This brief explores the link between rural youths' identification with their community, their self-esteem, and their future plans. The panel study of New Hampshire's Coos County youth offers a snapshot into the dynamics of a population that is developing its identity in a region that is undergoing an identity transformation of its own. Place…

Project Aspire was created to identify poor rural students with academic potential and to provide them with academic and counseling support in advanced placement courses and prerequisites. This article describes Project Aspire and its foundations; the relevant lessons learned from the literature on poverty, small schools, rural schools, and gifted…

To determine how well rural youths were adjusting to modern society, a study on educational and occupational aspirations of male high school seniors from two counties in Southwest Arkansas was begun in 1965 and completed in 1972. A major finding in the first stage was that 70% of the 165 seniors (121 Whites, 44 Blacks) overaspired for their…