The cost of providing an educational program is higher for rural, small schools and districts than for others. Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that small schools and districts may be a more efficient investment than large schools because the "learning value per unit of expenditure" seems to be greater there. This new idea expands…

Charter schools have emerged in the 1990s as a prominent and controversial school reform idea. This digest discusses characteristics of charter schools, tentative research findings, advantages and disadvantages, and implications for rural communities. Since 1991, 33 states and the District of Columbia have passed charter school legislation. An…

This digest describes the development of the standard middle school and its impact on rural areas, discusses the original goals of middle schooling, and suggests how rural schools can meet these goals despite their small size. The earliest middle schools were innovative rural junior high schools that enriched their programs with additional…

This digest reviews research on the status of rural student achievement and schooling conditions and describes variations across the nation and the states. Between 1992 and 1996, rural students began to outperform nonrural students on the 8th-grade mathematics assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Despite this aggregate…

This ERIC digest examines the slowed pace of school district reorganization since 1970 and the expanded role of state education agencies (SEAs). It also reports trends that influence consideration of various reorganization forms and considers the framework in which future policy options may take shape. The decades from 1940 to 1970 show the…

Current educational research efforts are examining rural/urban differences in achievement, appropriateness of rural/urban achievement measures, effects of parents and community on the attainment of rural students, and how well rural students succeed in higher education. To accurately assess the small, rural school's impact on students, rural-urban…