This paper describes the history and status of the Urban/Rural School Development Program which has both community involvement and inservice teacher education as components. The paper first discusses certain important features of the Urban/Rural program. One unique feature of this program is its built-in parity mechanism that requires shared decision-making between school professionals and the community, and which sets it apart from similar programs in teacher education. Another salient feature of the Urban/Rural program is that it is aimed at inservice education. The importance of Leadership Training Institutes (LTI) in relation to this program is also stressed, since the LTI, through workshops, conferences, and newsletters, has served as a unifying element for the Urban/Rural sites. The paper then discusses the attempts of Urban/Rural programs, by including teachers in their planning, to solve certain problems found in traditional inservice education programs. A working definition of inservice education is then proposed, and strategies and mechanisms for providing inservice education that have emerged in the Urban/Rural program are discussed. Other Urban/Rural experiences for the design of a national strategy for inservice education are considered, and the success of various projects is also discussed. The paper concludes with a list of 11 conclusions or important experiences to offer national and local educational policy makers. (BD)