Abstract
This chapter examines the impact of successful university-school partnerships on the growth and achievement of children whose families live in rural poverty in Appalachia. It describes two different university-school initiatives carried out in rural counties in East Tennessee. Part one of the chapter details the process of building a county-wide literacy team following a needs assessment by university faculty and with ongoing university support; part two details the implementation of family math and stem nights across rural counties in the region.
TopIntroduction
Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics reinforce the correlation between poverty and educational failure:
Family risk factors include coming from a low-income family or single-parent household, not having a parent who completed high school, and living in a household where the primary language is not English. Young children vary in their academic skills at kindergarten entry, with those who have one or more family risk factors tending to score lower in reading and mathematics in kindergarten and over the first few years of elementary school compared to their peers with fewer or no risk factors. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017, para. 1)
Children beginning school with such disadvantages must have access to interventions that are evaluated as scientifically research-based and have a history of successful implementation and effectiveness.
Children and families living in rural poverty face unique challenges predicated on place. In a statewide analysis of rural schools, the Tennessee Educational Equity Coalition (2019) found that roughly one in three Tennesseans attends a rural school. That percentage includes nearly 300,000 students. While rural schools typically serve smaller numbers of students, smaller school sizes may also lead to funding challenges or obstacles to serving specific student groups. The coalition asserts that, “As with urban education, rural school systems are subject to the strengths and challenges of their communities, including issues of public health and geographic isolation” (p. 3).
The coalition’s report further highlights widespread hospital closures, limited access to high-speed internet, the epidemic of opioid addiction, discrepancies in median household income (rural district incomes are lowest) and distance from public postsecondary institutions (rural communities may be more than twice as far from colleges or universities as urban communities). In one snapshot, a rural school in the state served one-quarter the number of English language learners (ELs) of its urban counterpart, but more than triple the number of its suburban one.
University-school partnerships between post-secondary institutions and K-12 school districts may be one intervention that helps children in rural poverty grow and achieve. Research suggests that university-school partnerships benefit not only students (Ujifusa, 2019), but also pre-service teachers (Jones et al., 2016; Quesenberry, Hamann, Sanden, Bates, & Hartle, 2018). This chapter examines the effects of two university-school partnerships: one focused on building teacher capacity for literacy instruction in a rural context and one designed to further preservice teachers’ understandings of rural poverty’s influence on student learning.
In Part One of this chapter, the authors examine a university-school partnership at their institution centered around professional development in elementary literacy instruction for in-service teachers in a neighboring rural county. In Part Two, the authors provide insight into a partnership between their university and multiple rural K-12 districts to coordinate Family Math and STEM Nights as an element of pre-service teacher preparation.
The research and partnerships discussed in both parts of this chapter have taken place in counties surrounding the authors’ research and teaching university. The university’s position in an urban setting surrounded by rural counties and communities offers a unique opportunity to examine the potential of university-school partnerships on rural communities, as well as on the university faculty and students who participate in them.
Key Terms in this Chapter
University-School Partnership: A collaboration between a university and a PK-12 school or district to achieve shared pedagogical goals.
Pedagogy: The theory and practice of learning and how both are influenced by interactions among teachers, students, and their learning environments.
Pre-Service Teachers: Undergraduate or graduate students enrolled in a teacher education program. Training often includes a semester- or year-long internship as a student teacher working under the guidance of a mentor in a K-12 classroom.
Title I: Federal funds allocated for educating students living in poverty who may be behind academically, especially in reading and math.
Appalachia: A cultural region that surrounds the Appalachian Mountains. Forty-two percent of Appalachia’s population is rural, more than double the national percentage.
STEM: An acronym introduced by the National Science Foundation at the turn of the 21 st century to delineate and group science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.
Literacy: The application of a matrix of skills (e.g., decoding, fluency, and comprehension) in reading and writing.
Capacity: The potential aptitude a person or group holds in a given area.