African American Education in Rural Communities in the Deep South “MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE” Sheneka M. Williams DECEMBER 2017 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Draft: Do not cite without permission from the authors When compared to urban education, rural education has received little attention in the research literature.1 Moreover, much rural education research has been approached from a deficit perspective and has mostly examined the lives of White students living in rural America.2 Rural America, however, is not a monolithic place. In fact, rural America, which comprises approximately 51 million nonmetropolitan residents, spans from Native American communities in the West to small fishing villages in New England.3 Rural America also encompasses Midwestern farm towns with burgeoning Latino populations and African American communities in the Deep South.4 Thus, rural America is vast, and diversity is increasing in the majority White spaces.5 Although rural America is diversifying in terms of population, it is not necessarily diversifying in terms of wealth distribution.6 According to the US Census Bureau’s annual report, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013, the official poverty rate in rural areas (persons living outside of metropolitan areas) was 16.1%, more than 1.5 percentage points higher than the national level. The poverty rate outside metro areas was down from 17.7% in 2012.7 The poverty rate is 30% greater in areas in which most Latino and African American populations reside, which sheds light on the income inequalities that affect all aspects of the lives of disadvantaged students. Thus, low-skill and low-paying jobs in rural areas, combined with lower educational attainment levels, are substantial factors in the rural income divergence,8 and if left unaddressed, will widen opportunity gaps between students.9 One cannot point to the rural income gap without focusing on the persistent education gap that exists in rural America.10 Rural schools make up nearly one-third of the nation’s schools and educate approximately one fifth of the nation’s students.11 Yet, there is a paucity of research that examines the schooling experiences and educational opportunity afforded to rural students.12 1 Draft: Do not cite without permission from the authors Further, even less research focuses specifically on the schooling of African American students in the rural South.13 Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to fill this gap by examining the educational opportunities afforded to African Americans who live in the rural South. It is important to examine the state of education for this population because they have been overlooked in policy discussions. More importantly, this research will add to the extant literature concerning rural education, thus providing policy makers with recommendations for how to narrow both the rural education gap and the rural income gap between Whites and African Americans living in the rural South. Although the number of African American students who live in the rural South is relatively low when compared to the national school population, there is a significant number of African Americans who live in the South, in general. Therefore, it is important to understand and elucidate the educational and professional realities of students who reside in the rural South. Three Eras of African American Education in the Rural South Most scholars agree that educational opportunity considers inputs and outputs as related to students’ schooling experiences.14 Inputs, for example, refer to teacher quality, curricular options, and student assignment patterns, whereas outputs refer to college attendance and job attainment by recent graduates. James Coleman posited, “Education is a means to an end, and equal opportunity refers to later in life rather than the educational process itself.”15 One reason the debate concerning equal educational opportunity continues is that “equal educational opportunity” cannot be standardized, and the phrase varies depending on how inputs are accessed by student populations. For example, students of a higher socio-economic status (SES) have access to an array of educational opportunities relative to low SES counterparts.16 That same claim manifests along racial lines. Thus, when one considers the intersection of being African 2 Draft: Do not cite without permission from the authors American and poor, the threat of not receiving equal educational opportunity widens. Moreover, residing in the rural South, being African American, and living in poverty furthers the distance to equal educational opportunity. African Americans who live in the rural South often have a direct lineage to former slaves and a denial of public education. Thus, the chapter highlights three eras that have shaped educational opportunities for African American students in the rural South: post-Reconstruction (1865–1954); post-Brown (1954–1980); and post-desegregation (1980– present).17 The post-Reconstruction era was a time when African Americans were gaining freedom and ultimately citizenship in America. It was also a time during which the burgeoning movement for public education was taking place. Moreover, education sustained the population of freed Blacks, as their “freedom,” particularly in the South, was not immediate. Southern laws further oppressed African Americans from participating in the government; thus, Black education developed in the context of political and economic oppression.18 Such political and economic oppression gave rise to a desire to become literate. Former slaves learned from other former slaves that becoming literate gave them a sense of pride and respect, and also set a path for opportunity. Although some Northerners and a few Southern Whites assisted, W. E. B. DuBois reminds us that “Public education for all at public expense was, in the South, a Negro idea,” which is important to bear in mind considering the historical landscape of educations for Blacks, especially in the South.19 Just as free Blacks fought for the right to be educated after slavery, the fight continued, yet in a different way after the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education. This case is significant in that it legally ended de jure segregation20 in public schools in the US.21 Although the Court handed down the decision in 1954, many districts in the US South did not desegregate 3 Draft: Do not cite without permission from the authors until 20 years later. The long-standing segregation in US schools, particularly in the South, emanated from segregation in public places. Yet, the case was about more than race, as the case’s premise, which focused on the inferiority of Blacks, was also about segregation of resources. The Court ruled that “separate was inherently unequal,” though many schools in the South continued remained segregated until the early 1970s. The post-desegregation era is most often characterized by the peak moment in the late 1980s, when the Black-White achievement gap was most narrow, and it is often characterized by evidence of re-segregation of Southern schools shortly thereafter.22 These two pivotal moments in the post-desegregation era led education researchers to further engage in debates and conduct studies that examined factors related to student achievement outcomes. Moreover, scholars began to examine issues of race, social class, teacher quality, parent engagement, etc. to determine why the achievement gap widened and why re-segregation occurred. While numerous studies have informed extant literature concerning educational opportunity for African American students in urban contexts, very few studies have examined African American students in the rural South. Moreover, a dearth of research has been conducted in rural contexts as compared to research conducted in urban and suburban settings. Between 1991 and 2003, fewer than 500 articles were published on rural education.23 This number has increased with the advent of journals such as the Journal of Research in Rural Education. Thus, the literature and research presented in this chapter will further enhance rural education literature. This chapter is undergirded by the theoretical framework of geography of opportunity, as place plays an important role in understanding the context in which this examination of rural education occurs. More importantly, this research examines the Deep South and Black students, a topic that is almost void in any education literature. 4 Draft: Do not cite without permission from the authors Geography of Opportunity and Rural Education According to the US Census Bureau, rural spaces are those that are neither urbanized areas (consisting of 50,000 people or more) nor urbanized clusters (consisting of at least 2,500 people).24 Despite the effects that many researchers associate with place, Galster and Killen contend that geography is not typically included in the definition of “equal educational opportunity,” and further argue that inequalities based on geographic location can affect individual opportunities.25 The geographic distribution of opportunity is particularly important for families and children because it impacts children’s schooling experiences. Schools in underserved communities—which are often racially and spatially isolated from opportunities— struggle to meet the needs of students from low-income neighborhoods.26 Geography of opportunity has often been used in the social sciences to analyze the structural and individual aspects of opportunity.27 Within the past decade, it has been applied in