” for example, gavehigher profile to states where people are moving to (orwithin) rural areas and lower profile to states where they


were moving from rural areas. The use of the LongitudinalGauge for the first time in this report tended to reinforcethat effect.But despite such shifts, many states simply gravitate to thetop of the Priority Gauge each year. They are mostly in theSouth, Southwest, and Appalachia. This year, that tendencyhardened. All of the states ranked in the top Priority Gaugequartile, except Alaska, are in Appalachia, the South, or theSouthwest and nine of the 12 states in the second quartileborder states in the top quartile. Only Idaho, North Dakota,and South Dakota do not.

We note, however, that the Southern hegemony is leastapparent in the Importance Gauge. Five of the top six rank-ing states are not in the South or Southwest or Appalachia.That is because in many states where rural education is rela-tively large in scale and scope—the factors in the Impor-tance Gauge—it is not very diverse, student poverty ratesare modest, conditions are not intensifying over time, andstudent outcomes are strong. Many top quartile states onthe Importance Gauge—Iowa, Maine, Montana, NorthDakota, South Dakota, and Vermont—rank much lower onalmost every other gauge. For many people—too many peo-ple—these states seem to be what they imagine rural Amer-ica to be: mostly white, reasonably well-off, wonderfullyuncomplicated, and withering away in a global economy.That myth is part of what keeps rural education on the mar-gins of national debate about education policy. These classicYankee and Prairie/Plains states are simply an importantpart of a much more varied, complex and challenging ruralAmerica that education policy makers must better under-stand.

The Special Education andPoverty DichotomyOur findings here are striking. Among states, higher rates ofspecial education identification in rural school districts mayhave more to do with the willingness to identify these stu-dents and to pay for the services they require than it has todo with the actual distribution of students who should havethese services. The top quartile states on the special educa-tion indicator include only two states in the top povertyquartile, but six states in the bottom poverty quartile. Thisis contrary to the widely accepted view that high rates ofpoverty correlate with high rates of special education. If therate of special education need is indeed higher in highpoverty rural areas, it is not reflected in high rates of actualdelivery of rural special education services. Moreover, thisdichotomy is not readily explained by the states’ fiscalcapacity. Among both the top and the bottom quartile onthe special education rate indicator, there are five stateswith above the national average fiscal capacity and six withbelow the national average. We suspect that special educa-

tion rates reflect the willingness to deliver the servicesmore than the incidence of need for the service.

Spending and Fiscal CapacityWhile fiscal capacity does not seem to impact rural rates ofparticipation in special education, the same cannot be saidof many indicators in our Policy Gauge.

Differences in state fiscal capacity, as measured by theTreasury Department’s annual calculation of each state’sTotal Taxable Resources Per Capita, seem related to manyof the indicators in the Policy Context Gauge. Four of thefive indicators in this gauge involve revenue and expendi-ture patterns.

All of the top quartile states on the Policy Context Gaugeexcept Illinois and North Dakota are below the nationalaverage in state fiscal capacity. On the other hand, nine ofthe 14 states ranking in the bottom quartile on this gaugehave above average statewide fiscal capacity. Rural districtsseem to fare better on the indicators in our Policy Gaugewhen the state enjoys higher levels of fiscal capacity.For example, states with the lowest rural salary expendi-tures are primarily in the Southeast and the Midwest/GreatPlains. Of the 13, all but Nebraska and South Dakota arebelow the national average in state fiscal capacity. On theother hand, states with the highest rural salary expendituresare located primarily in the Northeast, the West, and theMid-Atlantic. All these states are above the national aver-age in state fiscal capacity per capita.

In general, rural teachers are paid less than teachers inother locales, but there are nuanced differences among thestates with respect to rural instructional salaries. Ruralteachers seem to be paid better in states where they repre-sent a small portion of a largely urban and suburban teach-ing force, and where there is relatively high state fiscalcapacity. All of the 13 states spending the most on ruralinstructional salaries per FTE are above national average onfiscal capacity. Twelve of the 14 states spending the least perpupil on instruction in rural districts are below the nationalaverage in state fiscal capacity.

States with centralized school finance systems (heavyreliance on state aid and lower reliance on local revenue)tend to have larger rural schools and districts in the Southbut smaller schools and districts in the North. Those in theSouth tend to have low levels of salary expenditure perinstructional FTE and low fiscal capacity.

States with the most decentralized school finance systemsare either low poverty Northeastern states with high fiscalcapacity or Prairie/Plains states with low to moderate levels


of rural poverty and mostly above average fiscal capacity.The first group includes many states that spend relativelyhigh levels per pupil in their rural schools, while most ofthose in the second group are relatively low spenders intheir rural schools.

The Bottom LineGrowth in rural school enrollment is outpacing non-ruralenrollment growth in the United States, and rural schoolsare becoming more complex with increasing rates ofpoverty, diversity, and special needs students. Moreover,these trends, while widespread, are most intense in theSouth, Southwest, and parts of Appalachia. And they arenow trends that track back to 1999-2000, at least.

Rural education frustrates some who wish it would con-form to its image of simplicity. Its geographical dispersion,its small and decentralized institutions, its isolation, and thecultural conservatism of many of its communities makerural education a conundrum to reformers and policy mak-ers whose experiences and concerns are so often focused onurban education. Now, as the evidence mounts that ruraleducation is becoming a bigger and even more complex partof our national educational landscape, it is becomingimpossible to ignore.The day of closing our eyes and hopingit will just go away are ending. New, more thoughtful policyreforms customized to meet the challenges of rural educa-tion in all of its dimensions and manifestation are needed.


Imp

ort

ance

Gau

ge

Ran

kin

gs

AL

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

ID

ILIN

IA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

HI

AK

ME

Stat

eSt

atu

s

Cru

cial

Very

Impo

rtan

t

Impo

rtan

t

Not

able

NA


Stu

den

tan

dFa

mily

Div

ersi

tyG

aug

eR

anki

ng

s

AL

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

ID

ILIN

IA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

HI

AK

ME

Stat

eSt

atu

s

Urg

ent

Crit

ical

Serio

us

Fair

N/A


Edu

cati

on

alPo

licy

Co

nte

xtG

aug

eR

anki

ng

s

AL

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

ID

ILIN

IA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

HI

AK

ME

Stat

eSt

atu

s

Cru

cial

Very

Impo

rtan

t

Impo

rtan

t

Not

able

N/A


Edu

cati

on

alO

utc

om

esG

aug

eR

anki

ng

s

AL

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

ID

ILIN

IA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

HI

AK

ME

Stat

eSt

atu

s

Urg

ent

Crit

ical

Serio

us

Fair

N/A


Lon

git

ud

inal

Gau

ge

Ran

kin

gs

AL

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

ID

ILIN

IA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

HI

AK

ME

Stat

eSt

atu

s

Cru

cial

Very

Impo

rtan

t

Impo

rtan

t

Not

able

N/A


Ru

ralE

du

cati

on

Prio

rity

Ran

kin

gs

AL

AZ

AR

CA

CO

CT

DE

FL

GA

ID

ILIN

IA

KS

KY

LA

MD

MA

MI

MN

MS

MO

MT

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

NC

ND

OH

OK

OR

PA

RI

SC

SD

TN

TX

UT

VT

VA

WA

WV

WI

WY

HI

AK

ME

Stat

eSt

atu

s

Lead

ing

Maj

or

Sign

ifica

nt

Not

able

N/A


PRIORITYRANKING

2

Notable Important Very Important Crucial

AL Rank*

Percent rural schools 49.1% 18

Percent small rural districts 1.5% 41

Percent rural students 39.7% 7

Number of rural students 295,906 11

Percentage of state education funds to rural districts 43.0% 8

AL Rank*

Percent rural minority students 28.1% 17

Percent rural ELL students 2.0% 25

Percent rural IEP students N/A N/A

Percent rural student poverty 52.3% 9

Percent rural mobility 12.0% 17

AL Rank*

Rural instructional expenditures per pupil $5,207 17

Ratio of instructional to transportation expenditures $9.60 15

Median organizational scale (x 100) 27,186 9

State revenue to schools per local dollar $2.51 41

Rural salary expenditures per instructional FTE $48,791 10

AL Rank*

Rural high school graduation rate 67.5% 7

Rural Grade 4 NAEP scores (math) 228 3

Rural Grade 4 NAEP scores (reading) 218 13



Fair Serious Critical Urgent



G A U G E 1:

Importance

G A U G E 2:Student andFamily Diversity

G A U G E 3:EducationalPolicy Context

G A U G E 4:EducationalOutcomes

* A rank of 1 is most crucial or most urgent


AL Rank*

Increase in absolute rural student enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09) 111,106 26

Percent change in number of rural students (1999-00 to 2008-09) 57.7% 6

Percent change in number of rural Hispanic students (1999-00 to 2008-09) 397.0% 5

Change in percent rural student poverty (1999-00 to 2008-09) 5.1% 18

Change in rural students as a percent of all students (1999-00 to 2008-09) 14.5% 4

G A U G E 5:LongitudinalGauge

ALABAMA is the nation’s 2nd highest priority rural state according to our ranking system. Four of every ten stu-dents attend rural schools, one of the largest proportional rural student enrollments in the nation. More than half of thestate’s nearly 300,000 rural students live in poverty. Rural schools and districts are among the nation’s largest, andinstructional spending and instructional salaries are lower than in most other states. Rural high school graduation ratesand NAEP performance are near the bottom nationally. Rural schools and students are growing in number, with therural Hispanic student population increasing at nearly three times the rural US rate.

