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Nearly one in five students in the U.S. — about 9.3 million — attend a rural school, and many districts have high rates of poverty and student mobility. According to the recently released ninth edition of ‘Why Rural Matters’, many of these rural districts could face an education ‘emergency.’ Read all about the “Why Rural Matters” report, diversifying your classroom library, the 2020 census, and more in this week’s EdNews Round Up.

As part of their strategy to improve literacy, many Tennessee educators are turning to online literacy programs to supplement their classroom instruction. Like traditional literacy instruction, online programs are designed to help students learn to read by encouraging them to take an active and engaged role in their learning, and they offer a slew of additional benefits to educators, such as the ability to monitor progress with student data reporting, the ability to assign work automatically, and the ability to offer students more personalized literacy instruction. If you’re a Tennessee educator wondering if an online literacy program could be the right fit for your classroom, take a look at a few common questions we answered to help you out.

In addition to traditional school issues, rural communities tend to face a unique set of challenges when it comes to day to day learning. Teacher shortages, long commutes, sparse internet access, and even transitioning to higher education at a larger school’s setting are just some of the things students from rural communities tackle every day. In this week’s edition of the EdNews Round Up, explore topics centered around issues faced by rural communities, educators, and students.