This study examines achievement test results for one rural Tennessee school district in the context of national and state educational trends. The data were intended to assist in a 5-year school-improvement program that takes rural revenue constraints into account. Rural restructuring has been hindered in part because of rural communities' limited…

A survey was conducted of 82 rural parents of students with disabilities or giftedness on the topic of open enrollment. The survey examined demographic characteristics, sources of information, reasons for transfer, and changes in parental involvement with schools. Most of the rural students with special educational needs who chose to participate…

Long-term underinvestment in education in central Appalachia has resulted in a work force that is not highly adaptable to employment in other areas besides coal-based industries. Employers who require skilled workers and who pay higher wages are discouraged from locating in the area by a less educated work force. This study identifies factors that…

Research on school effectiveness points to administrative leadership as one of the critical factors in creating effective schools. There is perhaps no educational setting in which this relationship is stronger than the small rural school district. In 1988 a national survey of school administrators conducted by the State University of New York at…

Following a thorough review of current studies and literature on women in leadership, this document examines the results of a study conducted to determine the significance of female gender in educational leadership, and how attitudes, values, perceptions, and life experiences of women differ from those of men and are reflected in female leadership…

One of the four case studies addressing access of rural students to vocational education through inter-school district cooperation, the Heartland case study represents the decentralized variation of the center cooperative school pattern, identifies essential features of this form of cooperation, details factors facilitating/impeding the…

The centralized secondary center pattern of inter-school district cooperation is examined in this third of four case studies addressing access of rural students to vocational education. The report identifies essential features of this form of cooperation, details factors facilitating/impeding the operation/maintenance of the cooperative…

A decentralized noncenter agreement pattern of inter-school district cooperation is examined in this final of four case studies addressing access of rural students to vocational education. The report identifies essential features of this form of cooperation, details factors facilitating/impeding the operation/maintenance of the cooperative…

A comparative study is reported of basic education in 10 African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, Benin, Mali, Upper Volta, and Angola. Basic education is defined as learning experiences to which all citizens are entitled or which are required to help them develop their potential to function effectively as individuals…

The close-knit, personal nature of small rural communities results in school and community operating as a single integrated social structure. Useful rural school improvement strategies must, therefore, address needs that are recognized by both the local school and the community and must operate in a style congruent with the local setting. Although…

Two survey studies were conducted to determine what rural and small school personnel perceived as their communication, information, and consultive needs in the area of career guidance materials and practices, and how these needs best could be met. For the first survey a questionnaire was sent to 7,618 schools which asked about awareness of career…

From 1966 through 1977, 700 men and women were selected, primarily because they had demonstrated some capacity for personal initiative, to be fellows in the $11 million Leadership Development Program (LDP) supported by the Ford Foundation to develop new leadership in rural America. To operate LDP a decentralized organization with offices in Maine,…

A study to determine teachers' attitudes toward inservice education programs was conducted in relation to the RISE (Regional In Service Education) Teacher Center (Connecticut), which provided two types of service: mandated inservice programs for participating schools, and voluntary professional development programs. Data for the study were…

Phase 2 of a three-phase project examined the secondary education background and employment adjustment of handicapped youth in rural counties in Florida. (Phase 1 was a pilot study.) Subjects were former special education students in five rural project counties who had been identified as needing services in the area of educable mental retardation,…

One hundred years of rural development in India is surveyed, tracing the impact of colonial administration up to and including the decades of independence--an administration built on elitism, centralism, and paternalism. Four major rural problems of famine, abuses of land tenure, peasant indebtedness, and rural disaffection and how political…