Percent rural students

AL US

39.7 20.2

Percent rural school poverty

AL US

52.3 41.0

Rural high school graduation rate

AL US

67.5 77.5

Rural instructionalexpenditures per pupil

$5,207$5,657

AL US

9

11

8

7

5

Change in rural students as apercent of all students

AL

US

14.5%

2.6%



AK Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

7

AK Rank*



Percent rural IEP students 12.3% 35



AK Rank*



Median organizational scale (x 100) 883.9 43



AK Rank*











AK Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





ALASKA - Almost two-thirds of Alaska’s schools are located in rural areas, and these rural schools serve highpercentages of ELL students, minority students, and families who have changed residence in the previous 12 months.Even with rural instructional expenditures and salary expenditures that are among the highest in the nation, Alaska hasthe nation’s lowest rural NAEP reading scores in Grades 4 and 8 and comparatively low rural NAEP math scores in bothgrades. Also of note, increase over time in the poverty rate among rural students in Alaska is greater than all but eightother states.

Percent rural schools

AK US

63.3 33.0

Percent rural ELL students

AK US

16.3 3.7


$10,300

$5,657

AK US

Rural Grade 8 NAEP scores(reading)

AK

US 264

250

Percent change in number ofrural Hispanic students

AK

US

334.3%

150.9%

10

5

49

3

6


PRIORITYRANKING

3


AZ Rank*






AZ Rank*






AZ Rank*






AZ Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






AZ Rank*







ARIZONA - Arizona’s rural students represent a fairly small proportion of all public students in the state, butthey are one of the nation’s most diverse student populations. More than half of all students are minorities, nearly halflive in poverty, one in five has changed residences in the previous 12 months, and one in ten is a non-native Englishspeaker. Spending on instruction is the nation’s second lowest at more than $1,300 per pupil below the national average.Outcomes are poor, with fewer than seven in ten students graduating and rural NAEP scores below those of nearly allother states. The percent change in the number of rural students is higher than in any other state.

Percent small rural districts

AZ US

59.7 49.9

Percent rural mobility

AZ US

19.5 12.7


AZ US

66.8 77.5


$4,249

$5,657

AZ US

Percent change innumber of rural students

AZ

US

228.9%

22.2%

31

4

3

7

2



AR Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

9

AR Rank*






AR Rank*






AR Rank*











AR Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





ARKANSAS -More than one-third of all students in Arkansas attend rural schools, and more than half of allschools serve rural communities. The poverty rate among rural students is fourth highest in the US, and nearly 14% of allstudents have experienced a residence change in the previous 12 months. Instructional spending and salaries are amongthe lowest in the nation, with only four states spending less on instructional salaries. Outcome measures are below thenational median across the board, with the lowest rural NAEP scores coming at the 8th grade level. The most notabledemographic changes over time are growth in the number of Hispanic students and an increase in the level of ruralpoverty.


AR US

55.2 33.0

Percent rural student poverty

AR US

58.0 41.0

Rural salary expendituresper instructional FTE

45,642$56,159

AR US


AR

US 264

258


AR

US

278.6%

150.9%

14

19

23

11

7


PRIORITYRANKING

24


CA Rank*






CA Rank*






CA Rank*



Median organizational scale (x 100) 5,243.5 24



CA Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






CA Rank*







CALIFORNIA has one of the nation’s lowest percentages of rural schools and students, but one of the highestpercentages of small rural districts and the 13th largest absolute rural student enrollment. Moreover, the state educates thelargest percentage of rural ELL students in the nation and one of the highest percentages of rural minority students. Thestate’s rural high school graduation rate is higher than most states, but all of the rural NAEP scores in Grades 4 and 8 arebelow average. From 1999 to 2008, the state’s number of rural students has increased substantially, with only nine statesshowing more absolute growth. California remains important as a rural state given its Student and Family Diversity indi-cators and the below-average NAEP scores.


CA US

4.5 33.0


CA US

18.1 3.7


CA US

95.3 77.5


70,202

$56,159

CA US

40

7

44

14

18

Increase in absoluterural student enrollment

CA

USmedian

72,859

9,880



CO Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

26

CO Rank*






CO Rank*






CO Rank*











CO Rank*





Change in rural students as a percent of all students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -0.2% 29

G A U G E 1:

Importance





COLORADO - One third of Colorado’s schools are rural, while only 14% of its students are. Colorado schools anddistricts are smaller than in most other states, but enroll a high percentage of rural minority and ELL students. Ruralexpenditures per pupil and teacher salaries are among the lowest in the nation. Colorado’s Educational Outcomes indica-tors represent a mixed bag of results: only five states had lower rural high school graduation rates but Colorado scored sig-nificantly higher than average on Grade 4 and 8 NAEP scores. Longitudinal indicators are all about average, except forthe percent change in number of Hispanic students, which is half the national average.


CO US

72.4 49.9


CO US

5.73.7


CO US

66.5 77.5

Percent change in number ofrural students

CO US

12.622.2


$4,820$5,657

CO US

31

17

14

38

29


PRIORITYRANKING

48


CT Rank*






CT Rank*






CT Rank*






CT Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






CT Rank*

Increase in absolute rural student enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09) -43,878 44

Percent change in number of rural students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -40.0% 47





CONNECTICUT - Connecticut’s rural districts constitute only 16.5% of the state’s schools and serve just over65,000 students. Rural household mobility and rural student poverty are lower than in any other state. Expenditures onrural instructional salaries rank second only to New Jersey, and state funding support relative to local support is weak.Rural Connecticut students have, on average, the highest overall NAEP scores of any state. The total number of rural stu-dents in Connecticut has been nearly halved since 1999.


CT US

16.5 33.0


CT US

7.2 41.0

State revenue to schoolsper local dollar

$0.49

$1.31

CT US


CT

US 222

241

43

48

36

50

49


CT

US

-8.4%

2.6%

0



DE Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

32

DE Rank*






DE Rank*






DE Rank*











DE Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





DELAWARE -With fewer than 28,000 students in rural districts, Delaware has one of the lowest absolute ruralenrollments in the nation. However, the rural student population includes a relatively high percentage of minority andspecial education students, as well as a high proportion of English Language Learners. Rural schools and districts are largeon average and transportation costs relative to instructional costs are the third highest in the US. The rural high schoolgraduation rate is slightly below the national average. Since 1999, the state’s rural Hispanic student population hasincreased by 183%.

Percent rural IEP students

DE US

15.212.1

Ratio of instructional totransportation expenditures

$8.03

$11.06

DE US

Number of rural students

DE

USmedian

27,709

141,486

Rural Grade 4 NAEP scores(math)

DE

US 240

239


DE

US

183.3%

150.9%

44

22

30

28

24


PRIORITYRANKING

11


FL Rank*






FL Rank*






FL Rank*






FL Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






FL Rank*







FLORIDA’s absolute rural student enrollment is one of the nation’s largest at more than 384,000 (though theyrepresent less than 15% of public school students) and ranks as the most diverse rural student population in our report.Nearly half of all rural students live in poverty, more than 40% are minorities, and 15% qualify for special education.Rural mobility is higher than in all but three other states, and the rate of English Language Learners is higher than in allbut seven other states. Rural schools and districts are the nation’s largest, instructional spending and salaries are low, andstate contribution to public education costs is weak. Outcomes are slightly below average, with the exception of highschool graduation rate (at eighth lowest in the US). Absolute and proportional growth of rural students is dramatic.


FL US

6.63.7


FL US

68.8 77.5

Median organizational scale (x 100)

FL

US 5,203

276,744


FL

USmedian

384,442

141,486


FL

US

51.9%

22.2%

40

1

1

23

11



GA Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

9

GA Rank*






GA Rank*






GA Rank*











GA Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





GEORGIA - Nearly 575,000 students attend rural schools in Georgia, the third largest absolute rural studentenrollment in the nation. Poverty and mobility rates are among the highest in the US, as is the percentage of minoritystudents. Only three states have larger rural schools and districts than Georgia. Rural NAEP scores are near the bottomnationally, and just over six in ten rural students graduate from high school (only Louisiana’s rate is lower). The rate ofgrowth for rural students is dramatic, and the rate of growth in the rural Hispanic student population is among the high-est in the nation.


GA US

15.7 12.7


GA US

62.1 77.5


GA

US 5,203

50,797


GA

USmedian

574,765

141,486

20

12

29

10

3


GA

USmedian

232,582

9,880


PRIORITYRANKING

N/A


HI Rank*


Percent small rural districts N/A N/A

Percent rural students N/A N/A

Number of rural students N/A N/A

Percentage of state education funds to rural districts N/A N/A

HI Rank*

Percent rural minority students N/A N/A

Percent rural ELL students N/A N/A


Percent rural student poverty N/A N/A


HI Rank*

Rural instructional expenditures per pupil N/A N/A

Ratio of instructional to transportation expenditures N/A N/A

Median organizational scale (x 100) N/A N/A

State revenue to schools per local dollar N/A N/A

Rural salary expenditures per instructional FTE N/A N/A

HI Rank*

Rural high school graduation rate N/A N/A








G A U G E 1:

Importance






HI Rank*

Increase in absolute rural student enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A

Percent change in number of rural students (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A

Percent change in number of rural Hispanic students (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A

Change in percent rural student poverty (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A

Change in rural students as a percent of all students (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A


HAWAII is the only state where public schooling is organized as a single local education agency, making itimpossible to differentiate by locale at the district level. However, the information which is available is presented below.One-fifth of the schools in Hawaii are located in rural areas and rural household mobility is very high at almost 15%.NAEP performance in rural areas is lower than nearly all other states. Due to data limitations, Hawaii is excluded fromfour of the five gauge rankings, and is not part of the overall state ranking.


