Students who attend rural schools are more likely to demonstrate proficiency on national assessments of mathematics and reading than their urban peers, but do not do as well as those in the suburbs, a federal status report on rural education concludes.
Rural high schools also tend to have lower dropout rates than those in cities, but see a greater proportion of students abandon their education early than suburban schools do.
The report, the first conducted under a new classification system designed to more accurately classify schools by geographic factors, is based on data from the 2002-03 school year. It was released last month by the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education.
“Status of Education in Rural America” is available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
