In this article, I report on findings from a case study examining the relationship between formal education and out-migration in a Canadian coastal community from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. Although high rates of village-level out-migration were chronic, most migration trajectories were short-range. Contrary to large-scale quantitative analyses of rural depopulation, I found a geographically stable population and persistently low high-school graduation rates among those who stayed in the proximal area. In the analysis of educational attainment and migration, schools served their traditional role of sorting and selecting youth for out-migration.