There is a disparity between suburban and rural school achievement, with rural schools often performing lower on academic measures such as reading. Regardless of a student's geographic location, they should receive a high-quality education. There are rural schools in the State of Illinois, despite their location, that have overcome odds and have…

Public Act 100-0465 or the Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act was signed by Illinois Governor, Bruce Rauner, on August 31, 2017. According to the Illinois State Board of Education's Evidence-Based Funding webpage, "This law enacts evidence-based funding (EBF) and comprehensively changes the way that school districts receive the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how principal workload, job isolation, mentoring, autonomy, and compensation impact the perceived job satisfaction of rural elementary (K-8) principals in Illinois. Principal job satisfaction is strongly driven by one's working conditions. Principals who find more satisfaction with their working…

The quantitative study examined the connection between principal leadership practices and the morale of elementary, middle, and high school teachers in rural Southern Illinois. These rural districts serve students in grades Pre-K through twelve. This cross-sectional survey design identifies the most prevalent practices in the study's population…

This paper shares the findings of a non-experimental quantitative case study done in a rural central Illinois K-8 school district. The study focused on the delivery of student social and emotional learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and how educators were able to still design equitable learning opportunities for students through their social and…

Physical education (PE) programs provide learning experiences designed to fulfill developmental and behavioral needs of the whole child. In the state of Illinois and across the country, however, student-centered PE programs are being limited or eliminated. Illinois laws reduced the requirements of PE and gave school district administrators the…

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the late months of 2019, and by the spring of 2020, to limit transmission of the virus, schools across the globe closed and transitioned to emergency online teaching. While the move to online teaching and learning was inevitable, many learners, especially in rural and remote areas, found that online schooling had…

This technical appendix provides additional information about the sample, data, and estimation strategy used for a series of American Educator Panels (AEP) Data Notes published by the RAND Corporation in 2019. The Data Note series is intended to provide brief but incisive analyses of teacher and school leader survey results that may be of…

The principal needs to be a strong instructional leader and foster a healthy school climate while having sufficient time to dedicate to these roles with all that is expected of the position. This quantitative-based research study examined the relationship between the perceptions of elementary and high school principals and elementary and high…

A wide range of research has been conducted regarding reasons for the achievement gap between low income students and higher income students, but there is limited research regarding parental perspectives, and particularly fewer studies of parental perceptions of low-income, rural elementary school parents. This study examined the extent to which…

Frank Reliford, the Principal at Dee-Mack Intermediate since 2005, is familiar to almost every child in the community. 260 Students attend Reliford's school, and their status is a point of pride: Dee-Mack Intermediate is consistently one of the highest performing schools in the state. The change in student performance correlates to the…

Child health is a complex issue that requires a comprehensive approach to address the many factors that influence it and are influenced by it. In light of the complexity of children's health, the Coordinated School Health Program (CSHP) was developed as a framework for a systems approach to planning and implementing school-based children's health…

Several social-emotional learning (SEL) or social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs have been shown to be effective at improving SEL/SECD skills, and some have also provided evidence of effectiveness in improving student behavior and academic achievement (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Very few SEL…

International assessment data indicate American students are not competing with their counterparts in other countries. The mathematics curriculum and pedagogy are not preparing students to compete in a global economy. This study compared student achievement using sixth grade mathematics results from the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.…

Since the 2008 implementation of Response to Intervention (RtI) plans in Illinois, rural schools in southern Illinois with a high percentage of low-income students have been compelled to implement school-wide reforms of their reading programs. Often, limited funding makes it difficult to sustain growth trends in Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).…