Report Shows Improvements In Rural Education

Diette Courrege writes at the Education Week (4/11) "Rural Education" blog that according to a new analysis from the Daily Yonder and the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University, "rural Americans have improved their educational attainment during the past 40 years, but the gap between rural and urban areas for residents with college degrees is growing, according to new analysis by rural advocates. Additionally, rural areas are seeing an increasing percentage of residents who only have a high school diploma, while the rest of the country is seeing a decrease in that percentage." The researchers found that over the past four decades, "rural areas have made progress according to many measures," but there are "a couple of areas where statistics aren't in rural communities' favor, specifically the widening gap between rural and urban areas for the percentage of adults with college degrees."