As many rural schools adopt virtual teaching options, the teachers can be thousands of miles from classrooms

In rural places, filling teacher vacancies can be impossible.
(Photo by Ash Ponders, The Wall Street Journal)

School is back in session, and in some places, students and teachers are thousands of miles apart as virtual learning becomes more common, particularly in rural areas, reports Sara Randazzo of The Wall Street Journal. "Virtual teachers are beaming into thousands of classrooms this school year in states from Nevada to Alaska to New Jersey, in subjects such as world languages, special education, science and math. . . . In rural places, the challenges of filling vacancies are felt even more acutely. The pay is lower than in urban districts, affordable housing options are limited, and recent college graduates might not want to move to a more remote, unfamiliar location."

"Even with students back in classrooms post-pandemic, more rural districts are making the concept of the remote teacher permanent," Randazzo writes. In Prescott Valley, Arizona, Humboldt Unified School District opted to pay virtual teachers to fill instruction gaps. Melissa Sanford, a Humbolt/Bradshaw Mountain High School's administrative secretary, said, "Bradshaw this year is offering Spanish 1, Spanish 2 and American Sign Language through a $142,000 contract with Elevate K-12, a Chicago-based company that provides the technology and instructors for remotely taught, live classes."

Not everyone agrees that virtual teaching should be the norm instead of the last resort. "The idea of continuing to rely on a virtual teacher is unwelcome, conjuring up images of unruly classrooms and little instruction being absorbed," Randazzo writes. "Bradshaw parent Jeromy Rye was surprised to learn after the school year started about the virtual teacher in his daughter Emma’s Spanish class. Even knowing there is a classroom coach in the room to assist, he is skeptical." He told Randazzo: “It may open up opportunities for people to misbehave, for one, or to not get the quality instruction compared with having a teacher in the classroom. I need to see the proof that it’s working.”

Virtual teaching may offer some rural schools the best path toward more equal education. "In Alabama, Birmingham-based nonprofit Ed Farm is teaming with the architecture firm of Danish Kurani to create what they call the Connected Rural Classroom, a high-tech room designed to virtually beam in STEM teachers to some of Alabama’s poorest regions," Randazzo reports. "Waymond Jackson, president of Ed Farm, said he is motivated by data from the University of Alabama’s Education Policy Center showing 11% of students are proficient in math in Alabama’s historically agricultural region, known as the Black Belt, compared with 23% elsewhere in the state."

Severe weather can disproportionately put rural energy needs at risk; study aims for improvements

New study aims to make rural grid more resilient.
(Photo by Matthew Henry, Unsplash)

Extreme weather can cause a strain on rural electrical grids. If the grid can't meet demands, thousands of lives can be at risk. To build a more weather-resilient grid, researchers "from universities in South Dakota, Puerto Rico, Maine and Alaska are working together for the next four years to investigate severe weather events and electrical grids," reports Kristi Eaton of The Daily Yonder. "The project is titled 'STORM: Data-Driven Approaches for Secure Electric Grids in Communities Disproportionately Impacted by Climate Change.'"

Tim Hansen, associate professor at South Dakota State University and co-principal investigator on the project, told Eaton, "The basic idea is to go to a few specific communities, and through community engagement, figure out what are the challenges that they are facing with regard to the impact of extreme weather on the power grid, and then solve some of those issues in terms of community outreach and engagement, designing new methods to make the grid more resilient." Eaton reports, "Hansen said the research project is based in strategic locations in which different weather events occur. Alaska, for example, deals with extreme cold, while Puerto Rico deals with storms and flooding."

The researchers will work within rural communities and help them develop severe weather responses. Study investigator Daisy Huang is an associate professor at the Univesity of Alaska Fairbanks and a mechanical engineer. "She conducts research at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, which looks at optimizing power, mostly in rural communities around Alaska," Eaton writes. "She said the rural communities are mostly not connected to the state grid." Huang told Eaton: "So they're all on their own diesel-fired power plants. And so we look at ways to integrate renewables [and] optimize their diesel for maximum efficiency."

