Building on recent research, ICF sought to explore how socioeconomic status and attachment to place influence rural youths’ educational and residential preferences across a wider geographic region. Our research questions included: What are rural high school students’ educational and residential plans? And what factors influence rural youths’ plans for adulthood?
This white paper summarizes ICF’s findings using the National Center for Education Statistics’ Common Core of Data. First we identified districts with locale codes of 41 (rural fringe), 42 (rural distant), and 43 (rural remote) in eight states: Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Because we also examined the experiences of rural English Language Learners (ELL), we then selected and identified rural districts with ELL growth rates of 100 percent or higher between 2000–2001 and 2007–2008. Finally, we identified high schools within selected districts, for a total of 612 high schools.
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