Wesley College, a private urban secondary school, established a rural campus in the small town of Clunes, Victoria (Australia), where ninth-grade students could spend a term in a community-based, experientially-derived curriculum to enhance their sense of self and community. A study examined the extent to which Clunes community members regarded…

Wesley College, a private urban secondary school, sought a rural location where ninth-grade students could spend a term in a community-based, experientially-derived curriculum to enhance their sense of self and community. The small town of Clunes, in Victoria (Australia), accepted Wesley's initiative and since 2000, Wesley has operated a campus…

During the early decades of this century in rural Iowa, basketball for girls served to bring excitement and diversion in an otherwise bleak environment. It provided a chance for the girls to travel, occasionally to large cities. Playing basketball enhanced the girls' relationships with school peers and teachers and served to bring recognition and…

Small rural schools have always had an important place in the educational life of New Zealand, but they have faced a number of challenges in the past decade. These challenges include difficulty in attracting and retaining high quality teachers, changing expectations of parents, decreasing rural population, and the impact of national educational…

Research indicates that female teachers who attempt to enter and advance in administrative positions encounter obstacles ranging from sex-role stereotyping to direct prejudice and discrimination. While these obstacles have been researched for a number of years, there has been little focus on the barriers experienced by women in rural districts.…

This paper describes Colton School District's (Washington) project of the Rural School of the 21st Century. The goals of the 6-year project, initiated in 1988, were to incorporate technology into all aspects of education and to use technology in restructuring the school system. The Colton School District consists of 184 students in a single K-12…

This case study examines an effort to restructure secondary education in a small rural Massachusetts public high school. Data documenting the change process include archival records, participant observation, and interviews and questionnaires conducted with community members, school staff, and students in grades 7-12. The restructuring effort…

This report examines the opinions of 726 registered voters in 5 small, rural mid-west school districts. The purposes of the study were: (1) to assess citizens' satisfaction with the school districts' programs and services; (2) to indicate strengths and weaknesses in the school districts' programs and services; (3) to identify problems facing the…

This study of the vocational and adult education system in isolated rural areas was designed to provide information that is necessary for the development of policy for vocational and adult education in isolated rural areas. The study consisted of a review of literature; unstructured interviews with representatives of the business, civic, and…

This dissertation, which won the Dissertation of the Year Award, examines how stakeholders in an Appalachian Kentucky high school addressed educational problems that they had targeted for reform. Set against the backdrop of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), this ethnographic study describes the challenges of effectively coupling top-down…

Rural school districts where ethnocentrism, traditionalism, primary group preference, and social conservatism form the dominant value system could be contributing to their own ineffectiveness through their patterns of personnel selection. This study investigated the influence of rural values on components of personnel selection and the tacit…

An ethnographic study examined school-community relationship and its effect on program implementation in six rural South Dakota towns serving as sites for the South Dakota Head Start/Public School Transition Demonstration Project (SDTP). SDTP is part of a national project to test whether providing continuous comprehensive services to Head Start…

The paper summarizes recruitment and retention approaches designed to assist rural school administrators in securing/holding well-prepared/qualified teachers and presents findings from a 1985 study that examined teachers' perceptions of professional preparation. Outlined recruitment approaches include paying candidate's interview and moving…

This paper summarizes arguments surrounding the closing of Hisel School in Jackson County, Kentucky, in an effort to analyze the debate on rural education in Appalachia and how it relates to school-community relationships. Events surrounding closure of the school are summarized, including a two-year period in which a school community volunteer…

This paper explores the relationship between community stability and school conflict in a small rural Texas school district. Data included school district records; newspaper archives; and interviews with school district officials, community members, and officials of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Texas County (a pseudonym)…