Rural Education Matters, Too

By Betsy Boggs

Ever wonder why we only talk about urban education? While a focus on urban education is important, there is an overabundance of research and scholarly attention being dedicated to the educational issues plaguing our urban communities in Chicago, New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Atlanta, etc. But what about the rural communities along the Interstate 95 corridor in South Carolina and in the Black Belt region of Alabama whose students are also suffering? If we care about all children receiving equitable educational opportunities through the public school system in the U.S., we have to spend more time talking about rural education and the unique challenges faced by students, families, and communities in these regions. There is a serious deficit in the attention and study of U.S. rural education, further reinforcing this mentality that those people and those places do not matter because they don’t deserve to be attended to or to be studied. I get it: it’s easier and perhaps even more fun and exciting to study people and places that others have already studied, especially when the places are America’s largest cities. In a sense, there is less work to do when examining educational inequities and inequalities in urban areas because there’s already been so much scholarship produced on issues of housing, healthcare, the environment, and the economy in many urban areas, and this scholarship is often helpful when making place-specific and intersectional connections with education. 

Growing up in rural South Carolina, I was fortunate to attend public schools in the same town where a public research university was located. However, my experience was much different from the experiences of those who lived along the Interstate 95 corridor that runs along the east coast of the state—the “Corridor of Shame.”  

Why didn’t I learn about the “Corridor of Shame” until I minored in education during college in South Carolina? And why then did I not learn that this infamous nickname was more than just that, but that it harkens to the longest lasting Supreme Court case in South Carolina state history? That seems like something worth mentioning, something worth attention, and most definitely something worth further study and interrogation, but what do I know? 

In 1993, 34 school districts in the state of South Carolina sued the state in Abbeville County School District v. State of South Carolinafor failing to provide a “minimally adequate” education to the students in these districts. In 2014, the state ruled in favor of the districts, finding these school districts guilty of just that. But, just last year in 2017, the South Carolina State Supreme Court overturned its 2014 ruling. The Corridor is back to square one.  

Because my public school experience was so rich and diverse in many ways, I didn’t realize how truly unique my experience was until I began working with students, families, and public schools and their teachers and administrators in rural Alabama. It was 2013 and schools were still segregated. Was everything I had been taught about Brown v. Board and the Civil Rights movement a lie? No progress seemed to have been made in this Black Belt community. The racial demographics of the county were about 75% Black and 25% white. There were five public schools in the county—one public high school and four public K-8 schools. There was also one private K-12 academy in the county. The racial demographics for the public schools were 98-100% Black, and the racial demographics for the private academy was 99-100% white. I knew that racism and segregation still existed, but the starkness of it in this rural community was unlike any of the attention or scholarship about these same issues in urban communities. And it wasn’t just the racism and the segregation in this community that struck me; it was also the poverty. 

I come from a working class/middle class family, and I know what it means to live from paycheck to paycheck, to have parents who cannot financially support you, and to have your home foreclosed. So, when I say that I was struck by the poverty in this community, I’m not talking about a lack of frivolous accessories. I’m talking about children who wear the same thing to school every day because they don’t have another option. I’m talking about schools with busted out windows, nonfunctioning bathrooms, hallways lined with buckets to catch the water during storms, and a lack of heat and air condition. We read about these same afflictions in urban schools all the time. They exist in rural schools too. 

This hyperfocus on urban education, hip-hop education/pedagogy, urban school leadership, etc. is an attempt to make urban education seem more attractive. While there are a number of scholars who study rural U.S. education and a handful of programs that specialize in rural education, there are only a few of these scholars and most of the programs focused on rural education are specific to international contexts. 

I chose to study at Penn because it is one of the top graduate schools of education; I was impressed with the research and scholarship being produced here; and I was excited to learn alongside some of the most brilliant scholars in education. I didn’t choose to come to Penn to study urban education, but that is what most of my courses have focused on, unfortunately. To be passionate about rural education, especially at a place like Penn, situated in the city of Philadelphia, I have learned is a very unpopular thing. I have been questioned by professors and fellow students about why I’m studying at Penn if I am interested in rural education. I have been discouraged from writing about rural places. The rare mention of rural education in my classes has referenced rural education outside of the United States or has referenced a place like Augusta, Georgia whose landscape is more rural, but whose population tops the second largest for cities in Georgia. 

If we truly value ensuring that all students receive equitable educational opportunities through the U.S. public school system, an institutional focus needs to be reconfigured—one that prioritizes rural education in the way that urban education is prioritized. Top graduate schools of education like Penn should diversify the courses offered so that there are courses offered on both urban and rural education and so that the assigned readings in the courses focus on both rural and urban places. Further, hiring faculty with interests and expertise in the rural communities of the U.S. would allow for more inclusion and attention to rural education. In addition to shifting the institutional focus of Penn’s Graduate School of Education, there also needs to be an institutional reconfiguration among Penn’s other schools. In order to re-prioritize rural education, other schools must join Penn in this effort as well.