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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Why do rural students have to “beat the odds” in order to get to college?

That’s the question Jim Shelton asked his fellow panelists during last week’s sixth annual Rural Summit, a gathering focused on addressing the needs of rural students.  Shelton is president of the philanthropic group Blue Meridian Partners and deputy secretary of the Department of Education during the Obama administration.

While rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than their urban and suburban peers, only about 55 percent go directly to college. Those who do drop out at high rates due to financial barriers, transportation, internet connectivity and family responsibilities, noted speakers at the summit.

While acknowledging the differences among and the diversity of rural communities in places like Oklahoma, Kentucky, Hawaii and Pennsylvania, speakers made the case that these communities all have the knowledge, talent and systems to help their students succeed academically in college and beyond — they just need the resources.

Education leaders and advocates say one answer is “place-based partnerships,” collaborations among local organizations working together to improve outcomes for students and families.

“Schools are only part of the solution,” said Russell Booker, CEO of the Spartanburg Academic Movement, a place-based partnership in the South Carolina city. He said it takes community partnerships that include the school system, housing, healthcare, the criminal justice system and local government to improve outcomes for rural students.

The summit was hosted by Appalachian Kentucky-based nonprofit Partners for Rural Impact. Dreama Gentry, the group’s president and CEO, said the goal is to bring together people working in pre-K, K-12 and higher ed to discuss the opportunities students need from “the cradle to career spectrum.”

Too often, Gentry said, educators focus on a single indicator — kindergarten readiness, for example — without considering how that relates to student preparedness and success at each stage of their education. “It’s actually taking that holistic look to make sure we’re supporting them at every step,” she said.

Here are a few of the initiatives highlighted at the three-day summit: 

  • The Community Colleges of Appalachia launched a Rural Educator Academy in fall 2022 to train faculty and staff to better understand and meet the needs of students in rural Appalachia, particularly those from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds.

The six community colleges in the first cohort worked to identify and alleviate a specific issue facing students on their campuses. For example, Tri-County Technical College, in Pendleton, South Carolina, focused on educating faculty and staff about the barriers preventing students in poverty from succeeding in college, while Mountain Empire Community College, in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, developed a mentorship program to create a sense of belonging among first-generation as well as all incoming college students.

  • The Hawaii-based nonprofit organization Kinai ʻEha launched in 2017 with the goal of disrupting the state’s school-to-prison pipeline, primarily for native Hawaiian and Micronesian youth. It runs a trauma-informed program, rooted in Hawaiian culture and language, that works with high schoolers who’ve dropped out of high school, as well as those who’ve experienced homelessness, poverty, incarceration or drug use. Students live and work on a farm, receive food and clothing, attend classes to complete their GED or HISET, and participate in work-based learning or vocational programs. In 2019, Kinai ʻEha helped to secure a state law requiring the creation of a task force to implement a system for evaluating and supporting kids who are struggling with trauma, behavioral or mental health problems and chronic absenteeism.
  • Rural alliances in states including Indiana and Texas are providing high schoolers with career and technical education, part of an effort to expand access to post-secondary pathways in rural areas and combat rural shortages of skilled workers. For example, the nonprofit Rural Schools Innovation Zone launched in South Texas in 2019 to bring together five rural districts, five higher ed institutions and workforce groups to create more opportunities for students to access college and careers that are prevalent in their regions. The collaboration has established five career and tech academies at each high school focused on sectors like health and sciences, the military or skilled trade jobs; as of the 2022-23 school year, 54 percent of RSIZ students had received a certification in an industry of their choice. In 2023, the Texas legislature passed a bill to expand the program to other parts of Texas.

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    One reply on “Is the secret to getting rural kids to college leveraging the entire community?”

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    1. Dear Editor,
      When I see articles concluding that children need to learn how to personally navigate their own society as though it was a recent enlightened discovery only accomplished by a few special programs, I have to wonder where common sense is. Few people at any age can live independently, urban or rural, and grasp that college is a means to that end without being specifically educated to do so. It is personal, not professional education, and it is AWOL in American schools, contrary to the policies of most advanced countries. Whether that education is instilled at home, less likely now, or throughout the K-12 school years, it must happen for each child, or they will struggle, learn by trial and error, have delayed maturation, and have less future potential. Our social systems are the most complex and competitive in the world; therefore, we must have a universal personal life education program, physical and psycho-social, in all public schools to ensure a successful transition to adulthood, regardless of professional goals. The program developed by Cornell to do that is called Human Ecology. It lays the foundation for K-12 students to understand and meet human needs, to realize that communal interest is self-interest and that prospering is different than getting rich; it is the program that helps students achieve wholeness and agency as individuals. The U.S. handicaps its own future in every way by not fully educating its young people.

    Letters are closed