"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This is the fourth volume in the series. Like their urban counterparts, rural schools and districts are being asked to stretch their dollars further but with limited economies of scale, difficult teacher labor markets, and inadequate access to time and money-saving technologies. While rural schools and districts educate millions of American students, they do so with less support and attention than their urban and suburban counterparts. Regardless, there are examples of rural districts and schools that are innovating how they deliver services to students, recruit teachers, use technology, and serve special populations. This volume details those efforts, provides potential solutions to challenges, and compels state leaders to keep the unique needs of rural education in mind when crafting policies that are designed with urban and suburban districts in mind. Following an introduction by Betheny Gross and Ashley Jochim, this report contains the following essays: (1) States Could Do More for Rural Education (Paul T. Hill); (2) Promoting Productivity: Lessons from Rural Schools (Marguerite Roza); (3) How Technology Can Boost Productivity in Rural School Systems (Rural Education and Technology Consensus Panel); and (4) How States Can Help Rural LEAs Meet the Needs of Special Populations (Tessie Rose Bailey and Rebecca Zumeta). [For "The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1," see ED562516. For "The SEA of the Future: Prioritizing Productivity. Volume 2," see ED562514. For "The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3," see ED562515. For "The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5," see ED562509.]