The delivery model of the Birth-through-Three program incorporates interlocking community-based centers with a regional agency (Little Tennessee Valley Educational Cooperative) under the administrative guidance of an advisory council. The program goal is to provide highly qualified professional services to the targeted children/families within…

A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the degree to which teacher training programs in 4-year public colleges and universities include rural education as part of their teacher education program. Questionnaires were mailed to college of education deans and chairpersons at each of the 473 4-year public colleges and universities in the…

Questionnaires were mailed in 1986 to school board presidents in small rural districts across the United States in order to identify the characteristics of successful rural school superintendents and the qualities that rural school boards look for when hiring a superintendent. There were 93 usable responses from 28 states. Analysis of the…

This report describes methodology and results of a study to determine the nature and extent of the high school dropout problem in the Appalachian region and to explore characteristics of existing programs dealing with dropout problems in the region. Data aggregation complicated by lack of standardization in reporting numbers of dropouts and…

The rural Northeast Alabama Consortium for Professional Development is composed of five local school systems and an institution of higher learning that have joined together to share resources and enhance educational opportunities for teachers and students. The Consortium was formed as a result of the impact of three major factors: the Alabama…

In an attempt to determine the basis of the farm wife's involvement in farm tasks, hypotheses regarding farm size and type, family cycle and wife's age, off-farm work of husband or wife, and family educational levels were tested in a 1978 random questionnaire survey of 532 Wisconsin farm families. As expected, wives were more involved with farm…

Rapidly increasing Navajo enrollment in San Juan County, Utah, public schools in the 1960's forced the rural school district to improve educational services to a sizable Navajo population while attempting to preserve local control in the face of changing Indian self-determination policy. The district implemented a Curriculum Development Center, a…

Rural conditions influence the implementation and effect of vocational education policies dealing with funding, accessibility, economics, and local values. By law funding formulas must consider two criteria: relative district wealth, often determined by property values, which have a low correlation to median family income; and concentration of…

Two faculty members from Indiana University Southeast collaborated with experienced special educators over a 2-year period to determine if supervision procedures based on general education classroom situations fit today's special education student-teaching experience. They found that the 21st-century special education classroom is often not a…

Central Queensland University's Women into Science and Technology program aimed to broaden the access of women to higher education, improve their career opportunities and employment prospects, and address the personnel shortage in engineering and technology by encouraging mature age women to consider these fields. The distance learning program was…

This paper discusses the difficulties that rural students on a Maine island encounter as they make the transition from a small local elementary school to a large distant high school. The elementary school is characterized by small class sizes, close nurturing teacher-student relationships, and the involvement of parents and families. When students…

To combat the shortage and high turnover rate of rural special education teachers, Utah State University (USU) special education faculty members developed university-school district partnerships. The partnerships recruit and train local community members as certified mild/moderate special education teachers and supervise student participation in…

New Horizons is a nonschool program that demystifies and communicates essential information on basic life skills and reproductive health to Egyptian girls and young women aged 9-20. The program consists of 100 hour-long sessions, each including an introduction to a specific topic, review of group knowledge level, discussion around key points…

This paper describes the development of a research project in 1993 to address concerns and issues related to education of Aboriginal students in the Shoalhaven area of New South Wales, Australia. Specifically, the purpose of the project was to examine the relationships between Aboriginal communities, students, and their schools, and important…

The shortage of qualified special educators in Louisiana is critical, particularly in rural areas. Factors contributing to this shortage include low teacher salaries, reduction of tuition exemption for teachers taking certification courses, and higher tuition costs. University training programs must assist teachers in developing necessary…