Twenty years ago, the Zuni tribe separated from the larger school district of which it was part and formed its own school district. For the past 10 years, it has cooperated with the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence on improvement efforts, focused on classes in which students work together on a variety of challenging…

The success of the Minimbah Aboriginal Preschool in New South Wales (Australia) is evidenced by happy staff and children, low staff turnover, and the later success of Minimbah's children in mainstream schools. Also, parents were frequently present as helpers and were apparently confident in entering the premises, talking with staff members, and…

The PACERS Small Schools Cooperative is an association of 29 small public schools in 25 communities in rural Alabama whose goal is to keep schools open by making visible their viability. To that end, the schools of the cooperative develop appropriate curricular and extracurricular opportunities for schools and students that involve the people in…

This paper presents findings from the 1998 Working Conference on Mathematics Teaching and Learning in Poor Communities, which examined evidence of effective mathematics education in impoverished communities. The task force highlighted aspects of interventions that were critical to success or failure and examined reform in relation to: student…

Because school systems throughout America depend on local property taxes for much of their revenue, districts with poor property valuations, especially rural districts, are facing fiscal crises. In response to a lawsuit filed in 1991, the Ohio Supreme Court twice decided that the state's heavy reliance on local property taxes for school funding…

The Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative (AKRSI) implements initiatives to document the indigenous knowledge systems of Alaska Natives and develop pedagogical practices and school curricula that appropriately incorporate indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing into the formal education system. These initiatives foster interconnectivity between two…

Jilin is a rural province in northeastern China, known for its forests and forest products such as ginseng. In the past, Jilin's schools focused on preparing students for higher education and offered little of relevance to most rural students. In addition, the schools were understaffed and were managed by a remote, centralized bureaucracy. In…

Northern Arizona University (NAU) and Nogales Unified School District established a school-university partnership in 1998 to prepare special education teachers to work in the rural Mexican border area of southern Santa Cruz County, Arizona. All 25 students in the program's first cohort were working adults from the local area, bilingual and already…

This paper describes the experiences of non-Indigenous preservice teachers during a 5-week rural cross-cultural practicum in Northern Territory (Australia) Aboriginal schools. The staff at the Education Resource Centre that serves and provides visiting teachers to Yirrkala Homeland Schools expressed a desire to become more fully involved in the…

This serial issue contains eight articles all on the theme of "Becoming Teacher Researchers.""Becoming a Network of Teacher Researchers" (Scott Christian) discusses how portfolios of classroom work provide documentation and encourage more systematic teacher research involving established research techniques. "Identifying…

This study provides a descriptive statistical analysis of the incidence of students who participate in the federal free/reduced lunch program and who are identified for a gifted education program at three Kentucky middle schools. There are 2,000 students enrolled in the three schools and the free/reduced lunch incidence varies from 60 percent to…

This manual offers practical advice to educators on conducting a job search and obtaining a position in Alaska. Alaska Teacher Placement (University of Alaska Fairbanks) is a statewide clearinghouse for the placement of educators. Although Alaska's certification requirements are similar to those of other states, school administrators are also…

The goal toward which rural education appears to be moving at the close of the biennial period 1927-28 is that of equalization of educational opportunity within each of the several states. The most significant and generally accepted means of achieving it is apparently through increasing emphasis on the promotion of centralizing and coordination…

The most remarkable feature in the progress of education in the United States within the past decade and a half has been the unprecedented increase of interest in secondary education, the multiplication of high schools and the large increase in the number of high-school students. Until about the beginning of this century interest in the public…

Focuses on three major issues in meeting the needs of mildly handicapped students in regular classes in rural areas: appropriate programming within a limited curriculum; limited professional development opportunities; and utilization of rural delivery systems for special education. Offers strategies for change. (JD)