Huang uses the study's outreach to build up science, technology, engineering, and mathematics projects within rural communities. She told Eaton: "The idea is looking from a community perspective – what their energy needs are, and how we can translate that – in parallel – developing educational programs around kids learning about energy systems." The study itself is full of young researchers. Hansen told Eaton: "It's a very good opportunity for the [National Science Foundation] to really build up the mentorship, and really build a lot of people's long-term careers off of the back of this." Eaton adds, "Hansen noted there will also be a virtual reality lab for remote power and energy research studies between all the participating institutions."

Quick hits: plague chipmunks; farmers' markets importance; what ballads and science fiction tell us about Appalachia . . .

Adorable and, possibly, dangerous.
Alamy Stock Photo by Sam Judy

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Hopefully not coming to a tree near you: the U.S. Forest Service has had to close several top hiking spots on Lake Tahoe because of chipmunks with the bubonic plague (most small-mammal infections are in the West.). A park ranger said wild rodents in the Sierra Nevada commonly carry the virus and advises people to keep their dogs on a leash. Read more here.

A small Black-majority town in Virginia is trying to keep a supermarket chain from building a warehouse there, worrying it could destroy the rural character of their town. Read more here.

To cap off National Farmers Market Week: The markets are growing in their role as essential sources of healthy food for the rich and poor, say two landscape architecture professors. Read more here.

What ballads and science fiction tell us about Appalachia's past, present and future. Read more here.

Rural communities should harness the once-in-a-generation windfall from the American Rescue Plan to invest in and improve school STEM programs, writes a rural education expert. Read more here.

The Agriculture Department is taking applications for loans and grants for rural start-ups, small businesses, non-profits, institutions of higher learning, and more. Read more here.

A new report provides a road map for expanding chestnut agri-forestry in the U.S. Read more here.

The Vera Institute of Justice is inviting applications for grants to rural organizations seeking alternative solutions to incarceration. Read more here.

Journalism chops and receptionist charm will get you a job and a home in West Virginia. Read more here.

Analysis suggests fewer rural college students major in STEM fields because of inadequate high-school prep

Fewer rural college students major in science, technology, engineering and math than their suburban and urban peers, according to a new analysis of federal data. "Only 13 percent of rural and small town students major in math and science in college, compared with almost 17% of students in the suburbs ... Urban students also trail suburban students when it comes to studying science, but only by a little, according to the federal data." Jill Barshay reports for The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit education newsroom.

That's a problem when more jobs than ever require training in so-called STEM fields. "According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupations in these fields are projected to grow 8 percent by 2029, more than double the growth rate of non-scientific professions," Barshay reports.

Part of the reason for the gap is that fewer rural high-school students go to four-year colleges, but even those who do are less likely to major in STEM fields. A June 2021 data analysis may offer some clues as to why, Barshay reports. Researchers at Claremont Graduate University studied a federal dataset of more than 20,000 students nationwide, and found that rural students had the same interest in math and science careers as their suburban counterparts at the start of high school.

But many rural students weren't as well-prepared for STEM fields: "Rural students posted lower scores on math assessments in early ninth grade than their suburban counterparts and they had taken half as many high-school level courses in middle school," Barshay reports. "By the end of 11th grade, rural students’ desire to pursue a career in math or science dropped below 9%. Some suburban students became disenchanted with a life in math or science too, but their enthusiasm fell only 1 percentage point. At the same time, the math achievement gap between rural and suburban students grew even larger."

The researchers posited three explanations for rural students' declining interest in STEM fields: lack of advanced math and science classes; math and science teachers who weren't as qualified or confident; and fewer opportunities for extracurricular math and science through activities such as science fairs, robotics competitions, or math clubs, Barshay reports.