HI US

19.2 33.0


HI US

14.9 12.7


HI

US 284

270

4



ID Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

16

ID Rank*






ID Rank*






ID Rank*











ID Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





IDAHO is ranked in the second-highest priority category on all five gauges, and is above the national average on fourout of five Importance indicators. One in five rural students in Idaho is from a minority population and only five stateseducate a higher percentage of rural ELL students. No state spends less on instruction per pupil, teacher salaries are low,and educational outcomes hover around the national averages with the notable exception of the Grade 4 Reading averagethat is among the nation’s lowest. Indicators measuring demographic shifts over time all rank near the national averages,with exception of change in percent rural poverty, where Idaho shows an increase of 5 percentage points.

Percentage of state education fundsto rural districts

ID US

30.7 20.4


ID US

7.03.7


$4,169

$5,657

ID US


ID

US 222

217

25

17

18

18

22


ID

USmedian

12,783

9,880


PRIORITYRANKING

25


IL Rank*






IL Rank*






IL Rank*






IL Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






IL Rank*







ILLINOIS has one of the largest absolute rural student enrollments, but rural students make up only one in sevenpublic school students in the state. Rural students in Illinois have one of the highest IEP rates in rural America, havehigher rural high school graduation rates, and higher than average NAEP performance at Grades 4 and 8. The statespends among the nation’s lowest per pupil on instruction and only West Virginia has a lower ratio of instruction-to-transportation spending. The most notable change in the state’s rural demographics is the 437% increase in the rural His-panic student population.


IL US

13.120.2


IL US

16.0 12.1


$7.72

$11.06

IL US


IL

US 264

271


IL

US

437.0%

150.9%

16

37

4

34

34



IN Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

22

IN Rank*






IN Rank*






IN Rank*











IN Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





INDIANA ranks second on the Educational Policy Context gauge, with low per-pupil expenditures and a low ratioof instruction-to-transportation expenditures. The state’s rural schools enroll a high percentage of students with specialeducational needs and a relatively small percentage of minority students. Indiana’s rural NAEP scores are all slightlyabove national averages but two of ten students fail to graduate from high school. Indiana’s rural Hispanic studentpopulation saw a larger-than-average increase in the percentage of rural students in poverty from 1999 to 2008.


IN US

3.5 49.9

Percent rural minority students

IN US

7.8 25.8

Change in percent rural student poverty

IN US

9.5 5.9


$4,808$5,657

IN US


IN

US 284

290

20

33

2

32

29


PRIORITYRANKING

31


IA Rank*






IA Rank*






IA Rank*






IA Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






IA Rank*







IOWA - Over half of Iowa’s schools are located in rural districts, and these schools serve nearly one in three of thestate’s public school students. Student and family diversity indicators are all at or below the national median. Ruralschools and districts in Iowa are smaller than those in most other states. State contribution to school funding relative tolocal funding is well below the national average. Rural NAEP performance hovers around the national median in allareas, but rural students graduate at a very high rate. Iowa’s student population has grown increasingly rural at nearlydouble the national rate in the years since 1999.


IA US

53.2 33.0


IA US

6.1 25.8


IA US

93.4 77.5


$0.84

$1.31

IA US

22

34

27

46

12


IA

US

4.8%

2.6%



KS Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

36

KS Rank*






KS Rank*






KS Rank*











KS Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





KANSAS - Approximately half of all public schools in Kansas are in rural areas, with two out of three districtsreporting enrollments below the national median for rural districts. Student and family diversity indicators are all closeto the US median. Instructional salary expenditures per FTE are more than $7,000 below the national average, andeducational outcomes are above average in reading and even higher in mathematics. Since 1999, the rate of rural studentpoverty has increased by more than 6 percentage points.


KS US

66.2 49.9


KS US

14.5 12.1


KS US

6.2 5.9


49,059$56,159

KS US


KS

US 240

249

30

42

43

27

16


PRIORITYRANKING

13


KY Rank*






KY Rank*






KY Rank*






KY Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






KY Rank*







KENTUCKY - Just under half of all schools in Kentucky are rural, and only nine other states serve a higherpercentage of rural students in their public schools. Rural enrollments are characterized by high rates of poverty, ruralmobility, and students qualifying for special education services (highest in the nation on special education rates). Theeducational policy context does little to help, with large schools and districts, high transportation costs, and low levels ofinstructional spending. Educational outcomes are a mixed bag, with some rural NAEP scores at or above national aver-ages but the nation’s 12th lowest rural high school graduation rate. Rural schools and students are growing in number,with dramatic growth in the rural Hispanic student population.


KY US

38.520.2


KY US

17.6 12.1


KY US

72.8 77.5


$9.05$11.06

KY US


KY

US

366.9%

150.9%

14

20

16

20

10



LA Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

6

LA Rank*






LA Rank*






LA Rank*











LA Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





LOUISIANA’s rural students represent a fairly small proportion of all public students in the state, but they facesubstantial challenges. Seven in ten rural students live in poverty, 45% are minorities, 13% are non-native English speakers,and more than one in ten has changed residences in the previous 12 months. Spending on instruction relative to trans-portation is low, reflecting the large enrollment size of rural schools and districts in the state. Outcomes are poor, withonly six in ten students graduating (the nation’s lowest rate) and rural NAEP scores near the bottom. The rate of growthin the total number of rural students is noteworthy, as is an increase in their poverty level.


LA US

36.5 33.0


LA US

45.4 25.8


LA US

60.0 77.5


LA US

13.7 5.9


LA

US 5,203

31,229

9

5

5

14

37


PRIORITYRANKING

29


ME Rank*






ME Rank*






ME Rank*






ME Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






ME Rank*


Percent change in number of rural students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -14,1% 39





MAINE ranks second highest for rural importance, with more than two-thirds of its schools and more than halfof its students in rural communities. Maine serves a large percentage of rural students with special educational needs.Rural students in Maine score close to the median in NAEP math and reading scores in grades 4 and 8. OnlyVermont spends a greater percentage of state education funds on rural districts. Moreover, from 1999 to 2008, Mainesaw an increase of 8.2 percentage points in the rate of rural students in poverty, as compared with a 5.9 percentagepoint gain during the same time period for the nation as a whole.


ME US

52.720.2


ME US

16.1 12.1


ME US

8.2 5.9


ME

US 5,202.9

1,718.8


ME

US 284

287

37

27

31

36

2



MD Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

43

MD Rank*






MD Rank*






MD Rank*











MD Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





MARYLAND -With fewer than one in ten students attending school in a rural district (none of which is smallby national standards), Maryland is not a very rural state. More than one in five students in rural districts are minorities.Most striking in the educational policy context are the extremely large rural schools and districts, second in size only toFlorida. NAEP performance in rural districts is among the nation’s highest, although the graduation rate in these samedistricts is below the national average. The total number of rural Hispanic students has increased by more than 200%since 1999.


MD US

9.6 20.2


MD US

7.6 12.7


MD

US 5,202.9

108,189.9


MD

US 284

298


MD

US

208.8%

150.9%

26

46

22

45

44


PRIORITYRANKING

49


MA Rank*






MA Rank*






MA Rank*






MA Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






MA Rank*



Percent change in number of rural Hispanic students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -45.5% 47




MASSACHUSETTS -With 4.3% of its students enrolled in rural districts and an absolute rural studentenrollment of less than 35,000, Massachusetts is ranked as the least rural state. Rural student poverty is very low, but onein six rural students qualifies for special education services. Rural schools and districts are above average in size, andreceive less state revenue relative to local revenue than most other states. Rural NAEP performance rivals Connecticutfor highest in the US, although Massachusetts’s rural high school graduation rate is lower. Massachusetts is one of onlythree states to report a sizable decrease in rural Hispanic student population over the past 9 years.


MA US

6.6 33.0


MA US

16.412.1


$0.76

$1.31

MA US


MA

US 284

306


MA

US

-64.3%

22.2%

0

48

48

40

44

48



MI Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

39

MI Rank*






MI Rank*






MI Rank*











MI Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





MICHIGAN - Over 300,000 students attend rural schools in Michigan, one of the largest absolute rural studentenrollments in the nation. Nearly four in ten rural students live in poverty, and the percentage of students qualifying forspecial education is slightly above the US median. Total rural instructional expenditures are below the national median,but expenditures on instructional salaries are relatively high. Rural high school graduation rates and NAEP performanceare near the national average. Perhaps the most crucial finding for Michigan is an increase of about 13 percentage pointsin the rural poverty rate over what it was 9 years ago.


MI US

13.812.1


MI US

13.2 5.9


$5,249 $5,657

MI US


MI

USmedian

301,049

141,486


MI

US 222

226

41

26

36

33

33


PRIORITYRANKING

37


MN Rank*





Percentage of state education funds to rural districts 24.0x% 26

MN Rank*






MN Rank*






MN Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






MN Rank*







MINNESOTA serves a rural student population of over 200,000, more than one-fourth of all students in thestate. Rural household mobility is a full four percentage points below the national average, but the number of studentsqualifying for special education services is above average. Rural transportation expenditures are high relative to instruc-tional spending, but state contributions to rural districts amount to almost $3.00 for every local dollar of revenue.Educational outcomes are high, especially in math, and the rural graduation rate is above average. Over the last 9 years,the total number of rural students has increased by over 25%.


MN US

8.7 12.7


$9.80$11.06

MN US


MN

USmedian

200,246

141,486


MN

US 240

250

19

43

41

37

25


MN

USmedian

42,044

9,880



MS Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

1

MS Rank*






MS Rank*






MS Rank*











MS Rank*




Change in percent rural student poverty (1999-00 to 2008-09) -1.7% 45


G A U G E 1:

Importance





MISSISSIPPI - The highest priority rural state according to our ranking system, Mississippi is near the top on allfive gauges. More than half of all schools are rural, and no other state serves a higher percentage of rural students in itspublic schools. Rural enrollments are characterized by high rates of minority students and low-wealth students. The edu-cational policy context does little to help, with instructional spending levels below all but five other states and the nation’sseventh lowest instructional salary expenditures. Results reflect that context, with rural schools performing poorly on allfive outcome measures. Rural schools and students are growing in number, with dramatic growth in the rural Hispanicstudent population.


