Rural Gifted Education and the Effect of Proximity

Abstract

Approximately 9.6 million (20%) K-12 students in the United States are enrolled in rural school districts. Rural school districts are found in every state, and while they make up 20% of the total student population, rural school districts constitute 33% of the schools in the nation. In some states, the proportion of rural school districts is as low as 6% and in others the proportion of rural districts reaches as high as 78%. In Mississippi, Vermont, and Maine, more than 50% of the students are enrolled in rural districts (Strange, Johnson, Showalter, & Klein, 2012). Rural school districts and the student population attending them may exhibit qualitative and quantitative differences making them unique educational environments deserving of attention from both policy makers and practitioners (Cromartie & Bucholtz, 2008; Plucker, 2013). Unfortunately, a number of studies have documented potential challenges for rural school districts to provide gifted education (Azano et al., 2011; Cross & Burney, 2005; Hébert & Beardsley, 2001). Though 32 (64%) of the states in the United States have policy mandates to either identify or provide services for gifted students (National Association for Gifted Children, 2013), inequities in gifted education services continue to exist even under state mandates (Baker, 2001; Baker & Friedman-Nimz, 2004). Furthermore, studies have found consistent underfunding of gifted education programs in rural school districts (Baker & McIntire, 2003; Howley, Rhodes, & Beall, 2009). Inequity of opportunity has been an ongoing concern for the broader field of gifted education (Esquierdo & Arreguín-Anderson, 2012; Stephens, 2011; Swanson, 2007). Educational opportunities for gifted students vary by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity (Ford, Harris, Tyson, & Trotman, 2002) and by locale (Cross & Burney, 2005; Kettler, Russell, & Puryear, 2015). Generally, rural schools and schools with a preponderance of low-socioeconomic students provide fewer resources and opportunities for identified gifted students than their counterparts in other locales and socioeconomic conditions (Baker & McIntire, 2003). It is not surprising then that gifted students in rural settings tend to be underrepresented in the research literature of both gifted education and rural education (Arnold, Newman, Gaddy, & Dean, 2005; Azano, 2014). Despite the relative lack of attention, studies have found locale to be associated with variance in educational opportunities-including gifted education programs and services (Lawrence, 2009). In particular, students in rural settings are less likely to be identified as gifted and generally have fewer opportunities for gifted education services (Lawrence, 2009; Pendarvis & Wood, 2009). Similarly, Howley et al. (2009) found that gifted programs in rural areas across the United States were consistently underfunded due to three common 690229G CQXXX10.

Take Care When Cutting

“…Accordingly, Greenough and Nelson nominated the Urban-Centric codes to become education researchers' standard geographic locale definition. By contrast, Puryear and Kettler (2017) questioned the Urban-Centric codes' utility for anything other than census purposes after their district-level analysis of gifted education opportunities revealed similar findings: rural-fringe districts resembled urban, suburban, and town districts more so than rural-distant and rural-remote districts. They also called for more research on the Urban-Centric codes to examine associations between opportunities and urban proximity.…”

“…Using the Urban-Centric codes, multiple research teams have observed subcategorical differences within their designations of city, suburb, town, and rural for schools (Greenough & Nelson, 2015) and districts (Puryear & Kettler, 2017). Examining schools' enrollment counts and Title I eligibility rates based on the 2010-2011 Common Core of Data from the U.S. Department of Education, Greenough and Nelson (2015) stressed differences within the rural category, where 61.6% of students in rural schools truly attended ruralfringe schools (coded 41).…”

“…As an outcome of that collaboration, proximity from urban areas is the primary characteristic that undergirds rural education with school size ranking fourth. We recognize proximity as an essential consideration when approaching geographic locale overall (Puryear & Kettler, 2017), especially for attempting to disentangle rurality from remoteness. We share an understanding that modern-day "rural schools are not necessarily small or remote" (Kettler et al, 2016, p. 248).…”

“…Thus, we designed this study to answer calls for research that better taps into rurality and remoteness (Corbett, 2018;Greenough & Nelson, 2015;Kettler et al, 2016;Koziol et al, 2015;Puryear & Kettler, 2017). Exemplifying possibilities arising from one of many ways to operationalize rurality and remoteness-NCES's Urban-Centric codes-we have employed an outcome variable of wide-ranging importance for equity-focused gifted education policy: breadth of opportunity to learn AP content (specifically the number of AP courses that a school received College Board authorization to offer).…”

Learning in rural schools

“…However, as this section reveals, these problems are far from universal, and some of the characteristics of rural education, such as their low student-teacher ratios, the abundance of social capital and the emergence of new technologies, open real opportunities for rural schools. In Chile, for instance, the initiative Puentes Educativos seeks to exploit the potential of multigrade teaching in rural schools for developing students' competencies like creativity, collaboration and critical thinking through changes in rural teachers' educational practices, curriculum, and educational materials (Puentes Educativos, 2018 [63]). Also several "urban" initiatives, such as alternative models based on small schools, multigrade teaching, moderate student-teacher ratios and close home-school relationships, point to the potential benefits that rural communities provide (Ares Abalde, 2014 [1]; Smit, Hyry-Beihammer and Raggl, 2015 [64]).…”