This guide deals with issues of recruitment and retention of both regular and special educators, and emphasizes the need for school administrators to upgrade or establish formalized recruitment programs. Factors impacting on teacher recruitment and retention include education reform, societal changes, demographic factors, personnel shortages, and…

This series of four essays is designed to share practical, workable strategies for quality rural education. The first essay, Ernest Lohman's "It's About Time...," gives an overview of the effective schooling concept and then looks specifically at ways a classrooom teacher can apply that concept. The essay includes a bibliography. The…

Designed to accompany a 28-minute videotape about the impact of the Iowa agricultural crisis on the school setting, this publication offers suggestions for classroom activities and ways teachers can become effective in reducing student stress. Teachers are encouraged to deal with students with problems by showing sensitivity and warmth,…

Directed to college of education faculty members, this paper provides practical advice for developing model education projects by means of interagency cooperation. The first section describes the numerous Macomb Projects that have received state and federal funding including Handicapped Children's Early Education Program funding. Projects focus on…

An instructional change model, known as OSSI (Organizing for Social Science Improvement) which helps small rural school administrators and teachers learn about, respond to, and effectively adapt new ideas to local instructional settings, is described. The OSSI project was begun in 1979, when 29 districts in east Texas had documented student and…

Attention is being directed to telecommunications and computer technologies as a possible way of delivering education to small rural schools in a cost-effective way. Characteristics of new technology and environmental changes having particular relevance for rural schools include the abilities to transcend space, network, redefine learning as…

Designed for use in rural Ecuador, addition and multiplication bingo games which promote number recognition and fluency in arithmetic operations are described. These skills are necessary for successful transaction at the market place where rural Ecuadorians must be able to buy goods and make change. The leader calls out a mathematical problem and…

Demographic, economic, and educational indicators, especially as shown in the Marion County Youth Study, suggest that strategies that deal with the problems of rural youth and which assume mobility to metropolitan areas may be outmoded and inadequate. Outmigration is, however, faced by many rural youth and its success is dependent upon formal…

Information about the outcomes, processes, and context of teaching and learning are being used to plan and monitor school-improvement efforts in many schools. Meaningful information shared within a school community can effectively coalesce broad support for responsive school-improvement efforts. An information planner is being developed by the…

This report reviews economic and social issues facing rural schools and communities in the 1990's, focusing on the mutual dependence and collaboration between communities and schools. Rural America, dependent on resource-based industries, has faced distressed economy and declining populations. With a historical overview of rural America under the…

This book develops a framework to help policymakers and policy analysts understand and judge policy options, so they can construct alternatives to the reorganization of rural, small school districts. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the book by stating the objectives and providing working definitions for "school district reorganization" and…

Rural education trends in the 1980s--influenced by decreased federal, state, and local funding and demands for higher academic standards and greater accountability--will have a significant impact on staff development in small and rural schools. Along with ebbing support for compensatory education and increased focus on math and science…

The document presents organizational details of the 18-month Country School Legacy Project (June 1980-December 1981) to begin an on-going inquiry into the history of rural education and current public policies which affect country schools and which will result in greater public use of library facilities and historical collections in public,…

Cooperation, sharing, and competence are the key ideas in the Victorian Country Education Project, a pilot project to be conducted in a limited number of rural areas in Australia in an effort to overcome problems peculiar to rural schools and communities and to search for new ways to provide those schools and communities with improved educational…

Educational reform poses problems for administrators in rural areas who have limited time and resources. This guide offers a process that can be used by rural administrators to engage the community in activities that will enhance children's success in the classroom and in their adult lives. Section 1 discusses the importance of community…