States aim to boost college graduation rates

States with large rural populations are launching strategies to encourage more kids to go to college by making it easier to earn college credit while they're still in high school.

This spring, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, signed into law a $1.3 million program that lets high school students who live in remote areas of the state take college-level courses as part of their high school studies through live videoconferencing. Wyoming offers a loan repayment plan for high school teachers in the state who take extra courses that make them eligible to teach college-level courses. Rural Colorado schools can receive $500 for each student who completes an Advanced Placement course and exam under a pilot project that will begin this fall.

The push reflects a broadening effort by state legislatures and governors to boost college completion rates. Studies show that students who take college-level courses while in high school are more likely to complete a college degree.

Most of the recent attention is designed to make more opportunities available to more rural students, who represent about 24% of all public school students, Education Department data show.

Half of low-income rural youth who graduated high school in 2012 entered college the following fall, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That was slightly lower than 53% for low-income minorities in urban areas, the data show.

The two populations face similar challenges: Both are less likely to have college-educated parents or to be as academically prepared as wealthier students or those who live in non-rural areas.

Rural students also have a geographic disadvantage: In many cases, the nearest college might be an hour or more away by car and even farther away in their hopes for the future.

"Oftentimes, urban students (are) able to see colleges around them, and rural students don't have that opportunity," says Jeff Charbonneau, a high school teacher in Zillah, Wash. Charbonneau, an adjunct lecturer for three colleges in the state, teaches college-level courses to his students. "It's about not only about raising standards in terms of what is being taught, it's also about raising awareness."

Efforts in rural communities in several states, including Texas, Oregon and Kentucky, borrow from a New York initiative that boosted high school graduation rates and college-going rates among poor students in Harlem.

In addition to helping link students with college classes, the programs, some of them federally funded, aim to create a "college-going culture," in some cases by introducing college concepts to fifth-graders and their parents.

Andrew Koricich, a professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, says the attention to building an educated workforce in rural areas is critical to the nation's future.

"These places are really important for the rest of the nation to thrive," he says. "We can't build power plants in Manhattan."