Improving Rural Educational Attainment

More often than not, policymakers focus on school-based strategies to spur improvements in the educational progress of students. The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, which demands greater school accountability for student performance, is a case in point. Yet, what happens in the classroom is only part of the story.In fact, as Lionel J. Beaulieu, Glenn D. Israel and Ronald C. Wimberley show in their chapter in "Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century", family characteristics have from 5 to 10 times as much impact as school characteristics on reading and math scores of rural U.S. eighth graders.In addition, community characteristics have as much impact as school characteristics on test scores, although both community and chool characteristics tend to be more important in geographically isolated rural areas than those adjacent to metropolitan areas. Clearly, helping rural youth succeed academically is the collective responsibility of families, schools, and communities.This issue brief is a joint product of the Rural Sociological Society and the National Coalition for Rural Entrepreneurship, a collaboration of four Regional Rural Development Centers: The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, the Southern Rural Development Center, the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and the Western Rural Development Center. Funding was also made available from the Ford Foundation.This brief is part of a policy brief series by the Rural Sociological Society and the Regional Rural Development Centers that stresses the importance of community collective action and developing the capacity of people and organizations to meet the community's needsThe Rural Sociological Society and the Regional Rural Development Centers creates new Public Policy Issue Brief series based on its recent book, "Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century".The briefs synthesize the context and substance of important issues raised in the book and address alternative policy options, with the goal of bringing important research to the policy community

AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN PEOPLE AND PLACES: ENDING THE LEGACY OF POVERTY IN THE RURAL SOUTH

This study focuses on the longstanding impoverishment of the rural South and three of its subregions-Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and the Black Belt. The poor quality of life in rural Appalachia and along the Mississippi Delta has been publically acknowledged by programs and commissions for improving conditions. However, the more comprehensive Black Belt subregion that links parts of Southern Appalachia and the Southern Delta has not received such regional policy attention. While the South as a whole is more rural and impoverished than other U.S. regions, this is largely due to the poor conditions in the Black Belt. In addition to region and rurality, a third feature of the pattern is race. It is in the Black Belt that the South's poor socioeconomic conditions are most concentrated. Policy and program attention are needed for regional solutions that take rurality and race into account along with demographic and other subregional characteristics.Appalachia, Black Belt, Mississippi Delta, policy, poverty, quality of life, rural, South, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Dimensions of Farm Commodity Production: Horses, Strawberries, and Why

To better understand the social context of food and fiber production, more and more researchers are beginning to study the production of agricultural commodities as independent, dependent, and intervening variables. Typically, these commodity variables are measured in terms of separate crop or livestock products or by ad hoc indexes that summarize several commodities. To assess and better understand the spectrum of farm commodities examined in such research, this study uses North Carolina data from the U.S. Census of Agriculture to factor analyze various indicators of crop and livestock production and to determine any underlying, empirical dimensions. Explanations of the empirical combinations involve ecological relationships, biotechnical and geographic patterns, and agricultural coincidence. These dimensions offer a basis for improved measurement and indexing of commodity production as well as a basis for analyzing related variables such as siting agribusinesses and services, or studying impacts on social well-being in farm areas

The Regionalization of Poverty: Assistance for the Black Belt South?

Rural poverty is largely regional. The nation\u27s primary region of rural poverty is the Black Belt South that stretches through 11 states from Virginia to Texas. In this area, like in other rural expanses of the United States, urban places typically fall within state lines while rural areas run across state lines and create multistate regions of rural poverty. The federal government provides block grants to address many of the public assistance needs of state populations. State-level block grants may be appropriate for serving urban areas within states, but they do not address regional-level poverty and welfare requirements across multistate rural regions. Regional organization is required to address public assistance in rural regions and to equitably coordinate the major effort necessary to turn the course of poverty in the Black Belt South

A Federal Commission for the Black Belt South

Recent legislation by the U.S. Congress authorized a federal regional commission for the Black Belt South. Three southern social scientists first proposed the commission at Tuskegee University’s Professional Agricultural Workers Conference in 1990. Following congressional seminars on the Black Belt by Ronald Wimberley and Libby Morris, the first legislation for the commission was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. After a succession of 12 U.S. House and Senate Bills, Congress finally authorized “the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission” in 2008 with support by various, and sometimes competing, groups. This paper traces and updates the chronology of sociological research, university initiatives, grassroots support, and policy efforts involved in establishing the Commission. Suggestions are offered for improving the Commission and the types of programs the Commission may use to improve the historic and contemporary poor quality of life in the Southern Black Belt

Measuring Five Dimensions of Religiosity Across Adolescence

This paper theorizes and tests a latent variable model of adolescent religiosity in which five dimensions of religiosity are interrelated: religious beliefs, religious exclusivity, external religiosity, private practice, and religious salience. Research often theorizes overlapping and independent influences of single items or dimensions of religiosity on outcomes such as adolescent sexual behavior, but rarely operationalizes the dimensions in a measurement model accounting for their associations with each other and across time. We use longitudinal structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent variables to analyze data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion. We test our hypothesized measurement model as compared to four alternate measurement models and find that our proposed model maintains superior fit. We then discuss the associations between the five dimensions of religiosity we measure and how these change over time. Our findings suggest how future research might better operationalize multiple dimensions of religiosity in studies of the influence of religion in adolescence

U.S. Poverty in Space and Time: Its Persistence in the South

Poverty in the United States is not randomly distributed across the country in an even or fairly even pattern. As mapped by the authors, places with the worst poverty levels tend to cluster together in areas of persistent poverty. The authors point out that welfare reforms, whether they work or not, will have important implications for the South and Appalachia

A FEDERAL COMMISSION FOR THE BLACK BELT SOUTH

Recent legislation by the U.S. Congress authorized a federal regional commission for the Black Belt South. Three southern social scientists first proposed the commission at Tuskegee University’s Professional Agricultural Workers Conference in 1990. Following congressional seminars on the Black Belt by Ronald Wimberley and Libby Morris, the first legislation for the commission was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. After a succession of 12 U.S. House and Senate Bills, Congress finally authorized “the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission” in 2008 with support by various, and sometimes competing, groups. This paper traces and updates the chronology of sociological research, university initiatives, grassroots support, and policy efforts involved in establishing the Commission. Suggestions are offered for improving the Commission and the types of programs the Commission may use to improve the historic and contemporary poor quality of life in the Southern Black Belt