"Solving these problems won’t be easy. The Rural STEM Education Act proposes to improve teacher training and increase both online and hands-on science education in rural schools. It has bipartisan support, has passed the House and may become law," Barshay reports. "But it will remain hard to justify hiring an Advanced Placement physics teacher for just a handful of students in a small school and harder to recruit an excellent teacher to teach it."

Coronavirus vaccine roundup: Rural providers fight distrust and conspiracies, and face distribution challenges

Rural communities face challenges in distributing the coronavirus vaccine. Watch the video here.

The first vaccines have been administered to hard-hit Native American communities. Read more here.

Rural doctors fight vaccine distrust and conspiracies along with the virus itself. Read more here.

The next six months will be "strange and confusing" as certain groups of people get vaccinated but others have to wait. Read more here.

Farmworkers, firefighters and flight attendants jockey for vaccine priority. Read more here.

Some rural Texas doctors celebrate the distribution of the Moderna vaccine while others are disappointed. Read more here, here, here and here.

A recent survey in Oregon shows that less-educated people were less likely to say they would take the coronavirus vaccine as soon as it becomes available. It's unclear whether that's partly conflated with political and population fault lines, since Republicans and rural residents are less likely to have a college degree, and those segments are also less likely to report wanting the vaccine. Read more here.

The vaccine rollout in rural Oregon and Idaho poses unique challenges. Read more here.

Rural Louisiana also faces challenges in distributing the vaccine. Read more here.

Four conservative senators fail in bid to block federal funds for climate-change training for TV meteorologists

A federal inspector general has dismissed an effort by conservative lawmakers to make it harder for TV meteorologists to tell viewers about climate change.

TV meteorologists have emerged as frontline soldiers in the battle to persuade Americans that the Earth's climate is changing, frequently helped with graphics and other resources from nonprofit educational organization Climate Central. "Last year, four climate skeptics in the U.S. Senate demanded an investigation of the $4 million in federal funding provided for the Climate Central program, saying it 'is not science — it is propagandizing,'" James Rainey reports for the Los Angeles Times.

"After a nearly yearlong review, however, the National Science Foundation's inspector general has rejected the claim by the four Republicans — Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and James M. Inhofe and James Lankford, both of Oklahoma. The inspector general’s review 'did not reveal any evidence that limitations on political activity ... were violated,' a memorandum summarizing the investigation said."

About 750 meteorologists across the nation have requested to be on Climate Central's distribution list this year. The program started with 197 meteorologists in 2014 and had increased to 644 by last year, Rainey reports. "Weather people are probably the closest thing that millions of Americans have in terms of daily contact with a person with science training," Climate Central chief executive Ben Strauss told Rainey. "It’s obvious that our weather has been behaving in strange and new ways, and we are simply helping weathercasters to help their audiences understand why."

Rural teachers invited to take survey; education group hopes responses will help rural districts lure more teachers

It's getting harder to recruit and keep teachers in rural schools, so some education groups are conducting a national survey to find out what rural teachers and administrators love and hate about their jobs, in hopes of making rural teaching jobs more attractive, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. The Survey of Rural Schools and Communities is a partnership of the National Rural Education Association, the Rural Schools Collaborative, and The New Teacher Project.

The problem has been getting worse over the past 30 to 40 years, says Gary Funk, director of the collaborative. "As more teachers reach retirement age in those school districts, there isn’t any policy to attract new teachers to those positions," he told Carey. "This is a tsunami that has been building up for some time." It's especially hard to find teachers at the secondary level, and in math, science, technical education, and special education, he said.

Though the negative aspects of rural teaching, like the frequent lack of broadband access,  are well known, there are positives too, like smaller class size, Carey reports. The collaborative hopes rural school districts will use negative survey responses to address those concerns and positive survey responses as talking points to lure new teachers. To further facilitate new hires, the survey website will eventually host a rural teacher job listing board.

The collaborative will collect responses to the survey through the end of April, and expects to release the results this summer, Carey reports. Click here to take the survey.

