Thirty percent of Minnesota’s public school students attend rural schools, nearly half of them in small school districts, but indicators of socioeconomic stress are consistently low, earning the state a low ranking at 39th in the country in need of rural education attention and improvement. Student diversity rates as very important for policy consideration with a large and growing minority student population. Minnesota spends proportionally more on transportation than instruction compared to most other states. Educational outcomes are better than average, with rural scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress on math among the nation’s highest, and a 90% graduation rate.