Despite conditions that would work against a small and rural school in an impoverish rural area of the United States, Fairway Elementary School has managed to excel in its accountability measures. Through interviews with faculty, staff, teachers, students, and parents of children at Fairway Elementary School a model was developed through the lens…

The high-stakes accountability policies that stemmed from NCLB and Race to the Top required minimum group sizes in order for school performance to be analyzed through state accountability formulas. Small rural schools have frequently been left out of this equation due to a lack of consistently reportable aggregate groups and subgroups. The…

This paper reports on the ways in which teaching principals in rural schools in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, Canada enact instructional leadership within the five leadership domains conceptualized by Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe (2008). Although participants suggested that they were "not where they wanted to be" in their efforts to…

The role of principals, especially in rural schools, where educational outcomes fall below the national average, is significant in implementing changes in the school. The focus of this qualitative study was to explore factors that principals deem most crucial to establishing and maintaining Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Moreover,…

A pressing need on principals and their demands for personal professional development is improving their performance based on evaluation policy standards. State policy standards dictate how principals evaluate teachers and how they are evaluated. Surveying rural principals we investigated the current understanding of state standards and needs for…

On December 10, 2015 President Obama signed the "Every Student Succeeds Act," Public Law 114-95, which will take effect in the fall of 2016 and which replaces No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--the name for the nation's suite of K-12 education laws in effect from 2001 to 2016. There are many similarities between NCLB and ESSA. For example,…

Teacher recruitment and retention factors were identified in the smallest public school districts in Illinois. Findings were compared to a previous study of Montana rural teacher recruitment and retention conducted by Davis (2002). A quantitative survey instrument was administered to teachers employed in the 24 smallest Illinois school districts.…

This article reports the findings of a study commissioned by the Montana Small Schools Alliance to explore the challenges and sustainability practices of frontier schools. A Montana frontier school is defined as a school district with 200 or fewer students with its attendant community located in a county with five or fewer people per square mile.…

This article reports the results of an inquiry into the dynamics of principal selection in rural school districts in two mid-American states with high numbers of rural schools. The study focuses on two questions: (1) are rural school districts experiencing a shortage of qualified applicants for vacant principal's positions; and (2) what…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there exists a relationship between student achievement in Texas, as measured by the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test, and the size of the high school at different socioeconomic levels. This study compared five size categories of Texas high schools to determine which size high…

Surveyed 384 teachers in small schools in Oregon concerning their perceptions of the adequacy of preparation in specific areas of preservice training, i.e., practical methods, reading, curriculum, broad number of subjects, specific grades, several grades, discipline, rural problems, resources, counseling, community relations, classroom…

Interviewed 25 school administrators employed in small public school systems in rural south Georgia concerning their job descriptions and how they coped with the many demands of multihat positions. Suggestions for coping include learning time and stress management skills. (KS)

Reports results of a survey of Idaho programs of cooperation between schools or districts. Reveals 75 percent of responding schools participate in one or more cooperative efforts and report sharing to be a successful practice. Describes major advantage of curriculum variety, but disadvantages of problems with coordination, transportation, and…

Describes school economics programs developed by Junior Achievement, with particular emphasis on Junior Achievement's Applied Economics course for high school students and recent efforts by Junior Achievement to implement this course in rural high schools across America. Course can be taught via satellite. (KS)

Reports on the results of a survey of rural midwestern, fifth- and sixth-grade parents' perceptions of elementary social studies to see if their perceptions were consistent with "Revised National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Curriculum Guidelines." (AH)