MS US

54.7 20.2


MS US

62.9 41.0


MS US

63.1 77.5


$4,578

$5,657

MS US


MS

US

530.2%

150.9%

10

1

7

13

8


PRIORITYRANKING

21


MO Rank*






MO Rank*






MO Rank*






MO Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






MO Rank*







MISSOURI - More than one in four students in Missouri is enrolled in a rural school district. The state is abovethe national average on each importance indicator with a large absolute student population and a high percentage of smallrural districts. Rural minority and ELL enrollments are among the lowest proportionally in the US. Missouri scored lowerthan average on every Educational Policy Context indicator, with only two states paying lower average teacher salaries.Educational outcomes for Missouri’s rural students were close to average with slightly higher than average rural highschool graduation rates. Longitudinal indicators show an increase of 8.3 percentage points in the rural student poverty rateover the past 9 years.


MO US

60.8 49.9


MO US

5.9 25.8


MO US

81.1 77.5


MO US

8.3 5.9


43,716

$56,159

MO US

23

25

9

35

19



MT Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

26

MT Rank*






MT Rank*






MT Rank*











MT Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





MONTANA - No state has a higher percentage of small rural districts and three out of four schools in Montanaserve rural communities. Rural student populations show high mobility rates and a large percentage of rural ELLstudents. Montana’s rural schools and districts are among the nation’s smallest and teacher salaries are low, consistentwith bordering states. Educational Outcomes are close to national averages with the exception of higher than averageGrade 8 NAEP scores. With a decline of nearly 24%, Montana has had one of the nation’s most substantial decreases inrural student enrollments since 1999.


MT US

33.075.1


MT US

15.1 12.7


MT

US 5,203

53.8


MT

US 264

271

4

14

36

30

45


MT

US

-6.0%

2.6%

0


PRIORITYRANKING

35


NE Rank*






NE Rank*






NE Rank*






NE Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






NE Rank*







NEBRASKA - Over half of Nebraska’s public schools are located in rural districts, and five of six rural school dis-tricts enroll fewer than 537 students. The percentage of rural students who qualify for special education services is higherthan all but 11 other states. Expenditures on instructional salaries are low, and the state’s contribution to school funding islower than in any state except Rhode Island. The state’s rural high school graduation rate is above 90%. Nebraska hasexperienced substantial decline in the number of rural students over time.


NE US

83.7 49.9


NE US

15.212.1


NE US

91.8 77.5


$0.45

$1.31

NE US

42

36

34

28

15


NE

US

-3.1%

2.6%

0



NV Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

20

NV Rank*






NV Rank*




State revenue to schools per local dollar $1,24 22


NV Rank*











NV Rank*

Increase in absolute rural student enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09) 656 31





G A U G E 1:

Importance





NEVADA -With most state residents living in urbanized areas, Nevada is one of the nation’s least rural states.The rural student population is diverse, with four in ten students living in poverty, three in ten students identifying asminorities, and one in twenty qualifying for ELL services. Nevada has the nation’s highest rate of rural mobility. The pol-icy context is problematic, with larger rural schools and districts than in all but seven other states, high transportationcosts, and meager state fiscal support. Outcomes range from below average to near the bottom nationally. The number ofrural schools and rural students is growing, and the rural student poverty rate has increased more than in all but fiveother states.


NV US

21.8 12.7


NV US

10.4 5.9


NV

US 5,203

28,719


NV

USmedian

19,708

141,486


NV

US 264

259

28

13

17

6

44


PRIORITYRANKING

44


NH Rank*






NH Rank*






NH Rank*






NH Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






NH Rank*







NEW HAMPSHIRE - Just over half of New Hampshire’s schools are located in rural areas and one in threestudents is enrolled in a rural district. Rural poverty and mobility rates are among the lowest in the nation. The educa-tional policy context is favorable, with the exception of weak state support relative to local contributions. New Hamp-shire’s rural students score higher than most other states on both math and reading NAEP tests. The absolute number ofrural students in the state has decreased slightly in the past 9 years.


NH US

35.8 20.2


NH US

14.412.1


$0.63

$1.31

NH US


NH

US 240

251


NH

US

-7.5%

22.2%

0

16

47

39

47

36



NJ Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

47

NJ Rank*






NJ Rank*






NJ Rank*











NJ Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





NEW JERSEY - Fewer than one in ten of New Jersey’s schools are located in rural areas, but they serve morethan 100,000 students. Rural student mobility and poverty rates are low in comparison with other states, but thepercentage of rural students qualifying for special education services is among the nation’s highest. Transportation costsare high in relation to instruction costs. Rural high school graduation rates and NAEP performance is higher than nearlyall other states. The total number of rural students in New Jersey has decreased more sharply over the past decade thanin all but four other states.


NJ US

33.09.7


NJ US

16.112.1


$0.67

$1.31

NJ US


NJ

US 264

276


NJ

US

-29.9%

22.2%

0

44

49

28

39

42


PRIORITYRANKING

14


NM Rank*






NM Rank*






NM Rank*






NM Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






NM Rank*







NEW MEXICO’s rural students make up only about one-fifth of all public students in the state, but they are oneof the nation’s most diverse rural student populations. Eight of ten rural students are minorities, eight in ten live inpoverty, nearly 14% are English Language Learners, and more than one in ten has changed residences in the previous 12months. The educational policy context is favorable for the most part, but educational outcomes are poor, with fewer thanseven in ten students graduating and rural NAEP scores below those of nearly all other states. The most notable demo-graphic shift over time is an increase in the poverty rate among rural students, the nation’s second largest increase.


NM US

64.5 49.9


NM US

82.6 25.8


NM US

65.8 77.5


NM US

24.0 5.9


$5.98

$1.31

NM US

8

2

46

3

30



NY Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

45

NY Rank*






NY Rank*






NY Rank*











NY Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





NEW YORK enrolls almost 350,000 students in rural districts, constituting 12.9% of students in the state. Rela-tive to the rest of the country, New York’s rural student population is not very diverse, with the exception of the high per-centage of students qualifying for special education services. Instructional spending and teacher salaries in rural areas arevery high, and transportation costs are high relative to instructional spending. Educational outcomes rate better than thenational averages. Of note, the number of rural Hispanic students in the state has grown by more than 176% in the pastdecade.


NY US

15.2 12.1


$8.80

$11.06

NY US


NY

USmedian

348,738

141,486


NY

US 284

291


NY

US

176.1%

150.9%

31

40

42

38

36


PRIORITYRANKING

12


NC Rank*






NC Rank*






NC Rank*






NC Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






NC Rank*







NORTH CAROLINA - One of the nation’s most rural states in terms of proportional and absolute studentpopulations, more than half of the state’s public schools serve rural communities. Rural minority students and rural ELLstudents make up a larger percentage of the total student population than in all but eight other states. Schools anddistricts in rural North Carolina are among the largest in the US, and instructional expenditures are among the nation’slowest. Outcome measures range from average to near the bottom, with mixed results on NAEP and a rural graduationrate below that of most other states. The increase in number of rural students is dramatic, and proportional growth in therural Hispanic student population is the tenth largest in the nation.


NC US

6.43.7


NC

US 5,203

60,512


NC

USmedian

685,409

141,486


NC

US 264

258

12

18

23

20

5


NC

USmedian

219,406

9,880



ND Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

22

ND Rank*






ND Rank*






ND Rank*











ND Rank*


Percent change in number of rural students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -21,7% 43




G A U G E 1:

Importance





NORTH DAKOTA - Despite an overall priority ranking of 22, North Dakota ranks fifth on both importanceand educational policy and context. Nearly three in four schools are rural and only Montana has a higher percentage ofsmall rural districts. North Dakota’s rural schools and districts are among the nation’s smallest and have low minority,mobility, and poverty rates but higher than average percentages of ELL and IEP students. Teacher salaries are theabsolute lowest in the nation and districts face the challenge of high transportation costs and a significant dependence onlocal dollars over state dollars. The state is above the national average on all Educational Outcome indicators, but longitu-dinal indicators suggest substantial population losses in rural communities.


ND US

94.0 49.9


ND US

4.4 3.7


ND US

88.3 77.5


40,675

$56,159

ND US

43

35

5

28

5

Change in percentrural student poverty

ND

US

-0.9%

5.9%

0


PRIORITYRANKING

30


OH Rank*






OH Rank*






OH Rank*






OH Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






OH Rank*







OHIO - Nearly half of a million Ohio students are enrolled in rural school districts, the fourth largest absolute ruralstudent enrollment in the country. The rural student population is relatively homogenous, ranking below the US medianon every diversity indicator. Educational policy issues are of crucial concern, with spending at less than $5,000 per studentin rural districts and high transportation spending relative to instructional spending. Rural graduation rate and NAEPscores all exceed the national median. The poverty rate among rural students grew by 9 percentage points between 1999and 2008.


OH US

6.5 25.8


OH US

9.0 5.9


$4,974

$5,657

OH US


OH

USmedian

469,948

141,486


OH

US 240

246

17

41

10

43

24



OK Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

7

OK Rank*






OK Rank*



Median organizational scale (x 100) 859 44



OK Rank*











OK Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





OKLAHOMA ranks high in terms of rural importance, with more than half of all public schools serving ruralcommunities and nearly one-third of all students attending school in a rural district. Seven of ten rural districts haveenrollments below the national median. Nearly six in ten rural students live in poverty, nearly four in ten are minorities,and more than 14% have changed residence in the previous 12 months. Instructional spending and salaries are low, butschools and districts are moderately sized and the state contribution to school funding is above average. Rural NAEP per-formance is below that of most other states, but rural graduation rates are above the national median. Of note, increasein the proportional size of the rural student population is greater than in all but nine other states.