USDA to host rural roundtables on STEM access, opioids

Representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are hitting the road to better understand two rural issues: opioid misuse and access to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education.

The roundtables on rural opioid misuse began with one on March 14 in Pennsylvania, and will continue into the summer with the following schedule:

• April 11 in Utah
• May 9 in Kentucky
• June 6 in Oklahoma
• July 11 in Maine

The specifics for the upcoming roundtables are still being hammered out, but Anne Hazlett, Assistant to the Secretary for USDA Rural Development, said the chosen states had all seen a rise in overdose deaths in recent year, Julie Harker reports for Brownfield Ag News.

The regional listening sessions on the shortage of rural STEM access kicked off with a session on March 20 in Coalinga, California, and will continue as follows:

• March 22 in Macon, Georgia, at Middle Georgia Regional Commission
• April 3 in Champaign, Illinois and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• April 4 in Hudson, New York, at Columbia-Greene Community College

The listening sessions will discuss both the lack of access to STEM education in rural areas and discuss ways the Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant Program can help address it.
If you are interested in attending a session, email DLTinfo@wdc.usda.gov.

Black Panther film's fictional Wakanda has lessons for Appalachia, Roanoke Times editorial says

A Roanoke Times editorial takes a whimsical turn, saying that the fictional Wakanda in the hit film "Black Panther" has some lessons for Appalachia. It's not that far-fetched a comparison: Wakanda is a tiny country whose wealth comes from minerals. Though Appalachia has no "vibranium," it does have coal, oil and natural gas, which leads the Times' editorial board to ponder: Can an economy based on resource extraction really become wealthy? Can an isolationist nation really become wealthy?

To the first question, the editorial notes that coal mining has historically enriched a wealthy few, while the miners were among the poorest in the country. "The fictional Wakanda has somehow created a resource extraction economy that re-invests its wealth in its own people. With the demise of coal, it’s too late for Appalachia to do that. Instead, the great challenge for the region now is to build a new economy that generates wealth here, not someplace else," the editorial board writes.

As for isolationism, the Times editorial board remains skeptical that any country would have everything it needs to build a society without trade. "That’s also the danger of Donald Trump’s isolationist trade policies," they write. "By withdrawing from the TransPacific Partnership, Trump basically made it harder for American businesses to profit from future growth in Asia. China is more than happy to step into that void."

Two things the board liked about Wakanda, and hopes Appalachia can replicate, are its focus on education and gender equality. Education matters because the biggest indicator of economic success is in the skill level of the population. And, it notes, getting girls involved in STEM fields is important because "you can’t build a modern economy with only half the population."

Facebook CEO visits Eastern Ky. to support education initiative

 Zuckerberg checks out a robotics project by Appalachian
students. (Photo provided by Jacob Stratton)

Students and teachers in Eastern Kentucky got a big surprise Saturday when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came for an unannounced visit, Valarie Honeycutt Spears reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Students from five counties were invited to meet with staff from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in Hazard. The purpose of the visit, they were told, was to "demonstrate and discuss some of the innovations taking place in schools and classrooms that are transforming teaching and learning," said Ron Daley, an official with the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative, which is a consortium of 22 public school districts in Eastern Kentucky.

"KVEC is working to help pilot a technology initiative called the Summit Learning Platform in several schools in the region," Spears reports. Summit is a free online tool that helps teachers create customized lessons for each student. It's funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which explains Zuckerberg's visit. He wanted it to be a "listening and interaction opportunity without media," Daley told Spears.

Zuckerberg, who also visited West Virginia over the weekend, was impressed. He posted on his Facebook page: "I talked to some students who were using the Summit personalized learning tools we’ve been building at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and who were learning how to code. These kids were showing me the games, robots, drones, and VR apps (!!) they were coding." His post went on to say that more than 300 schools in the US will be using the Summit program this fall.

