This landscape report explores the impact of earning micro-credentials on the social mobility of rural learners. Through four in-depth case studies, we show how earning micro-credentials may lead to credential attainment, workforce entry, promotions, and/or economic improvements (e.g., salary increase, prioritizing learners impacted by poverty),…

The close-knit, personal nature of small rural communities results in school and community operating as a single integrated social structure. Useful rural school improvement strategies must, therefore, address needs that are recognized by both the local school and the community and must operate in a style congruent with the local setting. Although…

In this descriptive and comparative study, we present results highlighting the complexity and scope of the challenges facing rural districts as they navigate the changing demographics of the students and families they serve. Rapid increases in the number and concentration of racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse students in rural areas…

The Maine Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing's (MECDHH's) "POINT" (Providing Opportunities for Integrating New Technologies) project is implementing a telepractice, distance learning collaborative in Maine with eight hub sites and 18 end points using Tandberg videoconferencing technology. This network is planned to be a…

Many reports on rural education give little attention to digital learning. At most, they tend to note either infrastructure needs or the potential of remote course access, with little focus on instruction, outcomes, or exemplars. This report intends to begin correcting that imbalance by connecting the dots between rural regions, rural education,…

As part of the Community and Environment in Rural America (CERA) initiative, the Carsey Institute has been investigating broad trends between rural community types, including the education level of residents and their parents. Since 2007, Carsey researchers have conducted over 17,000 telephone surveys with randomly selected adult Americans from…

The purpose of a planned career education program was to provide rural students in grades seven through ten a variety of experiences and knowledges which would form a basis for future educational and occupational choices. The program explores occupational models in the home, family, and local community; occupational choices available in the State…

Between 2001 and 2005, the state of Maine shifted the focus of its statewide high school improvement efforts to include an explicit focus on adolescent literacy. One trigger for that change in focus was a 5-school adolescent literacy initiative previously launched in a rural county under the federal Northeast and Islands Regional Educational…

The author reminisces about his childhood during World War II and the impact the war had on the rural community in which he lived. During wartime, children worked on farms after school and during the summer, commodities were rationed, and communities took part in air-raid drills. School lessons revolved around the war's events. (LP)

While many efforts to reform high schools target large cities, a similar minority located at the fringes of American culture has been relatively overlooked. Low-income, rural students suffer many of the same social maladies--such as severe poverty and widespread drug abuse--as urban minority children, and they are comparably disadvantaged when it…

Two concepts have been confused: equality of opportunity and equality of ability, which has led us to link intellectual giftedness with elitism. This linkage undercuts the ability to nurture and benefit from the gifts of the gifted, an important issue in rural places experiencing either withering economies and loss of population or an influx of…

Two studies indicate that rural gifted students in Maine middle schools with gifted programs have greater extracurricular and cultural opportunities than those in schools without gifted programs, and in eight states, the level of opportunities available to gifted students does not differ between rural and suburban middle schools. However,…

This paper addresses dilemmas facing rural schooling today as a result of industrialization and the changing nature of rural communities. Examples are drawn from the literature on Maine and West Virginia schools and from the movie "Hoosiers." Although some rural communities have benefitted economically from industrialization, in most…

This paper examines the imbalance in representation of native-born Mainers on the school board in Mount Desert Island, Maine. Mount Desert Island is the location of Acadia, the second most visited national park in the United States. In this community, native-born Mainers represent 68 percent of the year-round population, but 80 percent of people…