A Visual Examination & Ranking of Rural Students in Poverty by US State

Posted on September 24, 2010 in General by InnerEd  Tagged , , , , , ,

The Center for American Progress, one of my websites for educational analysis from the research side of the field (though I don’t always agree with its conclusions; the place is fairly good at producing raw informative data and seems less slanted left in education as they are in other fields), has released this interactive map showing where each state falls with what percentage of its students can be classified as “rural” and what percentage of the rural students are in poverty.  These are some really interesting statistics that aren’t mentioned often as most of the school reform rhetoric centers on struggling inner-city schools when many of the rural schools have been fighting similar problems for just as long.  The data for Nevada and Hawaii was incomplete.

States with the highest percentage of rural students (all at/over 60%):

  • Maine
  • Vermont
  • North Dakota
  • South Dakota
  • Montana
  • Wyoming
  • Nebraska

States with lowest percentage of rural students:  (all under 20%)

  • Massachusetts
  • New Jersey
  • Delaware
  • Rhode Island
  • Connecticut
  • Maryland
  • New York
  • Hawaii

States with highest percentage of rural students living in poverty from west to east:  (all over 50%)

  • New Mexico  [highest in nation--81%]
  • Oklahoma
  • Arkansas
  • Louisiana  [2nd highest in nation--70%]
  • Mississippi
  • Alabama
  • Kentucky
  • West Virginia
  • South Carolina

States with lowest percentage of rural students living in poverty from west to east:  (all under 20%)

  • New Jersey
  • Massachusetts
  • Connecticut  [lowest in nation--7%; only state in single digits]
  • Rhode Island
  • New Hampshire

Tennessee’s Data:

  1. Total:  325,823 students are rural
  2. 42% of students are rural
  3. 45% of rural students live in poverty (approx 147,272 students)
  4. Tennessee is touched by four of the nine states with the highest percentage of students in poverty (AR, MS, AL, KY)
  5. Of its other border states, TN’s numbers as percentage of students living in poverty are comparable to Tennessee’s–MO  has numbers only slightly lower, NC and GA slightly higher.  Virginia has significantly lower percentages of its rural students living in poverty (32.5%)  than Tennessee, and that number is the lowest in the southeast.  Tennessee is second, followed closely by North Carolina.



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