Policy action. Urban and poor communities will have the greatest need for teachers, with more than 700,000 additional teachers needed by 2010. In 1991 Alan J. DeYoung pointed out in his book Rural Education: Issues and Practices that rural educational issues rarely attract the attention of prestigious colleges of education and their professorates. Approximately 37 percent have inadequate science laboratory facilities, 40 percent have inadequate space for large-group instruction, and 13 percent report an inadequate library/media center. As a result, rural areas differ in terms of their needs and the resources they possess to address those needs. "Value of Rural America." Lancaster, PA: Technomic. "Rural Education Directory." REPUBLIC OF ZAMBIA. HOWLEY, CRAIG B., and ECKMAN, JOHN M., eds. Charleston, WV: AEL. 2002. The school in the rural community is still a respected institution, with much more focus on people than on business. "The Supply and Demand of Elementary and Secondary School Teachers in the United States." NCES's urban-centric locale categories, released in 2006. CHALKER, DONALD M., ed. Fewer than one-fourth (23.6%) are African Americans, and Hispanics make up only 5.4 percent of the total. 1997. Unlike the previous classification system that differentiated towns on the basis of population size, the urban-centric system differentiates towns and rural areas on the basis of their proximity to larger urban centers. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Part of the reason is that rural areas are places with traditions and cultures of labor and of working, rather than demand for intellectual understanding and for abstract scholarship. While equity and efficiency arguments have been prevalent in most of these cases, these court challenges also highlight the need to provide a level of funding for providing adequate educational opportunities if students are expected to meet state-mandated standards of performance. MOORE, ROBERT M., III, ed. Some countries, such as Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, and Tanzania, have experimented with "quotas" to control the transition from primary to secondary school so that a fair proportion of those pupils in rural schools are able to continue their education (or to ensure that females are represented at the next level). Generally there has been a rejection of vocationalization of primary schooling. It is claimed that if schooling is more relevant to local conditions and designed to contribute to rural development, the youth may not want to migrate. Education Atlas of South Africa. In 1997–1998, nearly 64 percent of all school districts were classified as rural or small-town districts. Place Value: An Educator's Guide to Good Literature on Rural Lifeways, Environments, and Purposes of Education. This concentration of economic activity is the result of powerful shifts in demographics, technology, and business practices. Better educated residents and improved rural economic networks are essential to the development of new rural businesses. Schools in rural areas tend to lack amenities. MCLAUGHLIN, DONALD H.; HUBERMAN, METTE B.; and HAWKINS, EVELYN K. 1997. Many of the challenges and issues that confront rural schools are not new, and in large measure they are linked to regional and local circumstances of change and reality in rural areas. Education in the past was restricted to upper castes and the content taught was also ascriptive. Lack of a precise demographic rural definition frustrates those who work in setting educational policy. Others argue that the state should set standards because local schools in some rural areas traditionally have low expectations for student achievement and because taxpayers in some rural areas have low interest in funding high standards for all students. In 1917, passage of the Smith-Hughes Act by the U.S. Congress provided funds for teaching agriculture to boys in high school, as well as to young farmers and to adults who came to school on a part-time basis. Rarely do the policymakers strive for a comparative perspective or try to learn from each other. In New Zealand and Papua New Guinea vernacular preschools, where reading and writing is taught before grade one, has enhanced the capacity of rural pupils to comprehend formal schooling and to excel in school. Like much of rural America itself, these traditional agricultural-focused agencies have been responding to the need to serve a broader constituency in rural areas, in addition to agriculture.