Remote Schools in the United States: Differentiating Conditions, Characteristics, and Priorities for Policy and Research

• In Event: Rurality in Educational Research and Policy

Abstract

In the United States, both education policy and education research tend to conflate remote contexts with rural contexts or fail to define rural at all. Remote is subsumed within the broader conceptualization of rural and so is assumed to be covered by rural-focused research. As a response to the priorities outlined in the National Rural Education Association’s (NREA) rural research agenda, this study highlights measurable differences in the educational conditions and characteristics of children living in geographically remote places in the United States as compared to children living in places designated generally as rural. Key findings include depressed instructional expenditures and graduation rates for remote-town and remote-rural districts as compared to non-remote districts.

Authors

• Karen Eppley, Pennsylvania State University

• Jerry Johnson, East Carolina University

• Daniel Showalter, Eastern Mennonite University

• Sara Lohrman Hartman, Ohio University