OK US

72.7 49.9


OK US

57.3 41.0


44,363

$56,159

OK US


OK

US 284

275

21

12

31

2

7


OK

US

7.7%

2.6%


PRIORITYRANKING

28


OR Rank*






OR Rank*






OR Rank*






OR Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






OR Rank*







OREGON - One in ten students in Oregon attends a rural school. Yet Oregon’s rural school students make up oneof the largest rural ELL populations in the US and rural poverty rates are high, leading to an Urgent ranking on the Stu-dent and Family Diversity indicator. The state has a low ratio of instruction-to-transportation spending and scores close toaverage on Education Policy Context and Educational Outcomes measures. The state’s 7.8 percentage point increase in therural student poverty rate from 1999 to 2008 is nearly two percentage points above the national average.


OR US

10.8 20.2


OR US

8.0 3.7


OR US

7.8 5.9


$9.35$11.06

OR US


OR

US 222

218

38

16

31

9

38



PA Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

37

PA Rank*






PA Rank*






PA Rank*











PA Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





PENNSYLVANIA has one of the nation’s largest absolute rural student populations and a very large percentageof rural students with IEPs. Pennsylvania’s rural students perform well above average on all Grade 4 and Grade 8 NAEPscores and graduate from high school at a higher rate than their peers nationally. Only three states spend fewer dollars oninstruction per dollar spent on transportation, but Pennsylvania ranks in the top half of states for teacher pay. The statehas seen a higher than average percentage increase in rural Hispanic students from 1999 to 2008 though it ranks low onpercentage of rural minority and ELL student percentages relative to other states.


PA US

16.712.1


$8.13

$11.06

PA US


PA

USmedian

334,805

141,486


PA

US 284

292


PA

US

167.6%

150.9%

35

44

13

39

34


PRIORITYRANKING

46


RI Rank*






RI Rank*





Percent rural mobility N/A N/A

RI Rank*






RI Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






RI Rank*



Percent change in number of rural Hispanic students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -50.4% 48




RHODE ISLAND is the least rural state in the US, with only about one in twenty students enrolled in a ruraldistrict, and only about one in ten schools located in a rural area. Rural poverty is low relative to other states and minor-ity students constitute only 3% of the student population, but the percentage of rural students qualifying for special edu-cation services is very high. States contribute only $0.31 for every dollar of local revenue, the lowest level of statecontribution in the nation. Rural educational outcomes are very high among fourth graders, but only average amongeighth grade students. Of note, the total number of rural students is only about half of what it was in 1999.


RI US

17.012.1


RI US

74.7 77.5


$0.31

$1.31

RI US


RI

USmedian

6,823

141,486


RI

US

-50.4%

150.9%

0

47

31

26

41

49



SC Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

4

SC Rank*






SC Rank*






SC Rank*











SC Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





SOUTH CAROLINA - Four of every ten students in South Carolina attend rural schools, one of the largestproportional rural student enrollments in the nation. Nearly six in ten of the state’s 285,000-plus rural students live inpoverty, four in ten are minorities, and 15% are English Language Learners. Rural schools and districts are among thenation’s largest, and instructional spending is well below the national median. Rural NAEP scores are near the bottomnationally. Over time, the total number of rural students increased more than in most other states, and the rate of growthin both rural students and rural Hispanic students is among the nation’s highest.


SC US

40.0 20.2


SC US

57.1 41.0


SC

US 5,203

42,217


SC

US 264

257

3

9

21

8

18


SC

US

16.1%

2.6%


PRIORITYRANKING

19


SD Rank*






SD Rank*






SD Rank*






SD Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






SD Rank*







SOUTH DAKOTA - Ranking as the nation’s third most rural state, South Dakota has the highest percentage ofrural schools and among the highest percent of rural students and small rural districts. South Dakota’s rural schools anddistricts are small in organizational scale, show close to average Student and Family Diversity and graduate all but one intwenty rural students. Only one state pays a lower salary and South Dakota relies more heavily on local dollars than most.Measured longitudinally, South Dakota is characterized by substantial loss of rural students, increases in the proportion ofrural Hispanic students, and increases in the proportion of students in poverty.


SD US

33.078.6


SD US

14.0 12.1


SD US

95.3 77.5


42,447

$56,159

SD US


SD

US

-7.3%

22.2%

0

34

32

19

16

3



TN Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

5

TN Rank*






TN Rank*






TN Rank*











TN Rank*



Percent change in number of rural Hispanic students (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A

Change in percent rural student poverty (1999-00 to 2008-09) N/A N/A


G A U G E 1:

Importance





TENNESSEE -More than 375,000 students attend rural schools in Tennessee, nearly four out of every tenpublic school students. Rural schools and districts are among the nation’s largest, rural instructional expenditures arelower than in all but four other states, and instructional salaries are the sixth lowest in the US. The rural high schoolgraduation is above the national median, but rural NAEP scores are well below. Growth in rural student enrollment as aproportion of the state’s total public school enrollment is greater than in any other state.


TN US

46.8 41.0


$4,518

$5,657

TN US


TN

USmedian

375,453

141,486


TN

US 284

275

1

14

11

31

12


TN

US

19.7%

2.6%


PRIORITYRANKING

15


TX Rank*






TX Rank*






TX Rank*






TX Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






TX Rank*







TEXAS -More than 834,000 students attend rural schools in Texas, the largest absolute rural student enrollment inthe nation and more than the combined total rural enrollments of 17 other states. ELL and mobility rates are among thehighest in the US, as is the percentage of minority students. The policy context ranks at the midpoint among states; ofnote are low instructional spending levels and a weak state contribution. Educational outcomes are below national aver-ages for the most part, but not dramatically so. Texas has experienced the nation’s largest increase in the absolute ruralstudent population over the past nine years.


TX US

9.4 3.7


TX US

74.6 77.5


$5,192$5,657

TX US


TX

USmedian

834,140

141,486

14

22

25

10

26


TX

USmedian

369,459

9,880



UT Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

34

UT Rank*






UT Rank*






UT Rank*











UT Rank*

Increase in absolute rural student enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09) -475 32





G A U G E 1:

Importance





UTAH - A very small percentage of students are enrolled in rural school districts in Utah, but one-fourth of all publicschools are located in these districts. At nearly 5% of the rural student population, only 11 states report higher rates of Eng-lish Language Learners. Instructional spending is extremely low and the rural schools and districts are larger than thenational median. Fewer than seven in ten rural students graduate from high school. In the years since 1999, the ruralpoverty rate has decreased slightly, and the number of rural Hispanic students has grown by over 70%.

Percentage of state education fundsto rural districts

UT US

6.4 20.4


UT US

4.8 3.7


UT US

69.1 77.5


$4,471

$5,657

UT US


UT

US

71.6%

150.9%

40

29

15

23

47


PRIORITYRANKING

42


VT Rank*






VT Rank*






VT Rank*






VT Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






VT Rank*







VERMONT -With four of five indicators ranking third or higher, Vermont rates as the nation’s most rural stateaccording to our importance gauge. The percentage of rural minority students is among the nation’s lowest, as is the per-centage of English Language Learners. Instructional spending is high overall and relative to transportation costs. NAEPperformance is strong and the rural graduation rate exceeds the national average. While rural student enrollment isdecreasing, both rural Hispanic student enrollment and rural student poverty rates have increased.


VT US

54.6 20.2


VT US

4.2 25.8


$16.62

$11.06

VT US


VT

US 264

272


VT

US

-17.3%

22.2%

0

1

49

48

45

38



VA Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

17

VA Rank*






VA Rank*






VA Rank*











VA Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





VIRGINIA has the seventh largest total rural enrollment in the nation at nearly 360,000 students (nearly three ofevery ten students). Percentage minority and special education enrollments are above the national average. Virginia’srural schools and districts are among the largest in the US, with higher than average rural salary expenditures and lowerthan average transportation costs. Despite average NAEP scores, the state has a low rural high school graduation rate.Since 1999, the rural Hispanic student enrollment has grown by nearly 300%, and the increase in rural poverty over thesame time period is above the national average.


VA US

12.8 12.1


VA US

73.2 77.5


VA

US 5,202.9

26,701.4


VA

USmedian

358,785

141,486


VA

US

295.7%

150.9%

13

19

20

26

23


PRIORITYRANKING

40


WA Rank*






WA Rank*






WA Rank*






WA Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance





NotableImportant

Very Important Crucial

WA Rank*







WASHINGTON -With Washington’s population concentrated in urban areas, only one in nine students isenrolled in a rural district. The percentage of rural minority students is higher than all but 15 states, and the percentage ofrural English Language Learners is the seventh highest in the country. Expenditures on instructional salaries in rural areasare more than $10,000 higher than the national average. Rural educational outcomes are well below the national medianin the fourth grade, but slightly above the median at the eighth grade level. Washington ranks low on indicators measuringdemographic trends, with one of the smallest percentage increases in rural Hispanic students since 1999.


