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S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31. Published in final edited form as: S D Med. 2015 May ; 68(5): 197–199.
Science Achievement in Secondary School Students Across Rural and Urban South Dakota Locales Teresa Maas, MSIV, University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine Michael Amolins, EdD, and Advanced Curriculum Coordinator, Harrisburg School District
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Peter Vitiello, PhD [Associate Scientist, Sanford Health; Assistant Professor] Department of Pediatrics, University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine
Abstract While many efforts have been made at the graduate level to train physicians for rural South Dakota, there has been little work to identify how geographic locale affects the science achievement of high school students. This study utilized the urban-central locale code system to analyze South Dakota high school student ACT science scores. Rural student achievement was significantly lower than students from city and town locales. By analyzing such correlations, unique strategies can be developed to improve secondary rural science education and increase the number of students pursuing careers in rural medicine.
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Introduction Sanford School of Medicine of The University of South Dakota (SSOM) is top-rated in the nation for graduates who ultimately practice in a rural area.1 Retention is high with 36 percent of SSOM graduates practicing in South Dakota 15 years after medical school. This increases to 77 percent for those who also completed residency in South Dakota.1 Still, there is a shortage of primary health care providers for rural South Dakota. Fifty-nine of the state’s 66 counties remain federally designated, all or in part, as a health professional shortage area.2
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Many recent changes have been made to the SSOM curriculum. These transitions position students to learn the basic sciences using a condensed model focusing on system blocks, while the longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) for third-year students was expanded from the Yankton campus to Sioux Falls and Rapid City. In addition, last summer marked the start of the Frontier and Rural Medicine (FARM) track where selected students spend nine months of their clinical training in rural communities. Over the last three years, the entering class has expanded from 52 to 60 students, with an additional 44 students expected over the next four years. While all of these changes will likely increase the number of rural physicians practicing in the state, one question lingers: can more be done? Perhaps one of the best methods to train excellent rural South Dakota physicians is to improve science education for high school students in rural South Dakota communities.
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A Student Perspective
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Teresa Maas, a fourth-year medical student at SSOM, believes that high school science education plays a large role in students’ medical school admission. This philosophy stems from her three years of experience as a high school life science teacher in central Pennsylvania. When she began teaching advanced placement environmental science and biology, she was amazed at her students’ competency level. “I was teaching gel electrophoresis and metabolic reactions to high school juniors. I hadn’t studied these topics myself until my sophomore year of college.” Teresa believed that the expectation gap between her students and her own experience growing up in Douglas County could be reflective of time, state standards, and private vs. public education. Upon enrolling in medical school, she began considering rural locale disparities in science education. She elected to participate in the Scholarship Pathways Program at SSOM and began working with Peter Vitiello, PhD, and developed several strategies to determine if educational gaps between rural and urban high school communities exist.
Locale Correlation to ACT Scores
Author Manuscript
As there are many different definitions of rural, it was important to find one that could apply to school communities and show the complex continuum from rural to urban. In 2006, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) created the urban-centric locale code system.3 First, schools are designated according to the population of the territory in which the district lies (city, suburban, town, and rural) followed by a gradation of size and proximity. Currently, there are 151 school districts operating 158 public high schools in South Dakota. A color-coordinated district map depicting NCES locale distinctions was generated by accessing the Common Core of Data Public School Locale Code Files (Figure 1).3 It is important to note that while less than 5 percent of public schools are in a city locale, 23 percent of the student population can be found within those districts. The ACT is the most commonly used college entrance exam in the Midwest. Each exam is given a composite score, as well as scores in each of four subject areas: science, math, English, and reading. Because every South Dakota public high school is required to report the ACT scores of their students, these public data were collected from the South Dakota Department of Education and organized by school locale code to assess student achievement. Science ACT scores from 2008–2011 were analyzed using the weighted mean according to student school populations. A significant decrease in science ACT scores was found in rural designations (Figure 2).
Author Manuscript
Rural Student Representation at SSOM-USD While standardized test scores serve as a quantitative marker for student success in the classroom, they do not encompass a student’s personal or academic growth and may not predict future student achievement in postsecondary or graduate courses. However, a similar locale discrepancy exists in the student representation at SSOM. During the admission process, SSOM also looks at the city or town where the student graduated from high school. For the class admitted in the fall of 2013, 32 percent were from rural towns defined by less than 10,000 people.4 Similar trends exist using the NCES definition with only 28 percent S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31.
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rural student representation for the 2014–2017 graduating classes even though secondary students from rural schools comprise 40 percent of the South Dakota student population (Figure 3). This means that the SSOM class is represented by 29 percent fewer students from rural locales when compared to the distribution of high school students (all analyses excluded SSOM out-of-state students). During these same years, 43 percent of SSOM graduated from a high school in a city locale, although these locales only graduated 30 percent of the state’s high school seniors.
