We use nearly 430 million standardized test scores, including test scores from more than 6,500 rural school districts, to describe educational opportunity in rural America. Although we find modest differences in outcomes between rural and nonrural students overall, these disparities are larger for specific socioeconomic, racial-ethnic, and…

The U.S. is in the midst of an effort to intensify middle school mathematics curricula by enrolling more 8th graders in Algebra. California is at the forefront of this effort, and in 2008 the state moved to make Algebra the accountability benchmark test for 8th grade mathematics. This paper takes advantage of this unevenly-implemented policy to…