Establishing An Empirically Determined National Rural Education Research Agenda

Abstract This article is based on a study conducted by the National Rural Education Research Consortium. It was developed specifically tor a June 1985 presentation to the U.S. Department of Education Intra-agcncy Committee on Rural Education. The complete study is available upon request. The Need for Quality Rural Education Research This document reports on the first comprehensive national effort to derive an empirical data base for establishing rural education research priorities. Rural schools comprise the majority (67%) of the nation's school systems and are extremely diverse. The dramatic diversity of rural schools and their unique needs support the imperative need for quality rural education research. This research is required if educators are to make sense of the diversity and to develop content related educational curricula and administrative procedures. One of the most significant obstacles to thoroughly assessing the effectiveness of rural education, and to comparing rural and urban districts has been the absence of a consistently applied definition of "rural" among federal agencies, educators, and professional organizations. Urban service delivery models have historically been recommended and unsuccessfully applied to rural schools. Practices successful in one specific type of rural subculture have also been transported, without adaptation, to other rural subcultures and have failed. Most federal agencies have had no definition or requirements for gathering data with regard to rural performance versus nonrural performance. Data on rural schools collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have frequently been summarized with data from large school districts. Until 1983, data for districts enrolling fewer than 300 students were completely deleted. This occurred in spite of the fact that they comprised 25% of the operating public school districts in the U.S. (Williams & Warf, 1978). Unfortunately, various data collection agencies and studies have used different definitions in studying rural school populations. A common definition has been to define a "rural" school district solely by population, as one having fewer than 1,000 students, although figures as high as 2,500 have frequently been used. Population-based definitions of "rural" are problematic. For example, if the local education agency (LEA.) being classified is large in area, it may have a higher enrollment than 1,000 or even 2,500 but still be very rural because of the sparsity of its population. However, strictly defining a rural district by population may inadvertently include nonrural areas. A population per square mile definition is more functional even though total geographic square miles may differ. The 1980 Census defined "rural" as: All persons living outside urbanized areas in the open country or in communities with less than 2,500 inhabitants. It also includes those living in areas of extended cities with a population density of less than 1,000 inhabitants per square mile. This definition contains ambiguous terminology (i.e., "outside urbanized areas in the open country") and does not offer a satisfactory context for defining a rural school district. In fact, this definition subsumes many nonrural areas. The modified census definition below has been successfully field tested in national rural education research conducted since 1978. A district is considered rural when die number of inhabitants is fewer than 150 per square mile or when located in counties with 60% or more of the population living in communities no larger than 5,000 inhabitants. Districts with more than 10,000 students and those within a standard metropolitan statistical area (SMSA), as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau, are not considered rural. (Helge, 1981). Need for a Study to Determine a National Rural Education Research Agenda It is clear from the above that a comprehensive data base for rural education is needed. …