Conclusion
Author Manuscript
Over the coming years, the demand for excellent physicians in rural South Dakota is expected to steadily increase. In order to meet this demand, weaknesses in science education need to be addressed before the post-graduate level. What would be the impact of a 5.4 percent increase in rural student science achievement? We found a direct correlation between ACT scores and student grade point average (GPA) in a college general biology course at Augustana College (n=1,568; r2 = 0.98). For a student receiving an ACT score of 25, a 5.4 percent improvement would translate to nearly a 0.3 point increase in final GPA with a change in letter grade from B- to B. Such a change in GPA may reduce student attrition from health science degrees which can have a profound impact considering that there are approximately 2,700 rural students graduating in South Dakota each year. A number of rural issues have been identified through previous studies, and may very well serve as a starting point for future work. Among these are the retention of qualified teachers, student motivation, access to advanced courses, and limited professional development opportunities for teachers.5 While many of these issues likely derive from financial constraints, it is absolutely essential that they be addressed.
Author Manuscript
Acknowledgements We would like to thank Susan Puumala, PhD (Health Outcomes & Prevention Research Center, Sanford Research) for statistical analyses, Sam Shaw (Science specialist, South Dakota Department of Education) for data acquisition, and Mark Larson (Department of Biology, Augustana College) for sharing unpublished results.
REFERENCES
Author Manuscript
1. Mission Management Tool. AAMC. 2012 2. South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development. Ready to work. 2011. Retrieved from www.SDreadytowork.com 3. National Center for Educational Statistics. Identification of rural locales. 2013. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/rural_locales.asp 4. Bunger, Paul. Personal interview. 2013 Dec. 5. Arnold, M. Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning, A.C.O. Guiding rural schools and districts: A research agenda. 2004. Retreived from www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED484397.pdf
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Figure 1.
NCES Urban-Centric Locales in South Dakota According to School District.3
Author Manuscript S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31.
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Figure 2.
Analysis of 2008–2011 ACT Science Scores by NCES Urban-Centric School Locale3 (*p
S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31. Published in final edited form as: S D Med. 2015 May ; 68(5): 197–199.
Science Achievement in Secondary School Students Across Rural and Urban South Dakota Locales Teresa Maas, MSIV, University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine Michael Amolins, EdD, and Advanced Curriculum Coordinator, Harrisburg School District
Author Manuscript
Peter Vitiello, PhD [Associate Scientist, Sanford Health; Assistant Professor] Department of Pediatrics, University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine
Abstract While many efforts have been made at the graduate level to train physicians for rural South Dakota, there has been little work to identify how geographic locale affects the science achievement of high school students. This study utilized the urban-central locale code system to analyze South Dakota high school student ACT science scores. Rural student achievement was significantly lower than students from city and town locales. By analyzing such correlations, unique strategies can be developed to improve secondary rural science education and increase the number of students pursuing careers in rural medicine.
Author Manuscript
Introduction Sanford School of Medicine of The University of South Dakota (SSOM) is top-rated in the nation for graduates who ultimately practice in a rural area.1 Retention is high with 36 percent of SSOM graduates practicing in South Dakota 15 years after medical school. This increases to 77 percent for those who also completed residency in South Dakota.1 Still, there is a shortage of primary health care providers for rural South Dakota. Fifty-nine of the state’s 66 counties remain federally designated, all or in part, as a health professional shortage area.2
Author Manuscript
Many recent changes have been made to the SSOM curriculum. These transitions position students to learn the basic sciences using a condensed model focusing on system blocks, while the longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) for third-year students was expanded from the Yankton campus to Sioux Falls and Rapid City. In addition, last summer marked the start of the Frontier and Rural Medicine (FARM) track where selected students spend nine months of their clinical training in rural communities. Over the last three years, the entering class has expanded from 52 to 60 students, with an additional 44 students expected over the next four years. While all of these changes will likely increase the number of rural physicians practicing in the state, one question lingers: can more be done? Perhaps one of the best methods to train excellent rural South Dakota physicians is to improve science education for high school students in rural South Dakota communities.
Maas et al.
