Beyond The One-Room Schoolhouse

Monday, March 1, 2004

(NAPSA)—Mention “rural schools,” and many people con- jure up an image of a one-room 94,072 Public Schools schoolhouse. While a few one-room schools do still exist, this imageis largely one of memory and made-for-TV nostalgia. The reality of rural communities and their schools is far different—and much more complex. According to the Rural School and Community Trust (Rural Trust), nearly 38,000 (more than 40 percent) of the 94,072 public schools in the United States are located in rural areas or small towns of fewer than 25,000 people. These schools serve nearly onethird of U.S. schoolchildren in communities as diverse and varied as the rural American landscape. What do these places look like? The rural communities where 14.3 million American children go to school include coastal fishing villages, Appalachian mining com- munities, Western mountain towns, ranching communities of the Great Plains, Native American reservations, border colonias of the Rio Grande, northwoods towns in New England, and rural farm towns of the Mississippi Delta. The students who go to school in these places are diverse, as well. Overall, 19 percent of rural schoolchildren are minorities. In the Deep South, many rural students are African American. Minorities, largely African American, make up 46 percent of the rural student population in Mississippi, 42 percent in South Carolina and 32 percent in Louisiana. In the rural schools of Hawaii and New Mexico, approximately threequarters of students are minori- ties, most of them Native American; in Alaska more than half of rural students are Alaska Natives. The border states are home to large numbers of rural Hispanic students—35 percent of the rural Population 2 Rural

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