With more than two decades of on-the-ground experience impacting 300,000 educators and 3 million students, NIET's success is grounded in research. The success of NIET's work is evident in the positive findings from evaluations of impact. In NIET's 2022-23 Research Summary, we summarize findings from five new studies and highlight selected findings…

Kelly Klober, the school librarian for Danville's (Arkansas) sole elementary school, provides school library services for the school's three hundred and twenty-five students. With the help and support of the learners, faculty and staff, and the community-at-large, together they have transformed the school library from a place that houses books…

An introductory organic chemistry course is a gate keeper to the science pipeline. Instructors can improve student learning by making deliberate efforts to understand and accommodate the various levels of classroom diversity. The changes in the demographics of the United States and the national push to cultivate women and minorities in the…

Rural poverty rises to higher levels than poverty in urban and suburban areas, and rural communities and their schools face greater isolation, which means that families must travel farther than their urban and suburban counterparts to access available services and learning opportunities. Elaine Weiss describes two rural communities, one in…

This study snapshot highlights key findings from a study that examined the feasibility and effectiveness of using brief email and text message communications to increase the number of parent and guardian visits to the Reading Initiative for Student Excellence (R.I.S.E.) state literacy website. In November 2021 the department sent test messages to…

A large and growing body of evidence over the past several decades has shown that school leadership is a key factor in improving school performance and student outcomes. Increasingly, funders and developers of school leadership programs are articulating talent development frameworks, or leadership development pipelines, that conceive of school…

Partnerships between the USDA and rural colleges are one approach that allows individual students and regional economies to fulfill their potential. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made a decision to be involved with rural community colleges, which has really made a difference on what is happening on campus. Through a dizzying array…

This document reflects work that began prior to the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act. In 2015 the Arkansas Department of Education began engaging with stakeholders to determine how the Department could better support students, educators, school and district leaders, and communities in their efforts to improve student outcomes. The…

Rural schools, particularly high poverty rural schools, often have difficulty hiring and retaining qualified teachers. Here, we discuss three programs the Arkansas Department of Education has used to attract teachers to teacher Geographic Shortage Districts (GSDs) through material incentives. Unfortunately, none of the programs have had much…

For decades, people questioned the sense of having two school districts, each with its own superintendent, central office and high school, operating in the same small town of The Dalles on the banks of the Columbia River in north-central Oregon. But election campaigns to consolidate repeatedly failed because each community had strong emotional…

Concerned that their special education students were not being adequately prepared for the post-high school world, a rural Arkansas school district made a concerted effort to provide a systematic transition program in which opportunities for life after graduation could become a meaningful reality. A significant component of the transition program…

Historically, it has been tough to get teachers for urban districts, but this is not the case in Baltimore, Maryland, anymore. Since 2002, the New Teacher Project has been finding at least 10 applicants for each teaching job it fills for the once hard-to-staff Baltimore district. Armed with unorthodox recruitment strategies, the group targets…

In New Mexico, 18 out of 89 school districts are on the four-day school week. So are many rural Colorado, Oregon, and Colorado schools. Implemented as a fiscal last resort, this schedule has had unexpected educational benefits for districts. Attendance has improved and student achievement on standardized tests remains stable. (MLH)

Facing financial difficulties, the Webster County Public School System in rural Kentucky implemented a four-day school week to save money on transportation and staffing. The district's research in the experience of other rural districts had indicated that such a calendar change could increase efficiency and also yield some unexpected benefits.…

People in the rolling, scenic valley, between the Ozarks and Ouchita mountains have a lot in common. As of this school year, they share something else in common: a school district. The four districts that make up the newly christened Two Rivers are among 57 rural Arkansas systems that state lawmakers forced to consolidate with their neighbors.…