The lion’s share of writing about education improvement for the past two decades has focused on improving urban schools. Given the yawning gaps between the low-income and minority students that populate those schools and their suburban counterparts, this makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, this focus has neglected the tens of millions of students who attend schools in rural areas. Many of the issues that they face, from the impact of the opioid epidemic to deindustrialization to a lack of infrastructure, take on a unique character in rural schools. And many of the reforms that have proven so successful in urban areas do not translate so easily to rural contexts. This volume looks at both the macro-factors affecting rural schools (like deindustrialization and the opioid crisis) as well as the specific steps rural schools have taken and can take to improve.
