Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. Researchers report that at least half of public schools are rural in 12 states (i.e., Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Mississippi) (Showalter et al., 2019). Providing quality education to all rural students is a daunting task and needs the support of policy and research. In 2018, the Center for Public Education (CPE) of the National School Boards Association published "Out of the Loop: Rural Schools Are Largely Left out of Research and Policy Discussions, Exacerbating Poverty, Inequity, and Isolation" (ED608842), a comprehensive report on U.S. rural K-12 public education. Today, the data and research presented in the report are about five years old. However, the facts, together with the suggested policies and practices about rural education, are still valid and accurate. After a two-year pandemic, issues related to funding, teacher recruitment and retention, and serving disadvantaged students have become more severe in rural school districts. This five-part series is a data-driven study to inform policymakers, school leaders, educators, and parents. The primary research goal was to examine educational equity for rural students. In Part 3, this report focuses on the student achievement gap and teacher shortages in rural areas. It first looks at the diversity of rural students on the Nation's Report Card and examines whether there is any regional, demographic, or geographical pattern of student academic performance in fourth and eighth grade reading and math. Based on the findings, it also discusses five unique learning opportunities that rural students often miss and encourage education leaders to consider providing more policy and practice support in those fields. [For "Educational Equity for Rural Students: Out of the Pandemic, but Still Out of the Loop. A Five-Part Series. Part 2: An Urgent Need to Fix the Digital Divide," see ED628332.]