This report describes the results of the Gulf County (Florida) College Counseling Project designed to raise the educational aspirations of students in rural areas who would otherwise stop their education upon completion of high school. It also describes how and why scores of young people from poor and working class homes in the Florida Panhandle…

This case study describes a 2-year (1988-90) demonstration dropout prevention program, a collaboration between a rural school and a university. The dropout prevention program attempts to identify effective teaching strategies that will increase the academic successes of at-risk sixth-grade students and expand the use of those strategies among the…

Studies conducted by the National Rural Development Institute (NRDI) indicate that migrant students have a higher school dropout rate than non-migrant students. In addition, rural migrant students experience higher levels of family dysfunction and abuse, teen pregnancy, emotional difficulties such as depression or low self-esteem, poverty,…

This paper describes two pilot programs that are developing networks among rural New Zealand schools to address the educational isolation of students. A program located in the South Island consists of a consortium of six small rural high schools using distance education technology to offer an expanded curriculum to rural students. The goal of the…

A distance learning program implemented in 1987-88 to teach Health Care Science was modified to include the clinical experience appropriate for Health Occupations I during 1988-89. The teaching team included an instructional coordinator/teacher and four regional clinical coordinators. A total of 19 juniors and seniors at 7 rural school districts…

This paper discusses issues involved in teaching culturally diverse students and questions current practices in multicultural teacher education. The central portion of the paper describes and discusses an alternative approach to multicultural teacher education through the Teachers for Alaska program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Teachers…

This series of newspaper articles evaluates North Carolina's schools and establishes a relationship between the state's rural poverty and low student achievement levels. Test scores in 1988 are consistently low in all but four of the poorest rural counties. Small schools are disappearing from rural areas. Large schools can offer students more…

This report profiles the condition of education in California's rural and small schools, placing public schooling and rurality into their social and economic contexts. The data focus on three issues: (1) the economic and social environments in which schools operate; (2) characteristics of rural schools, students, and teachers; and (3)…

The Rural School and Community Development Project encourages South Dakota rural schools to take roles in local economic planning. This booklet profiles 3 of the project's 12 pilot schools: Takini School on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, Estelline, and Belle Fourche. The three communities differ greatly in their histories, lifestyles,…

In 1973, there were 56 one- and two-room elementary schools in Prince Edward Island (Canada). As part of a descriptive survey of these schools, now closed by consolidation, researchers visited each school in 1973 and recorded details of the buildings, facilities, and school organizations. Teachers from 47 schools and their 737 students in grades…

Effective utilization of computer technology can help rural and small school administrators and teachers overcome problems of time, distance, sparsity in course offerings and support personnel, and unequal funding through facilitation of communication and through the potential to replicate quality instruction. Tools that have implications for…

This paper describes the Renewal Institute for Practicing Educators, a staff development program designed specifically for rural teachers. The institute is a state-funded cooperative effort between school districts and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. It provides tuition-free spring and summer workshops for rural teachers in science,…

The third-party evaluation of the second year of the Iowa Central Community College Experience Based Career Education (EBCE) Project was based on examination of project records, interviews with project staff, student and resource persons, questionnaires completed by students, parents and resource persons, and test data collected on students at the…

A model is proposed for a rural industrial education outreach center which would function on a regional basis providing supportive services to several Alaskan school districts in the areas of needs assessment; identification, purchase, and distribution of instructional materials; design of competency-based programs; teacher orientation and…

Prepared for the state legislature, this document is intended to supply practical information to help law makers and educators better understand the planning processes and cooperative efforts that currently exist among the public schools in the 18 counties of southwest and central Minnesota. Parts One and Three describe the planning process that…