WA US

60.4 49.9


WA US

6.9 3.7


$66,710$56,159

WA US


WA

US 222

217

45

21

45

25

38


WA

USmedian

-55,802

9,880

0



WV Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

18

WV Rank*






WV Rank*






WV Rank*











WV Rank*





Change in rural students as a percent of all students (1999-00 to 2008-09) -1,1% 32

G A U G E 1:

Importance





WEST VIRGINIA -More than half of West Virginia schools are in rural areas and more than a third of thestate’s students attend rural schools. Its rural schools and districts are among the largest in the US, and transportationcosts are the nation’s most burdensome. Rural student poverty rates and the percentage of students qualifying for specialeducation are high, while average teacher salaries are among the lowest in the US. Three in ten rural students in WestVirginia do not graduate from high school, and NAEP scores in math and reading are among the nation’s lowest, withonly one state scoring lower on NAEP Grade 8 math. Since 1999, proportional growth in the rural Hispanic student pop-ulation is higher than in any other state.


WV US

33.053.4


WV US

17.2 12.1


$6.92

$11.06

WV US


WV

US 284

268


WV

US

578.4%

150.9%

33

6

12

30

21


PRIORITYRANKING

41


WI Rank*






WI Rank*






WI Rank*






WI Rank*









G A U G E 1:

Importance






WI Rank*







WISCONSIN - Although it ranks near the middle on all indicators of rural importance, Wisconsin’s absolutestudent rural enrollment exceeds the US median by more than 40,000 students. Rural poverty and rural householdmobility are both very low relative to national averages. The educational policy context is close to the US median in allareas. The 90.7% rural high school graduation rate is well above the national average of 77.5%. Over the past decade,there has been a relatively large increase in the poverty rate among rural students.


WI US

7.7 12.7


WI US

90.7 77.5


WI US

6.8 5.9


$1.04$1.31

WI US


WI

USmedian

185,828

141,486

32

38

35

42

28



WY Rank*






PRIORITYRANKING

33

WY Rank*






WY Rank*






WY Rank*











WY Rank*






G A U G E 1:

Importance





WYOMING has the third smallest absolute rural student enrollment in the US with fewer than 20,000students. Only Kentucky has a higher percentage of rural students who qualify for special education services, and thepercentage of English Language Learners is relatively high. The Educational Policy Context is positive overall, althoughpupil transportation costs relative to spending on instruction is above the national median and the level of statecontribution to education costs is above the national median. Of note, the number of rural Hispanic students inWyoming grew by nearly 172% in the years since 1999.


WY US

33.056.1


WY US

17.3 12.1


WY US

75.3 77.5


$10.38 $11.06

WY US


WY

US

171.8%

150.9%

27

24

47

24

27


Percent Rural Schools

The number of public schools designated as rural by the National Center for Education Statistics,expressed as a percentage of the total number of all public schools in the state.

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

SD 78.6MT 75.1

VT 73.7ND 72.4

ME 66.8AK 63.3

NE 56.3WY 56.1AR 55.2

OK 53.9WV 53.4IA 53.2

MS 51.2NH 51.0NC 50.2

KY 49.8KS 49.8

AL 49.1ID 47.8

SC 46.6MO 46.3

MN 43.9TN 41.9

WI 39.8NM 39.6

IN 38.0GA 37.0LA 36.5VA 36.2

CO 33.6US 33.0

TX 31.9OR 31.4OH 30.8MI 30.6

AZ 29.5NV 28.9

PA 28.1WA 26.7

UT 24.2IL 24.0

DE 23.4HI 19.2

MD 18.6FL 18.2NY 18.1

CT 16.5CA 15.0

RI 10.9NJ 9.7

MA 6.6

Source: U.S. Department of Education,National Center for Education Statistics,

Common Core of Data, Public School Universe,2006-2007

90%


Percent Small Rural Districts

The number of rural public school districts with an enrollment below the national median for rural school districts,expressed as a percentage of all rural school districts in the state.

0 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

MT 96.3ND 94.0

VT 90.9NE 83.7

SD 80.7OK 72.7CO 72.4

CA 69.9AK 69.8

OR 66.7ME 66.3KS 66.2NM 64.3

MO 60.8WA 60.4AZ 59.7ID 59.0

IL 56.3NH 55.1

MA 53.5IA 51.9TX 51.3US 49.9

NJ 48.5WY 46.4

RI 42.9MN 41.7WI 40.8

CT 39.3NV 33.3

MI 31.9NY 29.7

UT 23.5AR 22.0

OH 5.9MS 5.7KY 5.4PA 4.0TN 3.7IN 3.5GA 3.5

AL 1.5VA 1.3

DE 0.0WV 0.0SC 0.0NC 0.0MD 0.0LA 0.0FL 0.0HI N/A

Source: U.S. Department of Education,National Center for Education Statistics,Common Core of Data, Public School

Universe, 2008-2009


0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

MS 54.7VT 54.6

ME 52.7NC 47.2

SD 42.5SC 40.0AL 39.7

TN 38.7ND 38.6KY 38.5WV 37.6

NH 35.8AR 35.5GA 34.8IA 34.3MT 33.9

OK 31.3VA 29.4AK 28.6KS 28.0ID 27.4OH 27.2MO 27.1IN 26.8NE 26.7

DE 25.2MN 25.0

WY 22.5LA 21.8NM 21.6WI 21.4

US 20.2PA 19.8MI 19.8

TX 18.0AZ 17.7

FL 14.7CO 14.0

IL 13.1NY 12.9CT 12.3

WA 11.2OR 10.8MD 9.6

NJ 8.4UT 5.9RI 5.2NV 4.6CA 4.5MA 4.3

HI N/A

Percent Rural Students

The number of students attending school in public school districts classified as rural by the National Centerfor Education Statistics, expressed as a percentage of the total public school enrollment in the state.


Universe, 2008-2009


Number of Rural Students

The total number of students attending school in public school districts classified as ruralby the National Center for Education Statistics.

0 100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 900,000

PA 334,805

MO 241,979

NE 78,142ID 73,297

RI 6,823

Source: U.S. Department of Education,Natonal Center for Education Statistics, Com-mon Core of Data, Public School Universe,

2008-2009

NC 685,409GA 574,965

OH 469,948FL 384,442TN 375,453

VA 358,785NY 348,738

MI 301.049AL 295,906

SC 285,442CA 278,906IL 278,166IN 275,368MS 268,862KY 257,637

OK 201,964MN 200.246

WI 185,828AZ 172,828AR 168,427IA 167,152

US 141,486 (median)

KS 131,920WA 116,053CO 113,555NJ 111,700WV 105,874ME 99,185

MD 81,260

NH 70,491CT 65,098OR 60,895SD 53,760MT 48,013VT 47,784AK 37,265ND 36,508MA 34,080UT 31,167DE 27,709NV 19,708WY 19,583

NM 70,900

HI N/A

LA 141,486

TX 834,140


Percentage of State Education Funds to Rural Districts

State education funding going to rural school districts, expressed as a percentage ofstate education funding to all public school districts in the state.

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

VT 55.6ME 54.2

NC 49.0SD 47.6MS 47.2

MT 44.0KY 43.9

AL 43.0ND 42.6AK 42.5

WV 41.2AR 39.9TN 39.6

NH 37.6SC 36.5

IA 34.8OK 34.4GA 34.3VA 33.8

WY 31.2KS 31.1MO 30.7ID 30.7

NE 25.6OH 24.0

MN 24.0IN 23.5WI 23.3NY 22.9

LA 21.8AZ 21.8PA 21.5

US 20.4MI 19.6

NM 18.5TX 17.9

CO 13.4IL 12.7OR 12.3

WA 11.4CT 11.1

MD 10.0FL 9.8

NV 8.5NJ 7.7

UT 6.4DE 6.0CA 5.3

RI 4.5MA 4.0

HI N/A

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Elementaryand Secondary Education Finance Data for

2007 (National Center for Education StatisticsF-33 Data Base)


Percent Rural Minority Students

The number of rural public school students classified as minorities according to the National Center forEducation Statistics, expressed as a percentage of the total rural public school student enrollment.

NM 82.6AK 71.7

LA 45.4TX 43.9

FL 42.1MS 40.6

DE 36.1CO 30.0NV 29.9WA 29.0

AL 28.1VA 26.5US 25.8

OR 24.3

ND 17.9AR 17.2UT 16.2IL 15.2

MI 12.1KS 11.9TN 11.6MN 11.6

NY 10.3NE 9.9NH 9.2CT 9.2

OH 6.5KY 6.5WV 6.2IA 6.1

HI N/A0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%



CA 55.3AZ 55.5

SC 40.5NC 40.5

OK 37.6GA 36.9

MD 22.6SD 20.8ID 20.1MT 19.7NJ 19.6

WY 18.1

PA 8.3WI 8.1ME 7.8IN 7.8MA 7.0

MO 5.9VT 4.2

RI 3.2


Percent Rural English Language Learner (ELL) Students

The number of rural public school students classified as English Language Learners according to the National Cen-ter for Education Statistics, expressed as a percentage of the total rural public school student enrollment.

0 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% 18% 20%

CA 18.1AK 16.3

TX 9.4AZ 9.1

ID 7.0WA 6.9

FL 6.6NC 6.4

CO 5.7NV 5.3

UT 4.8MT 4.8

WY 4.4ND 4.4DE 4.4

US 3.7SC 3.6SD 3.5

KS 2.8GA 2.8AR 2.7

VA 2.3IN 2.3

IL 2.1AL 2.0

WI 1.6NE 1.6MN 1.6TN 1.5IA 1.3MS 1.2MI 1.1

OH 0.8NY 0.8NJ 0.8LA 0.8WV 0.7PA 0.7CT 0.7MO 0.6MA 0.6KY 0.6NH 0.4

VT 0.0RI N/AOK N/ANM N/AME N/AMD N/AHI N/A


Universe, 2008-2009

OR 8.0


Percent Rural Special Education (IEP) Students

Number of rural public school students qualifying for special education services,expressed as a percentage of all rural public school students in the state.

