Just around the bendgettySummer Hopper and Sheneka Williams of Michigan State University have published a paper about rural education that identifies six key ideas about rural schools. The paper appears at the Live Handbook of Education Policy Research at the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP).Hopper and Williams identify six key findings, some of which run counter to conventional wisdom.Rural schools and communities are becoming increasingly diverse.The assumption that rural schools are “synonymous with whiteness.” That is increasingly inaccurate, but the assumption can lead to policy choices that render diverse students invisible. Rural schools may be seen as schools where no training or awareness of different cultural background is needed.Rural schools are rarely prioritized during education policy formation.Education policy discussions tend to focus on urban problems and solutions. But rural school districts have their own unique set of problems. Rural districts serve around 20% of American students. Rural schools are facing tough financial squeezes; rural districts in many parts of the country have had to make significant cuts, merge operations with each other, and even shut down entirely. Yet many states do not direct special supports to rural schools.The authors point to No Child Left Behind as a policy that was developed without regard for challenges of rural schools. One prominent example is the "highly qualified teacher" requirement, which failed to account for the unique challenges of staffing rural schools and what "highly qualified" might mean in these contexts. The mandates were developed with little to no consideration for the needs of rural schools, and when concerns were raised, the response was a blanket attempt to exempt rural areas from the requirements rather than adapt them to fit rural realities. This approach highlighted a broader disconnect between policymakers and rural educators, as the solutions often ignored the structural inequities facing rural schools.MORE FOR YOUAnother example of a rural challenge is transportation costs, a rural financial drain that is currently increasing as the cost of gas rises. Rural school closures and consolidations negatively impact communities.My children attended a rural elementary school that also served as the community center. When the school closed, it was a blow to the small town. When a school district shut down the school in Tidioute, Pennsylvania, the community was so concerned that it started its own charter school to replace the school they had lost. Republican opposition to school vouchers in states like Texas and Oklahoma has been motivated largely by the desire to preserve schools in small, rural areas. As the authors note, “schools in rural spaces are often central to the community in a way that may be difficult to grasp for those who have not seen it firsthand.” In many rural areas, school is part of identity. There are counties in this country where people well into adulthood still identify themselves by where they graduated from high school.Rural students have limited school choice options.Charter and private schools are business operations, and are therefor have less motivation to set up shop in rural areas where the market is limited. For years, charter advocates have pointed to charter “deserts” as a problem. Which makes a better business plan in Texas: setting up a school in the two-county area of the Wink-Loving school district with 435 total students, or the Dallas district with almost 140,000 public school students and another 44,000 in charter schools?In some states, cyber-schools bring choice into rural areas, though cyber-charters require internet infrastructure.Academic outcomes for rural students are significantly shaped by geography and demography.Hopper and Williams argue that rural students have to deal with higher and more generational poverty rates, so that one of the needs of rural schools is resources to deal with challenges coming from socioeconomic status. At the same time, rural students achieve higher NAEP scores and graduation rates than town and city students. Those high achievement rates mask large achievement gaps between the top and bottom students, with the high achievement rates driven primarily by White students.Rural students are far less likely to attend and graduate college than urban and suburban students. Rural students, the authors suggest, may feel less prepared for college, perhaps because rural schools may have fewer offers such as AP classes or specialized classes. Also, for rural students, attending college almost always means moving far away from home. Rural students also have less exposure to a wide range of jobs, narrowing their possible answers for “What do I want to do when I grow up?”Rural communities face challenges in recruiting and retaining a diverse teacher workforce.Recruiting and retaining teachers is a challenge everywhere these days, rural schools face their own special challenges. They have less money to spend on teacher pay, and the distance from colleges also means they are distant from college education departments. Not every recent college grad is cut out for rural life, where there are few amenities and the dating pool is generally shallow.While student populations continue to become more diverse, the teaching pool lags. Hopper and Williams note that scholars have found that 18-37% of rural schools are now majority minority schools, but the teaching workforce is still predominantly white. One solution may be for schools to recruit from their own graduates, but it takes years for that strategy to pay dividends.Rural schools face unique challenges. Those challenges are often ignored by policy leaders and lawmakers on both the state and federal level. Having to find their own way may stand as a seventh key truth about these schools.