Gifted Education in Rural Schools: What Constitutes Rural?
One resarcher put it well when he said, "Few issues bedevil analysts and planners concerned with rural education more than the question of what actually constitutes rural." As the Belin-Blank Center works on the preliminary National Assessment of Gifted Education in Rural and Small Schools, we find these words to ring true. At first glance, finding a working definition of rural seems like an easy enough task.
The realities of rural life in the 1990s, however, don't fit a Norman Rockwell stereotype. For example, just one-in-ten rural residents makes their living from farming. Dwindling industries such as logging, fishing, and mining can no longer employ large numbers of rural people. Instead, manufacturing is the biggest employer, with service industries, including tourism, close behind. Many rural people are underemployed, relying on part-time or temporary work. Partly as a result of this trend, rural families and their inner-city counterparts have equally high poverty rates. Also, rural America is demographically older than the rest of the country. Because the best and brightest often leave these small towns, the communities never actualize a return on their educational dollars.
This past summer, the B-BC has received responses from educators nation-wide to our Survey of Gifted and Rural Education. We have also interviewed gifted students and administrators from small communities throughout the country. Slowly, a picture is beginning to develop. What we're hearing is that these students often have little access to the resources, such as museums and universities, that more urban students enjoy. Outside of immediate family and teachers, these students see few role models. Accelerated or higher level course work to challenge the most talented is often nonexistent.
On the flip side, however, we've heard about communities that pool their resources to help a young person achieve his or her goals, providing scholarships to reach seemingly unattainable dreams. Additionally, many students are able to be involved in activities as diverse as the newspaper, drama, athletics, and band, not so much because the school's small size allowed for such diversity. And, of course, many people tauted the benefits of safety, friendliness, and earnest neighborly caring.
In the coming months, we will compile the pieces of our research. Our goal is to provide the clearest picture possible of just how gifted students in small and rural schools are currently being served. On one hand, the students we're examining might seem almost inconsequential. And yet, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 6.9 million students attend rural schools, accounting for more than a quarter of all public schools in this country. That group is sufficiently sizable and their needs are unique enough to warrant our attention.
By Jennifer New