The landscape of recovery in rural America is “a story of small victories and people who won’t give up on their neighbors.”
Seven Community Colleges Selected for National Program to Improve Student Experience
The small community of Spindale in western North Carolina and the surrounding area was once known for its textile mills, offering generations of families a way to create a solid life for more than 100 years. Now, however, the area is home to more medium-sized companies in industries like healthcare and small business ventures, said […]
Unlicensed Teachers Now Dominate New Teacher Hires in Rural Texas Schools
This story was originally published by the Conversation. The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 eliminated the federal requirement that teachers be highly qualified to teach. This regulatory freedom, combined with a shortage of trained and qualified teachers, has led some states to allow unqualified people to teach children. Texas used this freedom to adopt […]
Review: ‘Huckleberry Finn’ Retelling Wrestles With Writing, and Righting, Historical Wrongs
“If one knows hell as home,” Percival Everett’s Jim asks, “Is returning to hell a homecoming?” Everett’s novel James, a retelling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, places Jim at the middle of the narrative, just as it tears the story apart from the center. In the original, Jim is a runaway slave and erstwhile companion […]
Q&A: Community Organizing in Rural South Texas
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week. […]
Center for Rural Affairs Receives $62 Million Federal Grant to Provide Solar Power to Lower-Income Nebraskans
A federal grant of $62 million to the nonprofit Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska, will help build residential solar-power installations for Nebraska families who usually can’t afford the cost-saving systems, the center’s director said. The Center for Rural Affairs is one of 60 grantees across the country that will participate in the Solar […]
One Path to Easing the Rural Counselor Shortage
Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox. A senior at rural Anson High School in west-central Texas, Eddie Miller […]
Rural Jails Turn to Community Health Workers To Help the Newly Released Succeed
This story was originally published by KFF Health News. Garrett Clark estimates he has spent about six years in the Sanpete County Jail, a plain concrete building perched on a dusty hill just outside Manti, Utah, the small, rural town where he grew up. He blames his addiction. He started using in middle school, and […]
Republicans Double Down on School Vouchers by Taking Fight to Rural Members of Their Own Party
State Republican leaders are cracking down on rural members of their own party who oppose universal school vouchers, which allow families to take a portion of their state’s education funding away from public schools to pay for their child’s private education. Rural state legislators have been more likely to oppose school voucher laws because they […]
New Proposals Inch Farm Bill Toward Finish Line
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week. Nothing exemplifies how slow bureaucracy can be better than the fraught task of passing a new farm bill, a proposed […]
Analysis: The Myth of Rural Voters’ Power in the House of Representatives
A Daily Yonder analysis of Census data shows that rural Americans don’t have outsized voting power in the U.S. House of Representatives, despite an oft-repeated assertion that congressional apportionment gives rural voters undue influence. If you have even a passing familiarity with political news this election year, you know that the rural voter has been […]