Rural Kentucky tech ed innovations have gotten increasing media attention in recent years. KVEC and Belfry, Ky., teacher Haridas Chandran were written up in a recent Atlantic magazine article. Chandran and KVEC are also featured in a documentary that will air at 10 ET tonight on the National Geographic Channel. "Without a Net: The Digital Divide in America" is about schools in disadvantaged areas that are trying to prepare students for life in a high-tech world.

Scopes trial town has long had statue of Bryan, the prosecutor; it's getting one of defender Darrow

In the small Tennessee town where the "Monkey Trial" of John Scopes brought Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to the forefront of national debate in 1925, a group of atheists and agnostics will unveil a monument to honor the defense attorney in the case, reports Michael Miller of NPR.

In the trial, three-time Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state William Jennings Bryan was the special prosecutor of Scopes for teaching evolution in a Dayton, Tenn., high school, saying it violated a state law that made teaching human evolution illegal in public schools. Clarence Darrow, a leading civil libertarian, defended Scopes. Bryan was an influential "Christian crusader," while Darrow was a famous proponent of science and secularism, Miller notes. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 but the verdict was voided on a technicality.

The trial put Dayton, which then had a population of 2,000 or less, on the map. Now numbering about 7,200, it has an annual Scopes Trial Festival, which starts Friday, and businesses with sly nods for names such as the Monkey Town Brewing Co. (serving Evolution IPA on tap). A bronze statue of Bryan has long stood in front of the Rhea County Courthouse, funded by Bryan College, a local evangelical institution. The statue of Darrow, which cost about $150,000 and was created by Philadelphia sculptor Zenos Frudakis, was funded mostly by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

"It'll get people thinking and talking," Frudakis told Miller. "And it's just more historically balanced and accurate that way to have him there."

Rhea County, Tennessee (Wikipedia map)

Some locals are unhappy about the statue, as the Dayton Herald-News reported, but others have no problem with it, Miller reports. Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, who wrote the memoir Evolving in Monkey Town, told him, "I'm a Christian who believes in evolution, and those two things can exist together."

Kentucky weekly helps pass tax to help schools

A weekly newspaper in Central Kentucky led the charge to pass a tax that will fund much-needed renovations at local schools. More than 54 percent of voters in Marion County, Kentucky, voted in favor of the recallable nickel (5 cents per $100 of property valuation, subject to a petition and referendum) which with matching state funds, will give Marion County Public Schools about $30 million for renovations. In 2008, 58 percent voting against an identical proposal.

Lebanon, Ky. (Best Places map)

The Lebanon Enterprise did several stories on the issue in a sample-copy edition sent to all addresses in the county. The schools sponsored the extra printing and postage with $1,500, but Publisher Stevie Lowery said the edition would have run with or without the schools sponsorship. Lowery said the schools have sponsored previous countywide editions.

For one story, fourth and fifth graders were asked, "If you were granted three wishes for your school, what would they be?" Lowery reported that the majority asked for practical things, such as more bathrooms. Lebanon Elementary School has four bathrooms—two for girls, two for boys—for 400 students.

At Lebanon and Calvary elementaries, where one room serves as gyms cafeterias and auditorium, students said they wanted separate facilities for the three functions, Lowery wrote. There was also concern about crowded classrooms, no music or art rooms, or science or computer labs, bigger libraries, and a separate place at Calvary for the nurse, who currently shares a space on a stage where music is taught. Lowery also supported the cause with editorials and kept up an active conversation on the newspaper's Facebook page.

The Enterprise has long been owned by Shelbyville-based Landmark Community Newspapers, a company that sets standards but allows editorial autonomy. Lowery has a son in school and is a daughter of the late Steve Lowery, who edited the paper in the 1980s.

UPDATE, Nov. 18: An Enterprise employee reports on a congratulatory call from a subscriber.

