Arts Education in Rural Communities
California County Superintendents Arts Initiative believes in the power of arts education to support all students and is continuously working to increase access in rural communities.
While providing arts education in rural communities can come with economic, geographic, and staffing challenges, rural educators and leaders in these areas often work creatively to allocate resources and collaborate with their communities to ensure that students may access the minimum expectation in California Education Code Sections 51210 and 51220 which states that all students in grades 1 to 6 “shall receive instruction” and all students in grades 7-12 “shall have access to courses” in visual and performing arts.
Recommendations for Rural Schools and Districts
The following recommendations and resources are based on promising practices outlined in Leveraging Change: Increasing Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas and guidance in Chapter 9 of the California Arts Education Framework. Read more about how the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics define rural below under What is Rural.
- Use resources creatively to build sustainable funding for arts education and ensure equitable access for all to standards-aligned courses in all five arts disciplines.
- Hire qualified arts educators and teaching artists.
- Provide professional learning in arts standards implementation and arts integration to retain teachers and build their confidence.
- Create rural networks and connect with education partners who can collaborate to support arts education and build on rural assets.
- Develop a Strategic Arts Education Plan to make effective use of data and define a regional approach, build on rural assets, engage in placemaking strategies to support the arts sector, and develop arts-friendly strategies to drive change.
Contact us if you have questions about supporting rural arts education or if you would like us to connect you to resources that may be helpful in your region.
Rural Arts Education Video Spotlights
Building and Maintaining Standards Based Arts Education Programs in Rural Schools
Features strategies undertaken by two small and rural school districts to build and maintain standards-based arts education programs.
Artscapes Video Series
A series of videos featuring models of visual and performing arts education in rural Northern California counties. Spotlights include:
Student Voices: What Arts Education Means to Me
Students from rural schools in California speak about why arts education is important to them.
Del Norte County Music Educators
Features the importance of the music educators in Del Norte County schools.
Arts Education Brings Hope to Students in Butte County Schools
A teaching artist reflects on the power of arts education to give students hope.
El Dorado High School Theatre Program Transforms Students
A theatre teacher reflects on the power of theatre to transform students.
Resources for Rural School Leaders
- Creativity and Collaboration in Rural Communities is a free professional learning module with resources that can be downloaded and customized for professional learning.
- Leveraging Change: Increasing Access to Arts Education in Rural Areas is a report which summarizes research and best practices to guide strategic planning.
- The National Rural Education Association’s report Why Rural Matters provides additional context for discussion about rural education.
What is Rural?
We tend to think of sparsely populated and remote places as being “rural” and the word frequently evokes images of farmland, mountain communities, or small towns. While these characteristics are often true of rural areas, the line between urban and rural can be a bit blurred. When considering the rurality of a location, a clear definition based on both population statistics and geography is necessary. Two questions to consider when thinking about rural spaces – At what population density is a location considered to be urban? What is the distance between the closest urban area or suburb and the rural community?
Defining Rural
Two of the most commonly used rural definitions come from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The definitions used by these agencies are connected, but provide different measures of rurality. In simple terms, the Census definition of rural relates to the population density in a given area and the NCES classification of rural relates to the proximity of a school or district to an urban area (as defined by the Census).
Census Definitions of Urban and Rural
To understand the Census Bureau’s definition of rural, it is important to first understand their definition of urban. The Census Bureau divides urban areas into two geographical types:
- “Urbanized Areas” have a population of 50,000 or more.
- “Urban Clusters” have a population between 2,500 and 50,000.
From there, the Census Bureau defines rural as any population, housing, or territory not in an urban area. Essentially, any area with a population of less than 2,500 is considered rural by the Census definition. You can view the 2020 Census interactive map here.
NCES Classifications
A division of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports on educational to help facilitate educational and policy decision making. NCES uses a classification system based on geographic location to categorize every school in the country.
The NCES classification system has four major locale categories—city, suburban, town, and rural—each of which is subdivided into three subcategories. Cities and suburbs are subdivided into the categories small, midsize, or large; towns and rural areas are subdivided by their proximity to an urbanized area into the categories fringe, distant, or remote.
Although NCES has a rural classification, it is important to also consider towns when thinking about rurality. The secondary categories of fringe, distant, or remote provide a measure of proximity to more populated areas. A school district might be classified as “town” because it sits in place with more than 2,500 residents, but it could also be remote and hours away from universities, large retail complexes, or capital cities. You can view the interactive NCES Locale Lookup Map here.
