Rural School Trends and Implications for Workforce Development

An analysis of state tests shows that rural schools perform above average in most states, but fewer rural teens apply to college than their suburban and urban peers.

"Nationwide, tens of thousands of rural students are slipping through the cracks in the transition from high school to college," writes Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. "The result is the loss of potential for rural youth and a loss of talent for the nation's colleges and universities."

Rural schools reported a lower drop-out rate in the senior year, but only 54.3 percent of rural seniors apply to college, compared to 56.5 percent of urban and 61.6 percent of suburban seniors, Loveless reports. These findings are from data gathered by the National Center for Education Statistics in 1993-94.

Data from the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress show that rural fourth- and eighth-graders achieve at levels similar to suburban students in reading. By the twelfth grade, rural students score about the same as urban students, two points below the national average of 287. Rural students appear to do better on achievement tests in elementary school than in high school.

Download the report here.