31% of home-schooled students live in rural areas, where 3.6% of children are home-schooled

The number of home-schooled children in the U.S. more than doubled from 1999 to 2012 from 850,000 to 1.773 million, says a study released this week by the National Center for Education Statistics. Researchers estimate that 31 percent of all home-schooled children live in rural areas, though such areas account for 15 percent or less of the U.S. population. The study found that 3.6 percent of all rural children are home-schooled, compared to 1.6 percent in suburban areas and 1.5 percent in cities. (NCES graphic: Sources of curriculum and books for home schoolers)

Researchers used data from the 2012 NCES Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of parents of 17,563 school-age students. They found that among all home-schooled children, 31 percent of parents had a high-school education or less, 30 percent had some vocational or technical college education, 25 percent a bachelor's degree and 14 percent a graduate degree.

Among home schoolers, 91 percent said concern about school environments, such as safety, drugs and negative peer pressure, was an important reason why they home-schooled; 25 percent said it was the most important reason. Being able to provide religious instruction was cited by 17 percent as the most important reason, and by 61 percent as an important reason. Dissatisfaction with academic instruction at schools was the most important reason for 19 percent and an important reason for 74 percent.

4-H expanding in urban areas in bid to boost Hispanic and African American membership

4-H clubs will soon be expanding into urban and suburban areas in a quest to attract Hispanic and African American youth, T. Rees Shapiro reports for The Washington Post. (Post photo by Katherine Frey: Mica Biamonte, 12, gives a demonstration on how to sew a pillow to her fellow 4-H'ers on April 7, 2016, in Damascus, Md.)

The new effort is part of a campaign to add 4.2 million Hispanic or African American members by 2025. About half of the six million 4-H members from kindergarten to high school are white, with 1.7 million members Hispanic or African American. Jennifer Sirangelo, chief executive of the National 4-H Council, told Shapiro, "We just know we need to break out of this limited view that people have of 4-H. We’re still connected to our roots in agriculture, but we are so much more.”

In an attempt to attract more urban youth "the transformation will involve emphasizing 4-H projects surrounding science, technology, engineering and math—the STEM fields—promoting activities such as rocketry or building drones," Shapiro writes. "Sirangelo said that demographic data collected by the organization shows that there are about 30 million children in the country who are underserved and could benefit from leadership­-development programs such as 4-H." She told him, “We want to ensure that our program has a welcome mat in every community. We know if we don’t get them ready for leadership, we may have a huge leadership void affecting every industry and sector in the future.” The National 4-H Conference is being held through Thursday in Washington D.C.

High costs, lack of availability keeping rural children from enrolling in afterschool programs

About 3.1 million rural children would enroll in an afterschool program, if an affordable and accessible one were available in their community, says a report called America After 3PM from the Afterschool Alliance. Among rural low-income families, 44 percent would like to participate in an afterschool program, but only 14 percent do. The report also found that 45 percent of rural parents in 2014 said they wanted their child to be in a summer learning program, but only 28 percent enrolled their child in such a program.

Of those surveyed, 73 percent of rural parents said they felt being in an afterschool program would help with homework assignments, and 62 percent said it would increase STEM skills. Also, 61 percent of rural parents said afterschool programs provide children with healthy foods, 73 percent said afterschool programs keeps children physically active, 73 percent said afterschool programs give parents peace of mind knowing their children are safe and 72 percent said programs help working parents keep their jobs.

Affordability, accessibility and availability are the main barriers keeping children from attending aftershcool programs, the report found. Because the average weekly cost of rural afterschool programs is $95.80 in 2014, up from $51.86 in 2009, 59 percent of rural parents said current economic conditions made it difficult for them to afford afterschool. Overall, 46 percent of rural parents cited costs as an important reason why they didn't enroll children in afterschool.

Also, 32 percent of rural parents said afterschool programs were not available in their area, and 67 percent of rural parents "agreed that it was challenging to find an enriching environment for their child in the hours after school." Also, 46 percent of rural parents "report that they opted not to select an afterschool program because of the lack of a safe way for their child to get to and come home from the program, and 42 percent said that inconvenient program locations factored into their decision."