0 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12% 14% 16% 18% 20%

KY 17.6WY 17.3WV 17.2RI 17.0

PA 16.7IN 16.5MA 16.4NJ 16.1ME 16.1IL 16.0

FL 15.3NY 15.2NE 15.2DE 15.2

NV 14.9SC 14.6KS 14.5NH 14.4MN 14.3

SD 14.0WI 13.9OR 13.9MO 13.8MI 13.8NM 13.7OH 13.5ND 13.5

UT 13.2MT 13.1

VA 12.8NC 12.8LA 12.8IA 12.7TN 12.4AK 12.3WA 12.2US 12.1AZ 12.0MD 11.9

CT 11.6GA 11.4AR 11.4

ID 10.2TX 10.0

CA 8.7VT N/AOK N/AMS N/AHI N/ACO N/AAL N/A




Percent Rural Student Poverty

Number of rural public school students qualifying for free or reduced meals,expressed as a percentage of all rural public school students in the state.

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

NM 80.0LA 69.3

MS 62.9AR 58.0OK 57.3

KY 57.1WV 52.5AL 52.3

GA 51.6FL 49.7OR 49.4AZ 48.7

CA 47.3TN 46.8

ID 44.1MO 44.0AK 43.4TX 42.6WA 41.4MT 41.4US 41.0UT 41.0NV 40.7

ME 38.3SD 38.2MI 37.9

ND 36.5VA 35.1KS 34.5

NE 32.8WY 32.3

NY 30.7

DE 32.0NC 31.5MN 31.1IN 30.9

VT 29.9PA 29.6OH 29.6WI 29.3MD 28.3IA 27.4CO 27.4

IL 24.3NH 17.2NJ 16.8

MA 14.0RI 13.6

CT 7.2HI N/A

SC 57.1




Percent Rural Student Mobility

Number of rural children aged 5-17 in households that have changed residence in the previous 12 months,expressed as a percentage of all rural children aged 5-17 in the state.

0 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

NV 21.8AZ 19.5

AK 17.5FL 16.4

GA 15.7MT 15.1CA 15.1HI 14.9OK 14.3

TX 13.9AR 13.7

CO 12.9SD 12.9

US 12.7KY 12.4MO 12.4

ID 12.1AL 12.0NM 12.0UT 11.9LA 11.9

VA 11.6TN 11.5NC 11.3OR 11.3KS 11.2

SC 10.9NE 10.6

MS 10.0MI 10.0

IN 9.7OH 9.6IA 9.6IL 9.5DE 9.4WA 9.3NY 9.1ND 9.0WY 8.8WV 8.8MN 8.7ME 8.5

PA 8.1MA 7.8WI 7.7MD 7.6VT 7.3NH 7.2

NJ 6.8CT 5.5

RI N/A

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010American Community Survey


Rural Instructional Expenditures Per Pupil

Total current expenditures for instruction in rural pubic school districts,divided by the total number of students enrolled in those school districts.

$0 $2,000 $4,000 $6,000 $8,000 $10,000 $12,000

ID $4,169AZ $4,249UT $4,471OK $4,483TN $4,518MS $4,578IN $4,808CO $4,820IL $4,910AR $4,915FL $4,962OH $4,974MO $4,996NC $5,010KY $5,114TX $5,192AL $5,207SC $5,238MI $5,249CA $5,367SD $5,375IA $5,395LA $5,546WA $5,632US $5,657ND $5,704MN $5,754VA $5,780NV $5,825OR $5,856WV $5,856GA $6,058KS $6,112NM $6,115WI $6,232PA $6,278

MT $6,592NE $6,725ME $6,827DE $6,846

MD $7,095MA $7,473

NH $7,899RI $8,438CT $8,604VT $8,651NJ $8,783

WY $9,333NY $10,214AK $10,300

Source: U.S. Census Bureau,Elementary and SecondaryEducation Finance Data for2007 (National Center forEducation Statistics F-33

Database)

HI N/A


Ratio of Instructional Expenditures to Transportation Expenditures

Ratio of total current expenditures for regular education instructionto total current expenditures for regular education pupil transportation

(i.e., total dollars spent on instruction for every dollar spent on pupil transportation).

$0 $5 $10 $15 $20 $25 $30

WV $6.92IL $7.72DE $8.03PA $8.13ND $8.14LA $8.37IN $8.67NJ $8.67AZ $8.72NY $8.80KY $9.05SD $9.26OR $9.35NV $9.49AL $9.60VA $9.72MD $9.73MN $9.80ID $10.29RI $10.35NM $10.37WY $10.38FL $10.59ME $10.62MT $10.65WA $10.80MO $10.85CT $10.93US $11.06MS $11.27MI $11.43UT $11.83NH $12.02SD $12.07SC $12.26WI $12.33IA $12.34CO $12.39KS $12.73MA $12.98AR $13.18

GA $14.71TN $14.73CA $15.00OK $15.52NC $16.11TX $16.53NE $16.59VT $16.62

AK $27.52HI N/A

Source: U.S. Census Bureau,Elementary and SecondaryEducation Finance Datafor 2007 (National Centerfor Education Statistics F-33

Database)


Median Organizational Scale among Rural Schools

The state median for rural schools on the organizational scale indicator (computed by multiplying the total schoolenrollment by the total district enrollment). Note: for simplification, the indicators were divided by 100.

0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000 80,000 90,000 100,000

FL 276,744MD 108,190

NC 60,512GA 50,797

SC 42,217DE 37,167

LA 31,229NV 28,719AL 27,186VA 26,701TN 26,091

KY 14,515MS 14,296WV 12,670AZ 12,632UT 11,156

RI 9,783IN 9,137PA 8,796NJ 7,762MA 7,509OH 6,501CT 5,898CA 5,243US 5,203MI 4,617NY 4,448TX 4,272WA 3,160AR 3,062OR 2,592CO 2,254ID 2,220MN 2,215NM 2,137WI 2,084NH 2,079IL 1,744ME 1,719MO 1,656IA 1,371WY 969KS 923AK 884OK 859NE 382VT 324ND 215SD 204MT 54

HI N/A


Universe, 2006-2007

�


State Funding Contribution per Local Contribution

State funding contribution per local funding contribution for rural school districts(i.e., total state dollars provided for every one dollar in local funding).

$0.00 $1.00 $2.00 $3.00 $4.00 $5.00 $6.00 $7.00

RI $0.31AK $0.45CT $0.49NH $0.63IL $0.67NJ $0.67ND $0.70SD $0.70MA $0.76PA $0.76MO $0.78IA $0.84CO $0.91MD $0.94FL $0.98ME $0.98TX $1.03WI $1.04OH $1.06VA $1.11IN $1.13NV $1.24WY $1.26NY $1.28SC $1.31US $1.31GA $1.32MT $1.42CA $1.55UT $1.57LA $1.73AZ $1.79OR $1.81KS $1.83MS $1.83TN $1.83MI $1.88OK $1.96AR $2.00WV $2.01NC $2.12

AL $2.51VT $2.81MN $2.83WA $2.98KY $3.07

DE $3.53ID $3.76

AK $5.03NM $5.98

HI N/A

Source: U.S. Census Bureau,Public Elementary-Secondary

Education Finance Data for 2007(National Center for Education

Statistics F-33 Database)


Salary Expenditures per Instructional Staff Member (FTE)In Rural School Districts

Total current expenditures for instructional salaries, divided by thetotal number of instructional staff members.

0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 $70,000 $80,000 $90,000 $100,000

ND $40,675SD $42,447MO $43,716OK $44,363AR $45,642TN $45,983MS $46,313NE $47,021MT $47,738AL $48,791ID $48,927KS $49,058FL $49,193CO $49,322WV $50,067IA $50,418TX $51,351ME $51,453LA $53,090NC $53,572WI $53,672AZ $53,732KY $54,718IN $55,946NM $55,999US $56,159UT $56,968IL $57,110GA $57,315OR $57,536OH $57,665VT $59,785PA $59,829MN $59,844NH $60,372SC $60,376MI $60,411NV $60,493DE $62,782

WA $66,710WY $66,812VA $67,053MA $67,148RI $67,720

CA $70,202MD $70,682

NY $77,997AK $79,670

CT $82,259NJ $85,842

HI N/A

Source: U.S. Census Bureau,Public Elementary and SecondaryEducation Finance Data for 2007(National Center for Education

Statistics F-33 Database)


Rural High School Graduation Rate

As calculated using Swanson’s cumulative promotion index (CPI) model that calculates percentages of annual gradepromotions (9th to 10th, 10th to 11th, 11th to 12th, and 12th to graduation) and multiplies all four percentages.

0 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%

LA 60.0GA 62.1MS 63.1NM 65.8CO 66.5AZ 66.8AL 67.5FL 68.8WV 68.9UT 69.1AK 69.8

KY 72.8VA73.2TX 74.6RI 74.7NC 75.1WY 75.3DE 75.9AR 76.3WA 76.5ID 76.8MD 77.3US 77.5OR 78.2MI $78.6IN 79.1MT 79.4MA 79.8OK 80.1NH 80.4MO 81.1NY 81.5KS 83.5PA 84.0VT 84.1OH 84.5MN 85.6CT 86.5TN 86.9IL 88.0ND 88.3WI 90.7NE 91.8IA 93.4CA 95.3SD 95.3NJ 96.2

SC N/ANV N/AME N/AHI N/A

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,Common Core of Data, Public School Universe, 2006-2007


Rural Grade 4 NAEP Scores (Math)

The mean score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math assessment administered tostudents in grade 4, as reported by the U.S. Department of Education for the sample of rural schools in each state.

