Differing levels of education, or perhaps more accurately, differing qualities or extents of education, vary greatly depending on region as well as many of the other factors I have examined throughout the course of my past blog posts, but one that corresponds largely to the aspect of region is that of urban, suburban, or rural status.

Urban regions tend to be hubs of sorts. Hubs of culture. Hubs of intellect. Hubs of people naturally, but also hubs of poverty and hubs of high living costs. How does this all play into education? Well essentially in every way, with more people and more diversity comes a larger importance on the schools and the need for high levels of education, and high quality levels of education in order to better prepare citizens as positively contributing community members.

And this need corresponds quite directly to the reality of the differences and disparities between urban and rural educational results.

The graph above reflects the differing levels of education attainment between populations in the urban area versus those from rural areas, as well as between the year 2000 and 2016. Both regions reflect a positive change over the last 16 years as more people are recieving their college degrees and there are less people without at least high school diplomas. But it is clear that the urban populus has a higher percentage of individuals with college degrees and fewer individuals with high school diplomas or less. This statistic alone favors the educational opportunities in urban areas but when attempting to see a more wholistic view of educations across regions more than just numbers need to be examined.

There is a general consensus that although the statistics may show better percentages in urban areas that does not necessarily mean that their educational systems are “better.” Rural high schools largely depend on public or religious schools and often lack college level academics, meaning that there may be more high school graduates but the move to a college level degree would be harder to achieve. Urban populations often rely on public and religious institutions as well but due to the large number of citizens who populate cities there is also a larger push towards private institutions, institutions which often require money. But then within urban settings colleges are more readily accessible meaning that the transition to higher education could be somewhat easier for those who are already living in urban environments. What’s more the culture surrounding the educational environments is very different, with less emphasis put on the importance of education often in rural communities.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 1/4 of public school students attend rural districts and although the quality of these schools is often higher with a beneficial ratio of students to teachers and students to resources statistics show that many students do not go farther than a high school level degree. This has been decreasing but specifically white males continue to fall short in this category and are being surpassed by their white female counterparts, according to the article, “Solving the Rural Education Gap.” Sadly it is also much more challenging for minority populations in rural communities to statistically perform well. It is no surprise then that areas in which the educational levels are low there are worse economic outcomes, the root of many issues within communities stem from poor levels or poor qualities of education.

The challenges that face the urban community are more geared in the direction of lack of resources and educators as well as motivating students and general cost that is associated with high quality educations. Public schools too often do not support the high populations that crowd them in urban communities, there is then a push towards religious or private institutions which segregate students, face their own issues with diversity, and are exclusively geared, not towards the students that need the most help, but towards those already succeeding, those who excel athletically or musically, or those who have parents to fit the bill.

According to an article entitled, “Most Urban Schools in the U.S. Get a Failing Grade,” from Futurity, an online newspaper, out of the 50 cities they collected data in, less than 15% of the students took the SAT/ACT! This statistic alone is staggering, but then partner that with shocking statistics about the issues of racism, such as the fact that black students are twice as likely to recieve out of school suspensions, and we should be appalled as Americans that our cities are failing at educating the young people of our country.

This issue surrounding our educational system and where/how frequently it falls short could be discussed forever and analyzed again and again. The true question and discussion needs to be about what is next? How can we solve this issue? Because first and foremost we need to be supporting our young people to create a better environment for the young people to come.