Source: The Atlantic
In Tennessee’s Fentress County, the York Agricultural Institute is using education as a means to reinvigorate a rural region where opportunity is limited and poverty generational. In doing so, it combines vocational training and community programs with the traditional aspects of a high school experience.
According to the Atlantic, “…rural schools make up more than half of the nation’s operating school districts” and are equally as plagued by issues of funding, poverty, and malnutrition, as poverty-stricken urban schools. Furthermore, students in rural districts are less likely to attend college than their urban and suburban counterparts, especially if their hometowns face failing industry and a stagnant economy–like those in Fentress County.
Although York Institute students only achieve average to slightly above average scores on Tennessee standardized tests, they still outperform other nearby rural high schools, evidence that the York Institute may be a beacon of hope, and educational role model, for other impoverished rural communities.
Read full story at: The Atlantic