This policy brief summarizes and critiques the findings of the US Department of Education's Section 5005 Report on Rural Education. In September of 2018, the Department of Education released the "Section 5005 Report on Rural Education: Final Report." The report was written in response to a provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2016 (ESSA) (P.L. 114-95) that called for the US Department of Education to critically examine its policies and procedures related to rural education. The report provides a brief synopsis of the state of rural education in the US. Citing National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, the report states that 28% of the nation's schools and 19% of students are rural. In general, the report states, rural schools are doing about as well as schools in urban and suburban locales, with comparable National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores and graduation rates, although with significantly fewer students who go on to complete post-secondary education. For the most part, the report compares the challenges facing rural schools to those of urban schools, such as access to health care, poverty, teacher shortages, acknowledging that these are issues that are exacerbated by isolation, remoteness, and the small size of many rural districts. [For the final report, see ED597666.]