Greener Pastures

Rural districts usually have a tough time attracting new teachers. But one in North Carolina is defying the odds.

By Bruce Buchanan

Stand in front of Roanoke Rapids High School, and you can’t help but be impressed with the 1921 building’s grand, castlelike architecture. The edifice was erected by the same textile barons who once employed almost everybody in Roanoke Rapids, a town of about 17,000 souls in an isolated corner of northeastern North Carolina.

But look down the street, and you’ll see an old textile mill reduced to a pile of rubble. A few blocks away, another red-brick factory stands abandoned. The town proper—a few single-level storefronts still doing business, but many more vacant—quickly peters out into a scattering of small houses, flat country roads, and fields. And that’s the problem: In the fierce competition to hire good new teachers, with bigger, more cosmopolitan districts dangling more social amenities and higher salaries before job candidates than rural districts can hope to match, how do you attract talented young teachers to work there and stay there?

Well, says Roanoke Rapids Graded School District superintendent John Parker, you sell what you’ve got. Although he still calls teacher recruitment and retention his “Number 1 challenge,” Parker’s success in those areas has attracted the attention of rural districts around the region. Until recently, Roanoke Rapids had a 13 percent faculty turnover rate—not unusual among rural schools. But five years ago, something began to change. Parker—then the assistant superintendent—began to aggressively sell young teachers and new college grads on what his 3,000-student district did have: a close-knit community, low housing costs, an intense focus on professional development, and a relatively safe haven from the teach-to-the-test mania obsessing many more-populated districts. Since then, the district’s turnover rate has...