Study: Race and poverty are factors in southern rural graduation rates

New analysis from The Rural School and Community Trust reveals alarmingly poor graduation rates among high-poverty school districts in 15 southern states. "The districts studied include 616 rural school districts that are among the 800 rural districts nationally with highest student poverty rates," RSCT reports. "Just over 6 in 10 students can be expected to graduate from these districts, compared with 70 percent among other rural districts and 67 percent among non-rural districts nationally." Nearly three in five of students in the districts studied were people of color and the poverty rates of those districts was nearly twice that of other rural or non-rural districts.

"Even among these high-poverty districts, those with the lowest graduation rates are more likely to serve children of color," RSCT writes. "Nearly half (47 percent) of the students who attend districts in the bottom fifth in graduation rate among these 616 districts are African American." Twenty of the 616 districts studied were listed as high performing because they had graduation rates in the top 20 percent of their respective states.

"Not surprisingly, the 616 high-poverty rural districts in these 15 states operate with less state and local funding per pupil ($7,731) than for all other rural districts nationally ($8,134) or all non-rural districts nationally ($9,611)," RSCT writes. "The funding gap is caused by a gap in local revenue shortages that is only partially offset by somewhat higher state revenue." RSCT suggests "high dropout rates in high-poverty rural districts may converge at the intersection of larger districts and higher percentages of African American and Hispanic enrollment." (Read more)