Data provided by the 1981-82 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were used to study the citizenship and social studies achievement of rural 13-year-olds. The NAEP extreme rural sample included 901 13-year-olds from schools in areas with less than 10,000 people and many farmers or farm workers in residence. School size in this sample ranged from 115 to 1,013 students. The 13-year-olds from the extreme rural communities performed slightly below the national levels for their age group on all five of the citizenship/social studies objectives. By comparison, 13-year-olds in "disadvantaged-urban" communities, where a relatively high proportion of people were on welfare or were not regularly employed, fell significantly below the national performance levels on all objectives while those in "advantaged-urban" communities, where a relatively high proportion of residents were in professional or managerial positions, did significantly better than the national performance levels on all objectives. Looking at the specific areas tested--acquiring information, using information, understanding individual development and communicating with others, understanding human organization, and understanding the development of the United States--the rural students did best on objectives that focused on skills and worst on objectives that dealt primarily with factual knowledge. (JHZ)