There are more than 300 anti-Queer policies that are being proposed and implemented across the nation that impact education, including Tennessee's Senate Bill 1229; Virginia's "2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for all Students and Parents in Virginia's Public Schools;" and Florida's "Parental Rights in…

Recommendations for teaching the nature of science (NOS) are grounded in a deficit view of students and/or the public--wherein people accept pseudoscientific claims, particularly about evolution, because they do not adequately understand what counts as being "scientific." Under the deficit view, correct views of science are defined by…

Many reports on rural education give little attention to digital learning. At most, they tend to note either infrastructure needs or the potential of remote course access, with little focus on instruction, outcomes, or exemplars. This report intends to begin correcting that imbalance by connecting the dots between rural regions, rural education,…

This monograph offers an in-depth look at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Rural Systemic Initiative (RSI) efforts, an investment of more than $140 million to reform mathematics and science programs in rural K-12 public education and tribal education. The authors seek to promote a foundation of contextual understanding for improving public…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of instructional tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Math experts have developed formative assessment lessons (FALs) that teachers can incorporate throughout the year's curriculum.…

As an initial attempt to document the influence of class size reduction on overall student achievement, this report evaluates Project Challenge, a Tennessee Department of Education program to reduce at-risk student/teacher ratio in kindergarten through third grade classes in 17 rural Tennessee school systems. A summary of findings relating to the…

This report focuses on the noteworthy achievement and the successful practices of 12 rural schools in the southern region that are members of the "High Schools That Work" (HSTW) school improvement network. Although these schools enroll high percentages of minority and/or impoverished students, they have managed to outperform rural…

On March 22, 1993, the Tennessee Supreme Court found the method used by the state to fund local school districts to be unconstitutional. This finding culminated litigation filed by 77 mostly small, rural school districts known as the Tennessee Small School Systems (TSSS), claiming that the state's system of funding education was inequitable and…

The relationship between education and socioeconomic development is reviewed, and a case study of school improvement efforts in an East Tennessee school district is presented. The district and surrounding Clinch County have been economically underdeveloped throughout this century; their schools represent structural barriers for human capital and…

With the increase of interest in the rural public schools in all the States has come a desire for more effective rural school administration, to the ends that there may be a more economic use of school funds and that all children may have opportunities, both better and more nearly equal, to gain the preparation for life required by more rural…

This report describes the development and evaluation of mathematics activities manuals for grades K-8, correlated with the Tennessee state mathematics curriculum. Seventeen elementary teachers and seven secondary teachers met during January-June 1989 to write draft versions of the manuals and demonstrate activity-based mathematics and…

The purpose of this study was to examine rural and non-rural students in order to understand similarities and differences between their learning styles and the ease with which they learned Algebra with a graphic calculator. Two samples of students, one from a rural high school and one from a non-rural one, answered a survey asking about their…

Appalachia Educational Laboratory's Rural Excel program collaborated with the Tennessee Center of Excellence for Science and Mathematics Education and with faculty at 21 local education agencies in rural Tennessee to evaluate implementation of the Tennessee Mathematics Activities Manuals for grades 5-8. The manuals each contain 54-67 activities…

In 1988, 66 of Tennessee's rural school districts brought suit against the state government claiming that the school funding system of a local option sales tax discriminates against rural areas. This study examines the effects of increased reliance on local sales tax revenue on Tennessee's school expenditures. Not every county can support a major…

Between 1985 and 1989, the Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) Project studied the effect of class size on student achievement in Tennessee schools. The study examined: (1) small classes of 15 students per teacher; (2) regular classes of 24 students per teacher; and (3) regular classes with a teacher's aide. The sample included students from…