This article explores school and community leaders' beliefs about standards-based reform and the purposes of local schooling in a single rural community in the western United States. The study used interviews of 11 community and school leaders in the community. Participants engage in a balancing act between serving local interests and satisfying…

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…