200 210 220 230 240 250 260

AZ 226.9AK 228.0AL 228.4MS 229.5NM 229.9WV 230.5HI 231.5LA 232.3TN 234.1SC 234.6CA 235.1GA 236.7OK 236.9WA 237.1OR 237.5

DE 239.5KY 239.6VA 239.7US 240.0AR 240.2MO 240.5MT 241.0NV 241.0TX 241.3MI 241.4ID 241.4NE 241.5SD 241.7WY 241.9IL 242.3FL 242.8NC 242.9ND 243.3ME 244.1NY 245.1CO 245.5UT 245.6IA 245.8WI 245.8IN 246.1OH 246.3PA 247.2VT 247.8RI 249.0KS 249.1MN 249.9NJ 251.4NH 251.4MD 252.6MA 254.3

CT 256.2

Source: U.S. Department ofEducation, National Center forEducation Statistics, NationalAssessment of Educational

Progress

205 215 225 235 245 255


Rural Grade 4 NAEP Scores (Reading)

The mean score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessmentadministered to students in grade 4, as reported by the U.S. Department of Education

for the sample of rural schools in each state.

150 175 200 225 250 275

AK 197.1NM 204.4

AZ 209.3HI 209.5LA 209.8WV 212.5MS 214.1CA 214.8SC 215.7WA 217.1ID 217.2OR 217.6AL 217.6AR 217.8NC 218.6GA 219.1TN 219.5OK 219.7SD 220.2TX 220.3NV 221.5US 222.0WI 222.3IA 222.6WY 222.7ME 223.2MT 223.2NE 224.0ND 224.1UT 224.2IN 224.4IL 224.4MO 225.8KY 225.8FL 226.0VA 226.1KS 226.2OH 226.3MN 226.4MI 226.4DE 227.4NY 227.7PA 228.0VT 228.6NH 230.5RI 230.5CO 232.2MD 235.7NJ 236.2MA 237.1

CT 241.3

Source: U.S. Department ofEducation, National Center forEducation Statistics, NationalAssessment of Educational

Progress


Rural Grade 8 NAEP Scores (Math)

The mean score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math assessmentadministered to students in grade 8, as reported by the U.S. Department of Education


240 250 260 270 280 290 300 310

MS 264.2WV 267.6AL 268.6HI 269.5

NM 272.9LA 273.1AK 273.2OK 274.6TN 274.7AZ 276.0CA 277.1AR 277.7GA 277.8

SC 280.3NV 280.3KY 280.4

VA 282.5OR 283.8MO 284.0US 284.0MI 284.4ID 284.9FL 285.0RI 285.0NC 285.2WY 286.2UT 286.3IL 286.3IA 286.6ME 286.7OH 287.3DE 288.6SD 289.0WA 289.1NE 289.9TX 290.1MT 290.4IN 290.5WI 290.7ND 290.8NY 291.0KS 291.1VT 291.8PA 292.3MN 292.8NH 294.1CO 294.2NJ 295.5

MD 298.3CT 299.5

MA 305.9

Source: U.S. Department ofEducation, National Centerfor Education Statistics,National Assessment ofEducational Progress


Rural Grade 8 NAEP Scores (Reading)

The mean score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading assessmentadministered to students in grade 8, as reported by the U.S. Department of Education


230 240 250 260 270 280 290

AK 250.0MS 252.1

NM 253.6HI 254.2WV 254.6AL 255.0LA 255.4

SC 257.0AR 258.0NC 258.1NV 259.0AZ 259.4OK 259.6GA 259.9

CA 262.0TN 262.9ID 262.9VA 263.4TX 263.7FL 263.8US 264.0

MI 265.9OR 265.9MO 266.3KY 266.8RI 267.0ME 267.1ND 267.5WA 267.7WY 267.7IN 267.8MN 268.1NY 268.3IA 268.4WI 269.2SD 269.6KS 270.2DE 270.6NE 270.6MT 270.8OH 271.0CO 271.3UT 271.4IL 271.4PA 271.6VT 272.0MD 273.5NH 274.7NJ 275.7

MA 280.3CT 281.9

Source: U.S. Department ofEducation, National Centerfor Education Statistics,National Assessment ofEducational Progress


Change in Total Rural Student Enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09)

The absolute change from 1999-00 to 2008-09 in the number of rural students in each state(i.e., the total rural enrollment in 2008-09 minus the total rural enrollment in 1999-00).

-150,000 -100,000 -50,000 0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000 400,000

TX 369,459GA 232,582

NC 219,406TN 205,663

AZ 143,576SC 125,972

AL 111,106FL 88,325

VA 76,497CA 72,859

MS 68,373IL 64,185KY 53,582OK 53,539

MN 42,044AR 41,649OH 40,653LA 36,183

NM 24,126IA 19,682NY 13,856IN 13,736ID 12,783CO 12,469US 9,880 (median)MO 9,880AK 9,530MD 6,323DE 4,939KS 4,487WY 3,030NV 656

UT -475SD -4,176NH -5,365RI -6,480

WV -6,486NE -7,487VT -9,974

ND -10,147WI -11,060OR -12,261MT -15,093ME -15,702

CT -43,878NJ -47,702

PA -53,335WA -55,802MA -61,284

MI -78,777HI N/A

Source: U.S. Department of Education,National Center for Education Statistics,Common Core of Data, Public SchoolUniverse, 1999-2000 and 2008-09


Percent Change in Rural School Enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09)

The percent change from 1999-00 to 2008-09 in the number of rural students in each state(i.e., the absolute change in enrollment over that time period divided by the 1999-2000 enrollment).

-100% -50% 0% 50% 100% 150% 200% 250%

AZ 228.9TN 114.4

TX 79.8SC 79.0

GA 67.8AL 57.7

NM 53.0FL 51.9

NC 46.6AK 45.0

OK 36.3CA 35.4MS 34.1AR 32.9LA 32.1IL 30.0VA 26.7MN 26.3KY 24.2US 22.2DE 22.2ID 21.5WY 18.4

IA 13.4CO 12.6OH 9.5MD 8.5IN 5.1MO 4.3NY 4.1NV 3.5KS 3.5

UT -1.5WI -5.6WV -5.8SD -7.3NH -7.5NE -8.7

PA -13.7ME -14.1OR -17.0VT -17.3

MI -20.6ND -21.7MT -23.9NJ -29.9

WA -33.4CT -40.0

RI -48.7MA -64.3

HI N/A



Percent Change in Rural Hispanic Student Enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09)

The percent change from 1999-00 to 2008-09 in the number of rural Hispanic students in each state(i.e., the total change in enrollment over that time period divided by the 1999-2000 enrollment).

-100% 0% 100% 200% 300% 400% 500% 600% 700%

WV 578.4MS 530.2

SC 446.9IL 437.0

AL 397.0KY 366.9

AK 334.3AZ 324.9

VA 295.7NC 292.7

AR 278.6GA 230.5

MD 208.8DE 183.3NY 176.1WY 171.8PA 167.6FL 159.7IN 156.6IA 154.5US 150.9MN 141.8TX 138.5MO 138.2OH 126.1SD 124.8LA 123.8NH 120.4NM 115.7CA 109.6WI 106.6

OK 95.9

HI N/A


NE 86.3NV 84.6CO 83.9ID 83.7VT 78.5KS 73.0UT 71.6ME 67.7

ND 45.9NJ 26.1MI 17.8OR 15.3

MT 5.9WA 5.8CT 1.8

MA -45.5RI -50.4

TN N/A


Change in Percentage of Students Eligible for Free Meals(1999-00 to 2008-09, 2002-03 to 2008-09*)

Change in the calculated percentage of rural students eligible for free meals (i.e., the 2008-09 percentageminus the percentage from the baseline year—either 1999-00 or 2002-03).

-10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%

AZ 28.7NM 24.0

LA13.7MI 13.2

GA 11.2NV 10.4

IN 9.5OH 9.0AK 8.9AR 8.7MO 8.3ME 8.2

OR 7.8WI 6.8

KS 6.2US 5.9SC 5.8PA 5.3AL 5.1ID 5.0FL 5.0VT 4.7CA 4.7SD 4.6VA 4.5CO 4.3KY 4.0

IA 2.9WA 2.8NY 2.6NH 2.6MD 2.4

HI 0.0

*Note: All values represent change from 1999-00 to 2008-09 except for AK, AZ, IL, NM, OK,and WA. The earliest available data for these

states was from 2002-03.


Universe, 1999-2000, 2002-03, and 2008-09

DE 2.3NJ 2.1MN 2.1MA 2.1MT 1.8NE 1.6

IL 0.7TX 0.6OK 0.6RI 0.3CT 0.3

ND -0.9WY -1.5

TN 0.0

UT -1.7MS -1.7

WV -4.3NC -6.0


Change in Rural Student Enrollment as a Proportion ofTotal Student Enrollment (1999-00 to 2008-09)

Change, from 1999-00 to 2008-09, in the calculated percentage of rural students in each state(i.e., the percent rural students in 2008-09 minus the percent rural students in 1999-00).

-10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

TN 19.7SC 16.1

MS 14.6AL 14.5

AZ 13.5NC 11.2GA 10.8

AK 9.2LA 8.1OK 7.7NM 7.4AR 7.4

MN 6.7TX 6.3KY 6.0

IA 4.8WY 4.6DE 4.3VA 4.1

OH 3.6ID 2.9FL 2.8US 2.6IL 2.4

MO 1.4CA 1.1MD 0.8KS 0.6IN 0.2

CO -0.2UT -0.8WI -1.0WV -1.1NH -1.1NV -1.3SD -1.8PA -1.9

ME -2.2OR -2.6VT -2.8

ND -3.0NE -3.1MI -3.3RI -4.0

NJ -4.3NY -5.7

WA -6.0MT -6.0

MA -7.4CT -8.4

HI N/A


why rural matters 2011-12

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