The quality of leadership and the effectiveness of schools to deliver an appropriate education through quality teaching have been "hot" topics within education and more widely for several decades. This article provides a brief historical overview of developments in research and changing paradigms of Australian school leadership, followed…

This case study confronts the issues of staff motivation and teacher retention that face administrators in low-paying and/or low-performing small school settings when teacher pay is low and morale is lower, especially in communities having a lower economic base. It will present not only opportunities to try to keep good teachers but also…

An economical strategy used to expand the curriculum at the Peterson (Minnesota) secondary school, a small rural facility, is described. The need for an enriched curriculum was identified on the basis of several shortcomings perceived in the existing school program: few electives, student stereotyping and cliques, and inadequate special needs…

Small, rural schools have proportionately as many gifted students as larger schools and can have quality gifted educational programs. As in large schools, identification involves staff and self-referral and systematic record evaluations. Referral reviews determine if needs are being met in regular classrooms, suggest alternative strategies for…

Asserts that the challenge facing music educators today is to provide students with enriching music instruction within a changing educational environment. Describes a four-phase program adopted by a small rural Texas school district that helped improve music education within a limited budget. (CFR)

Three small rural school districts in Montana and Wyoming used alternate school day scheduling to make time for staff and curriculum development inservice programs. The schedule of one short and four long days delivered the instructional time of 175 6-hour days each year. Benefits of alternate scheduling included time for regular inservice…

Points out eight factors consistently associated with effective schools (academic focus, student participation in decision-making, etc.) and eight common problems with effective schools projects (short-term focus, unrealistic expectations, etc.). Summarizes successful projects at a K-12 village school and an urban junior high school. (JHZ)

Having a sound budget based on an effective school philosophy is one way to provide for quality programming in reservation schools. The Ganado Unified School District, located on the Arizona part of the Navajo Reservation, attempted to decentralize the budget-making process and to study whether the current budget effectively supported the school's…

The Entry Year Assistance Program of Educational Service Unit #11 in Nebraska is a staff development project to train mentor teachers, entry-year teachers, and school administrators in small, rural school districts. Schools that participate in the program select a team consisting of a mentor teacher, an administrator, and an entry-year teacher.…

To determine if a state-supported program of educational cooperatives would be beneficial to New Mexico's small schools, a review of the literature from 1960 was conducted and questionnaires were sent to selected New Mexico educators, followed by interviews. Approaches to shared services used by Texas and New York were investigated through the…

Prepared for rural school teachers and administrators, the guide asserts that problems associated with smallness (costs, range and quality of existing programs, and special services to special populations) can be overcome by utilizing various electronic technologies in rural schools. Following an introductory section, Section 2 discusses the…

This guide is intended to provide assistance to educators interested in developing two-way interactive television networks, addressing the educational and cost issues of this technology. Interactive television (I-TV) offers smaller or rural schools the opportunity to offer a comprehensive program within budgetary restraints. I-TV refers to the…

An innovative, flexible scheduling technique for advanced levels of a foreign language program is described. The technique, predicated on individualized pacing and continuous progress, is generalizable to all elective programs, and offers a workable solution to satisfy the enrollment "numbers game" and to lend breadth and depth to the curricula of…

The success of implementing school change is determined in large part by the effectiveness of building leadership and time utilization. This paper describes the changing role of an urban principal as her building moved from a traditional junior high structure to a more collaborative small-school structure involving interdisciplinary grade-level…

After an introductory section which points out that the responsibility of small and rural schools is to provide all children with a quality education, and that Boards of Education must decide what is best for all children in the community, the paper briefly describes 16 exemplary programs involving cooperation between school districts. The…