Colorado's rural communities face challenges recruiting and retaining qualified teachers, leaders, and special service providers. The Colorado Center for Rural Education (CCRE) has created and implemented a comprehensive system for professional development of effective educators for rural school districts. The CCRE has expanded educator pathway…

In the Spring of 2019, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University launched the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) with funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. This overview provides a step-by- step description of NCRERN's continuous improvement model. NCRERN's…

The article describes a promising new, fully virtual, multicomponent professional development intervention to support special education teachers in rural U.S. schools who enter the profession without full state licensure. The intervention seeks to strengthen special educators' self-efficacy in relation to classroom and behavior management, and…

This article discusses the Faculty Mentoring Cohort (FMC), a pilot program designed to bolster new faculty retention at St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM), a teaching-focused, public honors college in the rural southern Chesapeake region. The FMC matches two established faculty members with two newly hired instructors to create between five and…

In the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, teachers were forced to quickly determine how to deliver a free appropriate public education to their students when in-person instruction was not possible. School districts and states have a variety of ways to provide supports to their teachers. One method for providing technical assistance,…

There is a documented shortage of special education teachers nationwide, and many rural school districts report hiring uncertified or temporary teachers to fill the open positions. To meet the needs of rural schools in our state, Colorado Christian University developed an asynchronous online alternative special education teacher certification…

Lions Connected (LC) is an inclusive postsecondary program approved by the U.S. Department of Education; thus meeting rigorous program standards and accountability. Equally important is that it gives eligible students from rural areas the opportunity to receive federal financial aid to attend college. The purpose of developing LC was to meet the…

Education means all round development, this all round development means intellectual, social and emotional development. It is only education that can mould the behavior of an individual. READ (Rural Education and Development) Foundation is not-for-profit organization established in 1994 to address the dire need for education and literacy in…

In this article, teacher education faculty of a medium-size university, historically grounded in teacher preparation within a rural context, describe their ongoing work to transform their practice in order to prepare special and general educators who co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess with their counterparts in the field. Follow-up research with…

Overall, the educational achievement of rural and regional students is lower than that of students elsewhere. To address uneven student achievement, a regional NSW high school, in collaboration with the local university, adopted a whole school approach to literacy teaching and learning. The literacy pedagogy adopted by the school has been applied…

Gifted students have been provided the opportunity to study three core subjects through an academically selective virtual high school in western NSW, Australia. At the same time they continue to attend their local public high school for their other subjects. This article presents the mechanisms that have provided this opportunity, and describes…

The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) is Australia's largest independent special education provider and one of Australia's oldest charities. Founded in 1860 in Sydney, Australia, RIDBC seeks to provide high quality, innovative education and therapy to children who are deaf and hard of hearing and their families. RIDBC initially…

This ALTC project is a collaborative endeavour between the four public universities involved in teacher education in Western Australia (Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University and The University of Western Australia), focussed on improving the quality of preparation of pre-service teachers for rural, regional and remote…

In order to improve recruitment of teachers to rural schools, preservice teachers need opportunities to become familiar with rural education contexts, overcome anxieties promoted by negative stereotypes and build confidence in their professional and personal abilities. Traditional approaches involve rural practicums which are not feasible for many…

"Why Rural Matters 2011-12" is the sixth in a series of biennial reports analyzing the contexts and conditions of rural education in each of the 50 states and calling attention to the need for policymakers to address rural education issues in their respective states. While it is the sixth in a series, this report is not simply an…