Academic Growth in Rural Schools: A Special Edition of PRiME’s Growth Reports

Andrew M. Camp, Ph.D., Courtney Vahle, Ed.D., Collin Hitt, Ph.D., and Lucas Koch

When we talk about how students are doing in subjects like reading and math, it’s more helpful to look at how much they grow over time rather than just where they stand at one moment. This report continues the PRiME Center’s efforts to highlight Missouri’s excellent schools by examining student growth in the state's most rural schools over the last three years.

Key Points

• In terms of student growth, some of the highest performing schools in Missouri are in rural communities. We highlight and celebrate the rural schools that are doing an outstanding job promoting student learning, many of which would not be recognized if we looked at raw scale scores by themselves.

• Single point-in-time measures of student achievement are biased against schools that enroll high percentages of low-income students. This is true in rural schools. However, the relationship between economic circumstances and school outcomes disappears when looking at growth. Many of the highest growth schools in rural Missouri serve high percentages of low-income students. 

• The Missouri Growth Model is the best growth model in the country. It is the most accurate measure of school impacts on student achievement—and the fairest to schools that enroll high percentages of low-income students.  

• Rural schools often face unique challenges such as geographic isolation, difficulty in retaining staff, financial strain due to higher transportation and fixed costs, and a lack of external economic and community resources. These schools are sometimes overlooked when we think about schools that are doing an exceptional job helping students learn.

• Traditional measures of “rural” are quite broad and do not fit the Missouri context. Instead, we use a comprehensive measure of rurality to examine student growth in the state’s most rural schools.
  

  Camp, A., Vahle, C., Hitt, C., and Koch, L. (2025). Academic Growth in Rural Schools: A Special Edition of PRiME’s Growth Reports. Policy Research in Missouri Education, 7(18). Saint Louis University. www.primecenter.org/growth-reports-database/rural-growth