This report provides background information on Forest Service (FS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) revenue-based payments and a brief overview of a related payment program--the Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program. Because the revenue-based, Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 (SRS), and PILT payments interact…

Across the United States, students attending rural school districts can face different obstacles than their urban counterparts, particularly rural students from households living below the federal poverty level. But how rural districts are defined can vary by federal, state, and local entity and can sometimes not capture the difficulties specific…

Fourteen percent of the nation's population lives in rural communities, and one in five K-12 students attends a rural school. This is a substantial portion of the population, but it's far too often overlooked by education analysts, advocates, and policymakers. Rural communities tend to face some persistent challenges, including higher rates of…

Community colleges serve a unique purpose in American higher education. For many students, these institutions present the best opportunity for the postsecondary credential needed to pursue a living-wage job with career potential. For others, a community college represents the gateway to a four-year institution or beyond, and potential career paths…

In the Fall of 2010, the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) approached Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) to commission a report of system-wide performance for their first full school year of testing as part of the BIE-NWEA Project. Even with only a single year of testing data, some patterns were identified and they are listed in this report.…

New York rural schools and districts have a high percentage of core teaching assignments filled by highly qualified teachers, with only small differences across key factors such as school poverty and school need for improvement. Urban schools--particularly those in New York City--have fewer core assignments filled by highly qualified teachers.…

In 2006, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a new classification system to make the reporting of locale data consistent across its various surveys and to be more precise in its classification of rural areas. This report brings together data from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Census surveys and…

The BRIGHT program was designed to improve the educational outcomes of children in Burkina Faso. It focused on girls in particular and was implemented in 132 rural villages throughout the 10 provinces of the country in which girls' enrollment rates were lowest. It consisted of constructing primary schools with three classrooms and implementing a…

The Black-White gap in completed schooling among Southern born men narrowed sharply between the World Wars after being stagnant from 1880 to 1910. We examine a large scale school construction project, the Rosenwald Rural Schools Initiative, which was designed to dramatically improve the educational opportunities for Southern rural Blacks. From…

This document was produced by the authors based on their research for the report "Pathways from Rural Schools: Does School VET Make a Difference?" [ED495178], and is an added resource for further information. The original report investigated the medium-term outcomes of vocational education and training (VET) programs delivered by rural schools.…

Many of the shortcomings of the high school system have been attributed to the fact that the popularization of secondary education has necessitated the establishment of a large number of very small high schools. No one has known with any degree of certainty however, just how small these schools are, how many of them exist, how extensive a program…

Many rural areas have seen declining populations and school enrollments, which are expected to continue. Rural schools with declining enrollment face the threat of consolidation, loss of per-pupil funding, fewer instructional resources, teacher and administrator quality issues, and deteriorating school buildings. These problems are particularly…

This article describes work on a new tool to help educators increase parental involvement in their schools using the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). When the authors set out on their goal in rural Hart County, Kentucky, they discovered that no instrument existed to measure changes in the level of parental involvement. Using…

West Virginia is recognized as the second most sparsely populated state in the nation. Legislation that intended to upgrade the quality of education in the state was passed in 1988. Some educational leaders argued that statewide reform must consider the uniqueness of sparse, rural school districts in the state, taking into account issues such as…

The time period and the pioneer conditions that existed when north central and northwestern North Dakota were settled determined the type of rural schools that were established there. Those areas were settled between 1885 and 1910. Most of the settlers in that area of the state were of Scandinavian (particularly Norwegian) extraction. The vast…