This report describes, on a number of measures, the challenges facing low-wealth rural school districts in eastern North Carolina as they relate to issues of teacher quality and ensuring that students have a good teacher in each classroom. It describes five strategies that are being used in rural areas throughout the country to respond to these challenges, and specifically what North Carolina is doing around each strategy, including: growing your own; targeting incentives; improving recruiting and hiring practices; improving school level support for teachers; and using technology. In the last part of the report, the authors recommend local and state level activities for each of the five strategies, and add three recommendations that, based on their experience in North Carolina and in other rural states, would help address the pressing issue of providing all children in North Carolina the teachers they deserve. (Contains 8 figures, 1 table, and 22 endnotes.) [This is a publication of the Policy Program of the Rural School and Community Trust on behalf of the North Carolina Rural Education Working Group.]