Rural Matters

We wanted to know more about the rural school districts that serve high poverty communities so first we statistically rounded up the 7604 districts nationwide that have over half their students in a school that is physically located in a rural community. Then we identified the 800 – about 10 percent -- that have the highest rate of eligibility for the federal Title I program. That is the program providing funds for disadvantaged students. We’ll call these 800 high-poverty rural districts the "rural 800."

Continue reading to find out more about these districts and to see a chart of the 16 states where most Rural 800 districts are located.

Continue reading "The "Rural 800" Districts" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The legislature will open in April. Teacher pay issues are likely to be on the agenda, with the Louisiana Education Association (LEA) seeking a $3000 across the board raise for certificated personnel and a raise for Education Support Professions (primarily teachers’ assistants) that would be the greater of either a $3,000 raise or a raise that brings the salary above the poverty level. The LEA also wants to address the teacher retirement system and to remove language from the funding formula that allows districts to deny raises if the average teacher salary is above the average salary of states served by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). Average salaries in most poor rural districts are considerably below those of wealthier districts in Louisiana and the SREB average, and so the provision would not apply to them, but it would likely increase the salary gap between high and low-wealth districts and the competitive recruiting and retention disadvantage of the low-wealth districts.

Posted by Robin Lambert at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)