West Virginia Republican lawmakers block science standards that teach man-made climate change

The Republican-led West Virginia House of Delegates voted last week to block implementation of new science standards that require instruction on man-made climate change, saying the standards will negatively influence students in a state that relies heavily on fossil fuels, Eric Eyre reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail. The House voted 73-20 to block the rules for at least one year. New standards were supposed to go into effect July 1.

"Last year, state school board members modified the standards that mentioned climate change in hopes of satisfying global-warming skeptics," Eyre writes. "West Virginia's new Next Generation Science Standards three times address human-influenced climate change—in sixth-grade science, in ninth-grade science and in a high-school environmental science elective course." Current science standards received a D grade in 2013 from a conservative think tank, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The same Fordham study rated the Next Generation standards a C.

Republican delegate Michel Moffatt told Eyre, “Starting in kindergarten, you're talking about teaching the kids about how humans negatively affect the Earth. In an ideal world, you could interpret that as, sure, everyone has a footprint, but you could also twist that into all fossil fuels are bad.” Republican Del. Jim Butler told Eyre, “In an energy-producing state, it's a concern to me that we are teaching our kids potentially that we are doing immoral things here in order to make a living in our state. We need to make sure our science standards are actually teaching science and not pushing a political agenda.” (Read more)

Rural Wisconsin Initiative would expand broadband, improve education and healthcare

Republican lawmakers on Wednesday announced the Rural Wisconsin Initiative, "a series of seven bills lawmakers say are designed to help smaller towns and villages throughout the state grow in the future," Amanda Tyler reports for WEAU in Eau Claire. Bills "would expand broadband internet access; attract teachers to small schools; and provide grants for science, technology, engineering and math programs for local schools."

One of the keys is to provide equal opportunities for students and teachers in rural areas, Tyler writes. Augusta School District administrator Ryan Nelson told Tyler, “Just because we are rural doesn't mean that we provide any less of a quality education for our kids. Any type of legislation that might continue to support the efforts of rural school districts is always a positive move."

Another initiative is to improve healthcare to small towns "by increasing funding for programs that encourage physicians to take residencies in rural hospitals," Tyler writes. Dr. Joan Hamlin, program director at Eau Claire Family Medicine, said the proposal is a step in the right direction but isn't enough to meet the needs of rural areas. She said funds "would need to be higher than the $250,000 being proposed by lawmakers." If all the measures pass, they are expected to cost between $13 to $15 million.

Politico ranks New Hampshire nation's strongest state, Louisiana weakest; 8 of 10 weakest in South

New Hampshire is the strongest state, and 8 of the 10 weakest states are in the South, led by Louisiana as the nation's weakest state, according to Politico Magazine's rankings of states, Manuela Tobias reports for Politico. States were ranked based on: annual per capital income; unemployment; percent below poverty level; home ownership rate; high school graduation; life expectancy at birth; infant deaths per 1,000 births; obesity; violent crime rate; employment in computer, science and engineering; math and reading scores; Well-Being score; GINI index; and H.L. Mencken's 1931 rankings.

"To pull the list together, we consulted 14 existing rankings from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI and then averaged each state’s different rankings," Tobias writes. "The resulting list, inspired by American Mercury editors H.L. Mencken and Charles Angoff’s 1931 series 'The Worst American State,' doesn’t promise scientific infallibility. But it’s based on the simple idea that education, health and wealth generally make us better off, while crime, unemployment and death do not."

Following New Hampshire at the top of the list was Minnesota, Vermont, Utah, Colorado, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Iowa, Connecticut and Hawaii. Louisiana was ranked 51st. Also at the bottom was Mississippi (50th), Alabama (49), Arkansas (48), West Virginia (47), Tennessee (46), Oklahoma (45), Kentucky (44), Nevada (43), Georgia (42), New Mexico (41) and South Carolina (40).

