To stress one of this nation's greatest strengths--its ability to form groups or partnerships to solve problems, such as providing quality education to rural America--academic year 1983-84 was proclaimed "National Year of Partnerships in Education." The Intra-Agency Committee on Rural Education, composed of representatives of the 14…

Interviews with 940 Iowa farm operators and their wives were conducted during 1977 to address the question of perceived extension effectiveness (the degree to which the respondent perceived the Cooperative Extension Service as meeting his/her needs). Two models of organizational effectiveness were advanced and suggested as being consistent with…

Attitudes expressed in Iowa's news media recently show a change of attitude from an urban or metropolitan slant to a more pro-rural, pro-agrarian point of view. Iowa's major daily news medium is now saying that the state's character, culture, economy, values, beliefs, and social attitudes are in jeopardy, and Iowans should have the moral and…

Reviewing the history of rural education reform, this paper argues for a policy of improving rural schools on their strengths, rather than a policy of consolidation. Since the late 1970's, rural school reform has placed greater emphasis on developing policies and educational strategies that allow rural schools to be different from urban schools…

Many rural school districts struggling with declining elementary school enrollments will soon face the more complex problems of declining high school enrollment. School districts with only one high school do not have the option of consolidation and must find innovative solutions to the problem of maintaining educational quality with dwindling…

In the face of declining enrollments, many Iowa rural school districts have begun sharing superintendents. In 1988-89, 88 districts shared 44 superintendents; 42 of these participated in structured interviews for this study. All participants were male. Interviewees indicated that most school boards had undertaken the new arrangement because the…

An overview of the history of rural school consolidation in north central Iowa reveals that by 1994, 9 of the 10 high schools in towns of less than 500 in 1940 had closed, and 3 of the 5 high schools in towns with populations of 500-999 had closed. However, all three towns with populations over 1,000 in 1940 had high schools in 1993-94. This…

An overview of the status of rural school financing revealed three major reasons why rural schools are facing major problems in financing today: (1) school reforms have generally failed to address the specific needs of rural and small schools; (2) researchers have failed to recognize small school differences in their collection, classification and…

During the second year of a 3-year study involving 112 Iowa farm families, mothers of children aged 4 to 10 years old expressed expectations of independence, responsibility, and hard work from their children during home interviews. The importance of the parent-child relationship together with the lack of sufficient child-rearing research on rural…

Political organization is an alternative to the so-called inevitability of losing one's rural school or one's small community; People United for Rural Education (P.U.R.E.), organized to promote the survival of rural schools and the concept of rural as a credible way of life, has been an effective political organization. The reversal of urban…

The Lohrville Career Education Model (LCEM) was instituted as a systematic attempt at exploring careers in Iowa and inducing Iowa youth to seek careers closer to home following high school graduation or post-secondary education training; a major purpose of the Toward Community Growth project was to teach positive attitudes about living and working…

Scheduled for implementation in 1985, Student Excellence through Educational Development of Staff (SEEDS) is a 3-year cooperative partnership between four rural Southwest Iowa school districts to provide comprehensive, long-term staff development that promises to heighten student achievement through increasing instructional/supervision skills of…

A computerized referral management system, the Arrowhead Student Information System, has enhanced communication among special education staff members in rural Iowa. The system serves a 45-district intermediate level service unit which identifies and serves children from birth to 21 years who require special education from a student and preschool…

A two-day exchange between staff of the University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls and the Burt Community School proved successful for all participants. The university team (professors, graduate students, and senior students who had completed student teaching) became responsible for the education of the Burt students while the Burt teachers and…

Identifying and describing students in rural schools who are at potential educational risk is the purpose of this study which involved extensive taped interviews with administrators, teachers and students in selected rural schools in Iowa. Various indicators of educational risk in selected rural environments suggest that students are decidedly…