America’s rural communities are the bedrock of our nation’s economic and fiscal well-being, but they are frequently under-resourced, struggling to gain the attention of policymakers and investors.

That’s why Achieving the Dream launched Building Resiliency in Rural Communities for the Future of Work, an initiative that aims to increase equitable student success by strengthening rural colleges’ capacity to prepare students for careers in today's and tomorrow’s digital economy.

When Gov. Tony Evers announced his biennial budget on Tuesday, including a hefty $7.7 billion proposed for various education programs, Kim Kaukl felt like the concerns of rural Wisconsin were being heard.

“I feel it’s a strong budget,” says Kaukl, executive director of Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance (WiRSA). “It has basically everything that our members were looking for in this budget. It checked pretty much all the boxes for us.”

Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance represents 165 rural school districts and roughly 121,500 students. Wisconsin has approximately 310 rural school districts, representing 44% of Wisconsin’s K-12 students. Kaukl believes Evers’ proposals — including a huge boost for early childhood programs, special education funding, and rural broadband services — will aid communities struggling to rebound during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evers proposes a general per-pupil increase from the state, and his budget provides a hefty increase in special education funding of $709 million. Currently, the state covers less than 30% of districts’ special education costs; Evers’ budget proposes 45% to start and rising to 50%.

“We are hoping to get to 60%, but this is something we’ve been pushing for forever,” says Kaukl. “What people need to understand is that this piece [of the budget] helps all schools, and it helps all students because special ed has been so underfunded at the state level for so long that many of our districts are having to use money from their general fund to offset their special ed needs.”

The recently released budgets from the House of Delegates and Virginia Senate have promise. A 5% raise for teachers as proposed by the House and increased funding for support staff as proposed by the Senate are steps in the right direction. These and other budget recommendations greatly are appreciated and needed.

However, an equity mindset is missing from both proposed budgets. The word equity has been used in many discussions during this session, the past session, and the election of 2019. It seems, however, that equity has become more of a buzzword than a policy driver. I am thrilled that equity is part of the conversation, but our students won’t experience equity short of action.

The first example of inequity in the released budgets is the increase to cost of competing adjustment. The House increased this funding stream, which benefits divisions in Northern Virginia, by $13 million.

Rural schools in Arizona want to get their fast internet connections beyond their buildings and out into the community, where broadband can help provide online learning for students and families.

The Final Mile Project is an initiative of the Arizona Rural Schools Association (ARSA), which has 100 member districts.

“It might be a cliché to say it at this point, but the ‘digital divide’ is a real problem in rural communities, and it’s the same in the rural counties here in Arizona,” said Wes Brownfield, ARSA’s executive director and a retired rural school principal himself. “Building high-speed, dependable internet service to student homes is necessary for successful online learning, and right now, in many rural areas, fast and affordable internet access is just woefully inadequate.”

The Final Mile Project is identifying “anchor institutions, such as schools, libraries or hospitals, with existing high-speed fiber capacity,” Brownfield said. Those institutions can then host towers with the ability to broadcast internet service to nearby homes. Current technology and regulations can achieve an average reach of a seven-mile radius using this model.

This article gives meaning to innovating promising practices in high poverty rural contexts, as experienced by the Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP). The project sought to develop a model of shared school-family-community responsibility to support student success in foundational math courses as preparation for science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEM-H) careers. RMEP was one of the two rural development grant awards in the 2012 federal fiscal year, the first year for awards in the rural priority area of the U. S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) program. High poverty rural areas may have major implications for the fidelity of implementation and measurement of intended impacts that raise important questions about project organizational structures, capacities, and evaluation needs. If significant external funding and a partnership approach are key catalysts for innovating solutions to educational challenges, the answers to 10 questions of readiness could have major implications for project success.

Pam Buffington and Mara Casey Tieken discuss the educational challenges brought about by COVID-19.

In 2020 has been an exceptionally different—and difficult—school year for many of the 9 million students who attend rural schools in the United States. Not only has hybrid and remote learning replaced face-to-face instruction, but the pandemic has drastically affected the economic stability and physical health of many families in rural communities. These impacts will continue to be felt long after a vaccine is found.

In this podcast, Pam Buffington, director of Rural STEM Initiatives at EDC, and Mara Casey Tieken, an associate professor of education at Bates College, discuss how rural schools are adapting to the current realities—while continuing to meet the needs of students and their families.