Minnesota and New Hampshire tied for the top spot last year, while Mississippi was ranked last. In 2014, New Hampshire was the strongest and Mississippi the weakest.

States boosting economies by teaching immigrants English; youngest immigrants in Great Plains, South

States are investing millions of dollars to help "new immigrants learn English and acclimate to American culture, hopeful that it will pay off with economic activity," Tim Henderson reports for Stateline. The youngest immigrants are in North and South Dakota, and those states have a median immigrant age of 34. Kentucky is next, at 36, followed by Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa (37) and Wyoming, Kansas, Minnesota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Indiana (38). The average oldest immigrants are in Hawaii (48) and Florida (47).

"Immigrants fill many of the country’s labor gaps: from low-skilled work in agriculture to high-skilled work in science and technology," Henderson writes. "Having an immigrant population that is younger often means the newcomers are contributing to a state’s workforce, which can increase the tax base. But it also can mean young families that have children. And that can burden public schools, which are obligated to teach students who don’t speak English."

"Having an immigrant population that skews older can mean a state has a greater percentage of immigrants who have aged out of the workforce and may need help with health care, housing and retirement—though not always," Henderson. But the states with the oldest immigrants, Hawaii and Florida, "have settled in enclaves where many speak the same language or share the same culture," while immigrants in Hawaii—mostly from Asia—tend to be more affluent. (Stateline map: For an interactive version, click here)

House passes revision to No Child Left Behind law, allowing states to set own goals

The House today approved a revision to the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB), giving more control to states, a positive move for rural and remote areas, advocates say. The overhaul, which passed by a vote of 359 to 64, "allows states and school districts to set their own goals and to decide how to rate schools and what to do with those that underperform," Emmarie Huetteman and Motoko Rich report for The New York  Times. The bill is expected to pass in the Senate next week and be immediately signed into law by President Obama.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), the chairman of the House Education Committee, "said the existing law had left the federal government 'micromanaging' the education system," reports the Times. He said in a statement: “No Child Left Behind was based on good intentions, but it was also based on the flawed premise that Washington knows what students need to succeed in school."

Mark Hawkins, superintendent of the small North Star School District in northeast Montana, "said NCLB mandates to improve test scores each year were a disaster, especially for rural schools," reports Matt Hoffman for the Billings Gazette. Hawkins, who said the NCLB goals were noble, but unattainable, said that for "small schools, test scores can 'change greatly from year-to-year,' independent of long-term trends."

The bill will allow states like Alaska the "freedom to set its own performance goals, standard for teachers and testing plans," Ma. Elena Garcia reports for ISchoolGuide. "The pending bill will also have strong provisions for native education. It supports a current program that offers a curriculum specific to Alaska native students."

The bill passed Wednesday "retains the annual testing requirements in math and reading," reports the Times. "Schools must also continue to report the results by students’ race, income and disability status . . . Although the new bill requires that states take action to improve schools in the bottom 5 percent of all schools in the state as well as high schools that graduate fewer than two-thirds of students, the bill does not impose any specific action if those goals are not met."

"States are required to use test scores and other academic measures to rate schools but can also include other components like student surveys," reports the Times. "The bill specifically prevents the federal government from requiring that states evaluate teachers at all, much less use test scores to rate them, and says the education secretary cannot dictate any specific academic standards to states."

Most education groups welcomed the bill, while civil rights groups were cautiously optimistic, expressing concern that the new bill could put vulnerable children at risk, reports the Times. Andy Smarick, partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit education consulting and research group, told the Times, "Over the past 10, almost 15 years, we’ve so focused on reading and math scores, and this is the real opportunity to make sure we’re capturing the things that are important, whether it’s grit and persistence or school culture or parent engagement, and the only way to do that is to give power back to the states. You cannot centrally manage an innovative, creative accountability system from Washington, D.C.”