This article presents three rural schools with different leadership strategies and educational practices. Pseudonyms are used in place of the schools' real identities for confidentiality. Although rural schools do not seem to value best practice in ways that researchers and policymakers might recognize, neither do they set out to repudiate the wisdom of the field. Instead they seem to operate from a set of local norms that are hard to dislodge (even by best practice) primarily because these norms construct a meaningful local version of schooling. Coming partly from rural culture and partly from educators' commitments, these norms fit leadership and pedagogy to the expectations of their local communities. The resulting practices are anything but fads. Fads seem like best practice run amok. The result, perhaps, is suspicion of best practice as an idea. Best practice is a judgment. The advice to use best practice, more often than not, is advice to people in schools to disregard their own judgment, their own explanations, and very often their own cultures.