Last month I joined a group of nonprofit, government, and business leaders for a visit to Northwest Colorado. As I drove through the small towns and over mountain passes into the Yampa Valley I was reminded of the beauty and diversity of Colorado. My typical drive in this part of the state ends in a camping trip or a ski weekend. This one was different.
As we began hearing about economic development projects, resort economics, the loss of community character, and challenges related to coal plants and wolves, I started thinking about how we define success and whether the metrics we use to identify outcomes are the right ones. The things that might matter to a community have to be woven into the plans we make to educate and support its kids.
I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to grow up in Hayden, Colorado. What hopes and dreams do parents here have for their kids? How does this rural landscape shape a kid’s sense of what’s possible?
Ella told us about her school, her friends, and the opportunities that have opened up for her through her internship at the local coffee shop. She told us about the Yampa Valley Partnership and her experiences in the program that go beyond her internship, taking her out of Hayden and showing her possibilities and ideas that were new and exciting. But she also shared something harder: a slogan kids in town use about themselves. “What do you expect? I go to Hayden.” A phrase that shrinks the future down to something small before it’s even begun.
That’s not her perspective, though. She wisely told us, “Rural kids have different opportunities, not lesser.”
These words were jarring and I had to sit with both of Ella’s statements at once. This got me thinking about where the shrunk-down slogan even comes from. Most of the frameworks we use to talk about child outcomes — educational attainment paths, enrichment access, “opportunity” metrics — were built around dense population centers, where proximity and abundance are simply assumed. More classes mean more learning. More extracurriculars mean more opportunity. More options equal thriving.
Apply that same yardstick to a town like Hayden — population under 2,000 and entirely rural and you can end up confusing a scarcity of options with a scarcity of outcomes. Those aren’t always the same thing. A community can have fewer choices on paper and still raise kids who are doing just fine or even thriving with strengths the checklist was never built to see. Maybe the slogan isn’t really about Hayden at all. Maybe it’s about a checklist Hayden was never going to score well on to begin with.
This isn’t a case for ignoring real gaps. There are genuine, consequential challenges when a community lacks access to infrastructure and programs, or when economic instability ripples through a town as the result of the region’s coal transition. No reframe should paper over real deficits. But the comparison itself can distort what we’re looking for before we’ve even started looking.
Rural communities and small schools can be a haven for deep relationships and connections between students and adults who are there to support them. Kids can’t be anonymous at Hayden High School, where the entire town turns out for drama performances and sporting events. Rural communities also provide a rich tapestry of local culture and pride. Young people may grow up working on land that has been passed through their family for generations, developing a sense of place and responsibility that you don’t typically see in kids growing up in the city. Skills and trades that might look limiting from the outside are often real assets to families and communities. Success just looks different here.
These aren’t consolation prizes for what the town or its youth lack. They’re their own form of capital that doesn’t show up on the enrichment checklist because the checklist was never designed to measure it.
None of this is an argument for romanticizing rural life, or a reason to stop pushing for what’s still genuinely missing — mental health services, specialized education support, economic security as the coal economy winds down. “Different, not lesser” can’t become a blanket excuse to stop measuring or stop advocating.
