Are rural schools inferior to urban schools? A multilevel analysis of school accountability trends in Kentucky

Recent research does not provide clear evidence that rural schools are inferior to urban schools. For example, one prominent study finds that students in rural schools perform less well than their urban counterparts, but other studies using the same national data set have reached divergent conclusions. The present study reassesses the issue using a time series approach to school performance. We investigate the effects of location on school-level performance and improvement indicators between 1999 and 2003 using a sample of 1,111 Kentucky public schools nested in 170 school districts. Repeated-observations HLM analysis reveals that rural schools achieve mean annual gains in performance that equal or better their urban counterparts. Furthermore, schools in some nonmetro locations perform on par with metro schools in between-school baseline score comparisons. A simple answer to the question "Are rural schools inferior?" is not feasible, however, since standards for assessing school quality are changing as a consequence of education reform initiatives at the state and national levels.