Rural schools across the state of Arkansas often struggle with population declines and recent data shows that less than 50%* of Arkansas high school students go on to attend college. El Dorado Schools were given a unique opportunity through the El Dorado Promise Scholarship, the namesake of our podcast, to transform our schools. In this episode, we’ll talk to El Dorado Promise Director, Sylvia Thompson, along with a recipient of the Promise who came back to our district to teach, and a parent will tell us how the Promise scholarship impacted her children’s college opportunities. We’ll also talk to two teachers who saw the challenges rural school students face in pursuing colleges outside the state, so they took a group of students to Boston to visit 10 colleges and talk about other scholarship opportunities.

*Source: https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2018/07/27/the-college-going-rate-in-arkansas-is-declining-anyone-who-says-otherwise-needs-remedial-math