Barriers, Innovations & Pathways to Boosting Wisconsin’s Rural Teacher Pipeline
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March 2026
A new NORC study finds that to meet school workforce needs, Wisconsin teacher training programs need to offer more rural-specific preparation.
As teacher shortages continue across the United States, a new study by NORC and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research sheds light on the changing landscape of Wisconsin’s rural educator workforce and university programs’ efforts to strengthen the pipeline of future teachers.
State records show that, over the past two decades, the rural teacher workforce has contracted nearly 3 percent while the number of teachers working in suburban districts increased by more than 12 percent. Rural school districts account for 77 percent of districts in the state and teach nearly half of all students in Wisconsin, so these teacher shortages have widespread impacts.
We analyzed longitudinal data on more than 27,000 rural teachers and surveyed educator preparation programs (EPPs) across the state, then conducted site visits to four University of Wisconsin campuses to understand how these institutions are preparing teachers specifically for rural schools.
Geographic distance and limited awareness between rural schools and teacher training programs can create barriers. Our findings show that while EPPs produce educators who fill positions throughout the state—with UW System schools being particularly important sources of new teachers—geographic distance and limited mutual awareness between districts and EPPs create barriers that make maintaining the rural teacher pipeline especially challenging.
“EPPs want to support rural schools and strengthen the rural teacher pipeline,” said Jenny Seelig, a senior research scientist who worked as co-principal investigator on the project. “But often there’s limited connection between what preparation programs offer and rural districts’ knowledge of those opportunities, including pathways that could enable their own students to pursue teaching careers and potentially return to serve their home communities.”
“Often there’s limited connection between what preparation programs offer and rural districts’ knowledge of those opportunities, including pathways that could enable their own students to pursue teaching careers and potentially return to serve their home communities.”
We found several challenges for EPPs preparing students for rural settings.
- Geography is a significant structural barrier. Rural districts are located an average of 20 miles from EPPs, compared to just 2.5 miles for city districts. In the Northwoods region of the state, rural districts are, on average, 36 miles from the nearest EPP, making it even more difficult for them to attract student teacher placements.
- EPPs prepare students for all geographic settings, but education may be structured differently in small schools or rural environments than in urban or suburban districts and require specific lessons and experiences that examine the realities of rural teaching.
- Student demographics are changing in rural areas. Wisconsin’s rural student population has grown increasingly diverse, yet rural teachers have remained overwhelmingly White. This growing gap has implications for student success and suggests that EPPs develop new strategies to recruit teachers from within increasingly diverse rural student populations.
We found promising innovations that could help close these gaps. Through surveys and interviews, we identified programs at various stages of the teacher pipeline that are successfully connecting rural schools with future educators, even if they weren’t always designed with that explicit goal.
- Dual-credit high school education courses have become widely available in Wisconsin, allowing students to earn college credit while exploring teaching as a career.
- The Rural Teacher Talent Grant, a state-sponsored scholarship program, has helped offset the financial burden of unpaid student teaching for students placed in rural districts since 2017, making rural placements more accessible.
- UW–Eau Claire developed “micro-immersion trips” that bring education, nursing, and social work students to rural districts for day-long shadowing experiences.
- UW–Stevens Point expanded its student teaching placement radius statewide, allowing students to complete their training in their hometowns—a strategy that aligns with research showing teachers with rural backgrounds are more likely to return to and remain in rural schools.
“Many university program staff recognized the importance of attending to the needs of rural schools and communities,” Seelig said. “Some rural-serving aspects of the programs, like placing student teachers, have a focus that is more attuned to place, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. EPPs can do more to strengthen ties with rural districts near and far from their campuses.”
The research provides evidence for policy discussions about strengthening Wisconsin’s rural educator workforce. Our findings suggest that building sustainable solutions will require ongoing collaboration among multiple stakeholders—rural school districts, EPPs, and policymakers—working together to implement a range of strategies to help educators thrive in rural settings.
This article is from our flagship newsletter, NORC Now. NORC Now keeps you informed of the full breadth of NORC’s work, the questions we help our clients answer, and the issues we help them address.
