Principals have many responsibilities and priorities daily. For principals serving in small rural schools, their role as instructional leaders can be even more challenging. Given the complexities of their job, principals are charged with ensuring that all students are safe and receive the required instruction, supports, resources, special…

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…

The aims of the study were twofold: (a) to investigate how school size affects absentee rates in physical education (PE) and (b) to examine the experiences of students and teachers at a small rural high school in relation to attendance in PE at their school. The absentee rates in PE among all students (N = 6928 students) in a county in Norway were…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether there are any differences in what school board members look for in the areas of personal characteristics and professional skills when hiring a superintendent. A sample population of school board members who were serving at a school that had an opening for a superintendent during the…

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…

The study is an in-process report and constitutes a step in a series of studies oriented toward developing a comprehensive understanding of the work and work arrangements of public school administrators in settings which are particularly suited for such studies. The settings chosen for the present study were three school districts with student…

Reviews studies of cognitive development of high school students in small rural schools. Finds that while research clearly shows that students in small rural schools may not be as intellectually developed as students in large schools, little research has been done to identify possible causes for this difference. (BRR)

Based on data from a 1982-1983 study and from other sources, the average annual salaries of teachers in rural schools were compared, by geographical region, with salaries for all public elementary and secondary teachers in the United States, and the average beginning salary for rural teachers was compared with regional data for beginning public…

In 1973 a survey of teachers (361) and administrators (41) in 44 very small West-Texas secondary schools revealed highly positive opinions about the small secondary school and its educative and social functions. The same survey sent to the same schools in 1983 revealed similar positive opinions. Surveys covered three items: (1) teaching and…

Presenting a brief history of the rural village school in Great Britain, this paper addresses the pros and cons of consolidation. Drawing upon a Schools' Council survey (1975), research conducted in North Wales re: population decrease, and research on more than 600 pupils in 26 schools re: reading attainment, the problems of cost are analyzed in…

Based upon data derived from U.S. Office of Education biennial reports, this pamphlet presents statistical information on the changing status of the one-teacher school (1918-36) for purposes of determining the extent to which these schools have been eliminated, the rate of that elimination in recent years, and the trends of the future.…

The purpose of a study was to determine if offering jointly administered vocational programs shows a significant, positive cost-benefit relationship over not offering vocational courses. Emphasis was on smaller rural school districts that may not otherwise be able to support a total full-time program. Nine factors listed by Thomas and Peterson…

The product of an Ad-Hoc Committee formed to assess the future of the Rennselaerville primary school in Rensselaerville, New York, this document describes the way in which a small school has developed a "partnership" agreement with the larger Greenesville School District and has managed to keep its primary grades operative in the face of…

Designated as Phase I of a larger follow-up study of high school graduates, the report presented a comparison of students' scores on the Minnesota Scholastic Aptitude Test (MSAT) by school size. The population for the study consisted of all high school juniors attending public high schools in Minnesota who had taken the MSAT during the 1966-67…

A survey of rural school administrators and college education faculty assessed attitudes toward educating the disabled and opinions about characteristics of effective rural education. Results documented a knowledge and attitude gap between rural and college educators. Both groups were unaware of issues identified in the research literature on…