Presentation Title
Place and Education: Are Access and Outcomes Equitable Across Geographic Locales?
Abstract
For as long as rural populations have been declining, rural schools have been at the center of a debate on how best to educate in light of increasing costs. While prior research indicates significant socioeconomic benefits to home communities and improved educational outcomes for students of small schools, policies that advance rural school consolidation continue to be dominated by economic considerations and fail to account for the non-budgetary benefits of small and/or rural schools. In Vermont, Acts 60, 77 and 46 have reshaped the way public school are paid for, where they exist and how curriculum is delivered. This research proposes a spatial equality framework and use of data publicly available from the Vermont Agency of Education, Vermont Agency of Human Services and US Census Bureau to addresses the questions: do rural schools prepare students to remain in and succeed in rural communities, are low income communities disproportionality affected by school consolidation, and is geography alone predictive of student outcomes?
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Daniel Tobin
Secondary Mentor Name
Travis Reynolds
Status
Graduate
Student College
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Program/Major
Community Development and Applied Economics
Primary Research Category
Social Sciences
Place and Education: Are Access and Outcomes Equitable Across Geographic Locales?
For as long as rural populations have been declining, rural schools have been at the center of a debate on how best to educate in light of increasing costs. While prior research indicates significant socioeconomic benefits to home communities and improved educational outcomes for students of small schools, policies that advance rural school consolidation continue to be dominated by economic considerations and fail to account for the non-budgetary benefits of small and/or rural schools. In Vermont, Acts 60, 77 and 46 have reshaped the way public school are paid for, where they exist and how curriculum is delivered. This research proposes a spatial equality framework and use of data publicly available from the Vermont Agency of Education, Vermont Agency of Human Services and US Census Bureau to addresses the questions: do rural schools prepare students to remain in and succeed in rural communities, are low income communities disproportionality affected by school consolidation, and is geography alone predictive of student outcomes?