Arnold Fege, President of the Public Advocacy for Kids nonprofit, reflects on what it takes to create equity and reimagine schooling in rural communities after COVID-19. His article centers around five questions: unpacking the United States' political will to resolve internet inequality; examining organizational changes needed to wholly care for…

A networked improvement community can be a tremendous resource for people who share a common interest and desire to learn from each other, and, thanks to technology, this can occur even when participants are separated by a large distance. This article discusses Virginia Advanced Study Strategies' Rural Math Innovation Network, a four-year project…

This article describes a project initiated to address the challenges of providing high-quality professional development to teachers in rural schools. Spread over the vast northwest corner of Colorado, where it takes over two hours to drive from one end of the region to the other, the Northwest Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services (NW…

Over the past two years, the teachers and students in Carter County, Kentucky have been utilizing goal setting. As a result, the district has shown tremendous growth on not only state assessments, but also on local assessments. Additionally, the number of students meeting benchmarks for college and career readiness has increased significantly. The…

Across the nation, uncertified teachers represent a very small percentage of the teaching workforce in public elementary and secondary schools. However, research has shown that student access to certified teachers varies across districts within states, across schools within districts, or across classrooms within schools, and that teachers who are…

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many school districts have moved from brick-and-mortar instruction to remote instruction with little planning time and limited resources. Rural localities, already facing barriers and hardships, attempted to provide special education and related services in accordance with rapidly changing state and federal…

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…

Teachers in rural, black schools understood their communities and their students and provided lessons that are still relevant today. The three main lessons are to learn and use culturally appropriate teaching, initiate and maintain mutually respectful community connections, and expect great things from every student.

This article, based on a study in a sixth-grade middle school classroom in the rural southern United States, details a writing project that questions the nature of text and how text might positively affect students' perceptions as they become change agents for their communities.

Rural, economically disadvantaged communities face a bigger challenge than urban communities in recruiting and retaining high school (HS) students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) because many of these students do not have access to high-quality STEM opportunities. In this article, we describe a mentoring program we…

This seventh annual High School Benchmarks Report provides the most updated data on high school graduates' college access, persistence, and completion outcomes. The report was designed with several features particularly tailored to secondary education practitioners and policymakers. First, results presented in this report were based on the most…

Mboni Secondary is a government-run school in a rural part of Northern Tanzania. Following the British system, the school provides four years of O-level lower-secondary education to students who have already completed seven years of primary education. While some of the school's 238 students come from the villages near the school, others live…

In this paper we discuss our development and use of a conjecture map for a large research project on the design and implementation of an online professional development model. Following Sandoval's (2014) model, we built the conjecture map to reflect our high-level conjectures (overarching goals of the project), the embodiment of the learning…

Cross-sector collaborations can generate the resources and political will necessary to tackle urgent, complex issues. Because these partnerships involve local leaders, they are typically responsive to their surrounding communities, addressing local concerns, and capitalizing upon local assets. These strengths-oriented, locally driven…

World-ready learners require world-ready educators. One group of inspiring teacher educators share how they ignited a fire of awareness around the importance of global competency education at a small, rural teacher college.