In the popular view, somehow, rural schools often just do not measure up. The world over, rural schools generally get short shrift in the allocation of resources and prestige, their lack of urbanness often a self-fulfilling indicator of deficiency. As a result perhaps, rural students may perform, on average, less well than others in terms of the expectations and needs of parents and communities as well as on standard measures of achievement. Though every country has rural schools schools that are often identified as troubled, little research has examined rural schooling across nations. Even the most basic descriptive information is lacking: How prevalent are rural schools in different countries? What percentage of students live in rural areas? How do rural students perform relative to their non-rural counterparts? Are patterns of achievement by rural students consistent across countries? Of particular interest are the poor. How well do poor rural students perform relative to other groups of students? How big a role do family characteristics play in conditioning academic performance in rural areas? What are the value and the values of rural education? Such questions are especially salient for mathematics, for mathematics competence is essential to full participation in the economic, political and social life of the community and the nation.