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Marcus J. Hopkins

Appalachian Tennessee's Struggles Continue to Mount

Infographic highlighting literacy rates in Tennessee's Appalachian counties with a map and APPLI logo.
More than 2 out of 3 adults read at or below an 8th Grade level (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020)

By: Marcus J. Hopkins

October 31st, 2024


As October comes to an end, the Applachian Learning Initiative has been highlighting the adult literacy, numeracy, public health, and socioeconomic struggles faced by people living in Tennessee's 52 Appalachian counties.


We would be remiss if we failed to bring attention to the truly heartbreaking stories that have arisen out of the landfall of Hurricane and Tropical Storm Helene in Tennessee's eastern counties.


The storm received a major disaster declaration on October 2nd, 2024, which autorhized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide federal assistance and grant opportunities under its Individual Assistance and Public Assistance programs and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.


As of October 29th, 2024, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has released its public notice of its proposed funding for work projects to address the horrific impacts faced by Appalachians living in those counties.


The counties that received the major disaster declaration are:


Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hawkins, Johnson, Unicoi, and Washington.


This delcaration allows allows FEMA to provide reimbursement or direct federal assistance for emergency and permanent work to eligible state and local agencies and certain private nonprofit organizations. These funds are eligible in the following counties:


Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Hawkins, Jefferson, Johnson, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington.


We at APPLI hope that our friends, colleagues, and adult learners are able to easily access and utilize these federal funds to repair the damage as best they can.

 
Map of Appalachian Tennessee showing literacy rates with counties in color gradients from green to red.
Counties in and around Appalachian Tennessee's bigger cities boast higher adult literacy rates

Adult Educational Outcomes in Appalachian Tennessee


As with most Appalachian states, adult literacy outcomes in Tennessee's Appalachian counties are consistently highest in counties in or around metropolitan areas or larger cities.


Indeed, Knox County—home to Knoxville and the state's most prominent public university, University of Tennessee Knoxville—boasts the highest adult literacy rate amongst Tennessee's 52 Appalachian counties, with over half of adults (51%) reading at a high school level or higher. Knoxville's positive educational outcomes further extend to Anderson, Roane, Loudon, and Blount Counties.


Similarly adults living in Washington, Hamilton and Bradley, and Sullivan Counties—home to Johnson City and East Tennessee State University, Chattanooga and UT Chattanooga, and the cities of Kingsport and Bristol, respectively—have relatively high adult literacy outcomes compared to more rural counties.


Many of Tennessee's lowest rates of adult literacy are located in the north-central part of the state, spanning from Macon to Hancock County. These areas are both geographically and infrastructurally isolated, each nestled deep within the mountains with only Campbell County having an Interstate (I-75) going through it.


Infographic of Tennessee counties with varying colors showing percentages of adults struggling with basic math, by the Appalachian Learning Initiative.
More than 2 out of every 3 adults struggle to solve math problems with more than three steps in 49 of Tennessee's 52 Appalachian counties

Similarly, more than 1 out of every 3 adults are able to understand and solve math problems found in most high school-level courses in only three counties—Knox, Hamilton, and Washington.


In the remaining 49 counties, more than 2 out of every 3 adults struggle to solve math problems with more than three steps, have difficult understanding percentages and fractions, and are unable to perform more than basic addition, substraction, multiplication, and division.


In 2024, the state of Tennessee received $12,819,023 in federal funds under the U.S. Department of Education through the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WiOA). This amounts to roughly $3.90 per person for each of the 3,286,952 adults who are in need of literacy education across the entire state of Tennessee. 1,443,278 of those adults (44%) live in Tennessee's Appalachian counties.

 

Geography, Poverty, and Infrastructure as Barriers to Education


The unfortunate reality is that many of the adults who are in need of literacy and numeracy education in Appalachian Tennessee are simply unable to access those opportunties.


Appalachian counties Tennessee have long faced numerous geographic, infrastructural, and socioeconomic barriers to accessing goods and services. As with most Appalachian states, living in the middle of the mountains often means contending with poor roads, underfunded schools, few public transportation options, and fewer opportunities for economic upward mobility.


Infographic on poverty in Tennessee's Appalachian counties with statistics and an image of a barn.
More than 1 out of every 4 adults living in Tennessee's Appalachian counties lives in poverty, earning less than 150% of the Federal Poverty Level

In 37 of Tennessee's 52 Appalachian counties, more than 1 out of every 4 households earns less than 150% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL)—about $22,590 for individual and $46,800 for a family of four.


Poverty often serves as the primary driver of the other Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), as it greatly impacts the ability of a person to afford the food, clothing, housing, utilities, healthcare, and transportation they need to access educational opportunities. Moreover, the argument can be made that how the FPL is calculated is unrealistic given the cost of those basic staples of life.


The issues related to poverty are further exacerbated by Tennessee's distinct lack of infrastructural support and growth outside of its major cities.


As mentioned earlier, many of Tennessee's Appalachian counties are not connected by any major Interstates or highways, meaning that residents in those counties must traverse roads that are rarely serviced by the Tennessee Department of Transportation. This makes gaining access to gainful employment that pays a living wage more difficult and expensive than those living in connected counties. But infrastructural barriers are not limited to roads—Tennessee has allowed its rural schools to crumble, its rural hospitals to fail and close, and has fundamentally failed to expand high-speed Internet into Appalachia's more rural counties. This means that people living in those counties must either expend significant financial resources to travel to major cities for work using private vehicles (as public transportation is virtually nonexistent outside of Tennessee's cities) or attempt to eke a living out of the few job opportunities that exist.


This lack of economic opportunities and disconnection from technology and educational opportunties mean that adults living in these rural counties must overcome even greater barriers to accessing the literacy and numeracy services they need than those living in urban counties.

 

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