School Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) teachers can experience physiological stress through their various roles and responsibilities, including preparing Career Development Event (CDE) teams. Through CDE participation, students can encounter numerous benefits, but these academic competitions could be catalysts for stress. The purpose of this…

This multi-case study explored how local policy actors in rural school districts interpreted new teacher evaluation policies and how state-level policy actors influenced local policy responses. In the first phase of the study, teachers and administrators in four rural school districts in two U.S. states were interviewed about new state teacher…

The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of staff that work in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collects data…

This study surveyed school board members at rural districts in Missouri about their perceptions of their ability to evaluate a rural superintendent. A total of 41 school districts and 287 individual board members were included in the study, The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of rural board members related to training in…

Recruitment and retention concerns for teachers, particularly in rural school districts and in science, fill the daily news and research literature. The shortage of STEM workers is also another concern as well. Then why do nationally recognized secondary science teachers remain in rural schools with lower salaries, increased responsibilities…

The purpose of this study was to identify the processes School Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) teachers utilize to support students' psychological needs and motivation. SBAE teachers were sampled who taught for five or more years and displayed a range of SBAE successes. Within the five participating schools, all FFA members were recruited to…

The four-day school week is a concept that has been utilized in rural schools for decades to respond to budgetary shortfalls. There has been little peer-reviewed research on the four-day school week that has focused on the perception of parents who live in school districts that have recently switched to the four-day model. This study collected…

This report describes teacher and school characteristics related to teacher movement within and out of public school systems in Colorado, Missouri, and South Dakota. Stakeholders in each of these states expressed interest in better understanding teacher mobility and attrition and related factors. The authors used administrative data provided by…

The four-day school week (4dsw) is growing in popularity, especially in rural areas across the western United States. RAND Corporation researchers addressed knowledge gaps about the 4dsw by conducting a large-scale study of the implementation and outcomes of the 4dsw that involved the collection of original data in numerous districts across Idaho,…

This research essay examined a growing trend in a rural area of the Midwest where PK-12 school districts are partnering with a local university to hire teacher candidates (TCs) as the Teachers of Record (TORs). Many rural school districts are challenged to address the teacher shortage. As a result, many school districts are hiring TCs as the TOR…

The purpose of this bounded case study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) was to add to the existing research literature on early childhood trauma in addition to understanding teacher and administrator perceptions on students' adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in rural, Northwest Missouri elementary schools from 2009 through 2019. Survey…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of first-year teachers regarding the use of Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) within their teacher training programs. Participants in this study included 35 teachers from one of the 46 rural public-school districts in south-central Missouri. The 43 EBPs outlined in Robert Marzano's (2017)…

This study used student suspension data from one suburban and one rural school district in Missouri to describe the relationship between participation in long-term suspension credit-recovery programs and graduation rates of those same suspended students. Students who participated in a long-term suspension credit recovery program were 8.8 times…

Rural communities all too often face scarce funding, instructors and facilities, forcing institutions to choose between offering a variety of introductory courses across a breadth of subjects or providing more narrowly focused, sequenced programs within one or two priority Career Clusters. Providing learners access to diverse career pathways in…

This report provides descriptive information about the location and native language use of schools in the REL Central Region with high enrollment of American Indian students, whether Bureau of Indian Education schools or non-Bureau of Indian Education high-density American Indian schools (schools with 25 percent or more American Indian student…