College is too expensive. I don’t need a two-year degree, much less a four-year degree, to get a job. No one else in my family attended a university.
It’s easy to tick off a list of excuses for why rural students attend college at lower rates than their peers in urban communities. But the easy answer isn’t always the best answer — and sometimes it doesn’t even address the right question.
In a recently released report from the Rural Opportunities Consortium of Ohio, education policy experts Jennifer Schiess and Andrew J. Rotherham ask a different question: “Is there something inherent in rural schools – something happening at a systemic level – that causes rural graduates to skip out on post-secondary education?”
In Big Country: How Variations in High School Graduation Plans Impact Rural Students, Schiess and Rotherham report that high school rigor — or the lack of it — may be to blame. “What our findings suggest is that rural students are potentially less well-prepared for post-secondary learning, which limits opportunities, decreases the likelihood of successful completion of degrees, and exacerbates other barriers like income limitations by increasing cost and time to degree,” Schiess writes.
At the same time, there are things that can be done. The report outlines four key recommendations:
- States, districts and schools must ensure that students in all schools have access to a rigorous curriculum.
- States should consider increasing rigor in graduation requirements.
- States and districts should ensure that rural students have access to high-quality curricular planning and college counseling.
- Data collection and reporting should be improved to allow analysis based on rural locale.
Expanding opportunity
As NC New Schools/Breakthrough Learning expands efforts to partner with four new states through the Rural Innovative Schools initiative, we’re also looking at strategies that make a difference for students in rural communities. Thinking back on our work in several North Carolina rural districts over the past five years, we see lessons learned that support the recommendations in this report.
1. Rigorous curriculum
Our network schools found that connecting with higher education partners elevates the rigor students experience in their coursework. Through dual enrollment programs, high school students take classes at local community colleges or online offerings through East Carolina University or UNC Greensboro and earn as much as two years of transferrable college credits. Some students even graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate degree at no cost to their families.
Providing teachers with customized, research-based instructional coaching and professional learning has also led to more powerful teaching and learning in the classroom. Our partner teachers work together to make practice public and get feedback from their peers in a way that’s customized to their local context. For example, at East Surry High School in Pilot Mountain, NC, teachers are learning from each other in real time by inviting colleagues into their classrooms for instructional rounds, a structured process modeled on medical rounds where teachers provide each other with feedback on implementation of new strategies.
2. Graduation requirements
Setting reasonable, high expectations for students and rigorous graduation requirements is only half the battle. Students need to feel connected to the goal. It needs to be personal. College campus visits, access to college courses, personalized academic supports and celebrating acceptance letters can help build a vibrant college-going culture and reinforce the belief that every student can succeed in post-secondary learning. At Jones Senior High School, for example, all students participate in at least one of five campus visits during both their sophomore and junior years. For many, it’s their first time on a college campus outside of their local community college.
3. Curricular planning and college counseling
College liaisons, a role initially created for North Carolina’s early colleges and now extended to comprehensive schools in the Rural Innovative Schools initiative, serve as a bridge between the higher education partner and the school district while also directly assisting students in academic and career planning as they navigate between high school and college coursework. As the connection between the two organizations, liaisons focus supports for students and instructional assistance to help teachers and professors align the secondary and postsecondary curricula. Alleghany High School, for example, employs an extensive set of strategies to personalize student schedules and offer advice about college courses, including a parent information night, detailed results folders for each student and individual counseling sessions.
4. Data collection and reporting
Locally-based, longitudinal data systems that link K-12 to higher education and workforce data could lead to research-based conclusions about rigor in rural education – but they take time and money to implement. In the meantime, college liaisons in our network schools are personalizing the use of data to their local context and each individual student. By tracking college course-taking and success data, liaisons are able to customize supports for students to help them achieve in rigorous environments.
Through our network of rural schools, faculty and staff can also make connections with innovative educators across the state who might otherwise be isolated by geography. By connecting directly with each other both virtually and in person at NC New Schools/ Breakthrough Learning events, principals, teachers, counselors and liaisons can share experiences and strategies that worked in their local context and help others to adapt those ideas to their own rural communities.
Making an impact
The Rural Innovative Schools initiative is tackling the very challenge that Schiess and Rotherham identify — that a systemic lack of rigor is hurting rural students’ post-secondary opportunities. In partnership with rural districts, higher education, local government and area businesses, this work is cultivating the community support and talent development to radically change opportunities for students and to engage to engage education as a regional economic driver.
