Rural School and Community Trust education report released

The "contexts and conditions of rural education in each of the 50 states" is explored in the recently released report Why Rural Matters 2009: State and Regional Challenges and Opportunities. The report, fifth in a biennial series from The Rural School and Community Trust, seeks to meet two goals:

(1) to provide information and analyses that highlight the priority policy needs of rural public schools and the communities they serve, and

(2) to describe the complexity of rural contexts in ways that can help policymakers better understand the challenges faced by their constituencies and formulate policies that are responsive to those challenges

Each of the 50 states is ranked in order of priority based on 25 indicators including percentage of rural poverty, rural graduation rates, rural instructional expenditures per pupil, and percentage of rural minority students. The five states ranking highest on the "Rural Education Priority Gauge" are Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. State-by-state results can be viewed here.