Rural Education

Rural education has been defined by a number of different criteria over the last half century. The National Rural and Small Schools Consortium considers a district rural if inhabitants number fewer than 150 per square mile or if the district is located in a county where 60% or more of the population lives in communities of 5,000 or fewer. Other organizations and government entities have applied either a 25,000 resident criteria to classify communities as rural, or some have applied a more restrictive 2,500 resident restriction. Five terms were used by the U.S. Department of Education's Center for Education Statistics in 1987 to define or imply rurality: rural, nonmetropolitan, small town, small place, and school size. Rural and nonmetropolitan were identified as subsets for metropolitan status, as were suburban and urban.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that approximately 90,000 public schools operate within the United States, of which 38,000 were located in rural areas or small towns in 1999–2000. Schools in rural areas or small towns account for about 42% of all schools in the nation, and 30% of all students. Characteristics unique to rural areas include geographic isolation, small populations, and declining enrollments.

According to an open-ended survey of 50 small rural school superintendents, the most critical issues facing their districts were funding inequities, meeting the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements, attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers, declining enrollments, along with implementation of technology and distance learning. Most crucial were funding issues, meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress standard of NCLB and recruitment/retention of highly qualified teachers. In the other pressing issues category were problems associated with declining enrollments and the need to provide vital learning resources to students effectively through distance learning