Page 2
Author Manuscript
A Student Perspective
Author Manuscript
Teresa Maas, a fourth-year medical student at SSOM, believes that high school science education plays a large role in students’ medical school admission. This philosophy stems from her three years of experience as a high school life science teacher in central Pennsylvania. When she began teaching advanced placement environmental science and biology, she was amazed at her students’ competency level. “I was teaching gel electrophoresis and metabolic reactions to high school juniors. I hadn’t studied these topics myself until my sophomore year of college.” Teresa believed that the expectation gap between her students and her own experience growing up in Douglas County could be reflective of time, state standards, and private vs. public education. Upon enrolling in medical school, she began considering rural locale disparities in science education. She elected to participate in the Scholarship Pathways Program at SSOM and began working with Peter Vitiello, PhD, and developed several strategies to determine if educational gaps between rural and urban high school communities exist.
Locale Correlation to ACT Scores
Author Manuscript
As there are many different definitions of rural, it was important to find one that could apply to school communities and show the complex continuum from rural to urban. In 2006, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) created the urban-centric locale code system.3 First, schools are designated according to the population of the territory in which the district lies (city, suburban, town, and rural) followed by a gradation of size and proximity. Currently, there are 151 school districts operating 158 public high schools in South Dakota. A color-coordinated district map depicting NCES locale distinctions was generated by accessing the Common Core of Data Public School Locale Code Files (Figure 1).3 It is important to note that while less than 5 percent of public schools are in a city locale, 23 percent of the student population can be found within those districts. The ACT is the most commonly used college entrance exam in the Midwest. Each exam is given a composite score, as well as scores in each of four subject areas: science, math, English, and reading. Because every South Dakota public high school is required to report the ACT scores of their students, these public data were collected from the South Dakota Department of Education and organized by school locale code to assess student achievement. Science ACT scores from 2008–2011 were analyzed using the weighted mean according to student school populations. A significant decrease in science ACT scores was found in rural designations (Figure 2).
Author Manuscript
Rural Student Representation at SSOM-USD While standardized test scores serve as a quantitative marker for student success in the classroom, they do not encompass a student’s personal or academic growth and may not predict future student achievement in postsecondary or graduate courses. However, a similar locale discrepancy exists in the student representation at SSOM. During the admission process, SSOM also looks at the city or town where the student graduated from high school. For the class admitted in the fall of 2013, 32 percent were from rural towns defined by less than 10,000 people.4 Similar trends exist using the NCES definition with only 28 percent S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31.
Maas et al.
Page 3
Author Manuscript
rural student representation for the 2014–2017 graduating classes even though secondary students from rural schools comprise 40 percent of the South Dakota student population (Figure 3). This means that the SSOM class is represented by 29 percent fewer students from rural locales when compared to the distribution of high school students (all analyses excluded SSOM out-of-state students). During these same years, 43 percent of SSOM graduated from a high school in a city locale, although these locales only graduated 30 percent of the state’s high school seniors.
Conclusion
Author Manuscript
Over the coming years, the demand for excellent physicians in rural South Dakota is expected to steadily increase. In order to meet this demand, weaknesses in science education need to be addressed before the post-graduate level. What would be the impact of a 5.4 percent increase in rural student science achievement? We found a direct correlation between ACT scores and student grade point average (GPA) in a college general biology course at Augustana College (n=1,568; r2 = 0.98). For a student receiving an ACT score of 25, a 5.4 percent improvement would translate to nearly a 0.3 point increase in final GPA with a change in letter grade from B- to B. Such a change in GPA may reduce student attrition from health science degrees which can have a profound impact considering that there are approximately 2,700 rural students graduating in South Dakota each year. A number of rural issues have been identified through previous studies, and may very well serve as a starting point for future work. Among these are the retention of qualified teachers, student motivation, access to advanced courses, and limited professional development opportunities for teachers.5 While many of these issues likely derive from financial constraints, it is absolutely essential that they be addressed.
Author Manuscript
Acknowledgements We would like to thank Susan Puumala, PhD (Health Outcomes & Prevention Research Center, Sanford Research) for statistical analyses, Sam Shaw (Science specialist, South Dakota Department of Education) for data acquisition, and Mark Larson (Department of Biology, Augustana College) for sharing unpublished results.
REFERENCES
Author Manuscript
1. Mission Management Tool. AAMC. 2012 2. South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development. Ready to work. 2011. Retrieved from www.SDreadytowork.com 3. National Center for Educational Statistics. Identification of rural locales. 2013. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/rural_locales.asp 4. Bunger, Paul. Personal interview. 2013 Dec. 5. Arnold, M. Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning, A.C.O. Guiding rural schools and districts: A research agenda. 2004. Retreived from www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED484397.pdf
S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31.
Maas et al.
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Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript
Figure 1.
NCES Urban-Centric Locales in South Dakota According to School District.3
Author Manuscript S D Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 August 31.
Maas et al.
Page 5
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript
Figure 2.
Analysis of 2008–2011 ACT Science Scores by NCES Urban-Centric School Locale3 (*p
