A fundamental premise in assessment is that the underlying construct is equivalent across different groups of students and that this structure does not vary over years. The pandemic has potentially impacted opportunity to learn and disrupted the internal structure of assessments in various ways. Past research has suggested that students tended to…

This paper examines the first educational placement and current placement for 1068 New Mexico students who graduated from special education preschool programs, 1987-1989. All subjects met eligibility criteria for the developmentally disabled and were divided evenly between rural and urban districts. With regard to initial placements, 9% of…

The revolution in telecommunications technology will be a driving force in the future economic growth of rural areas. Federal and state universal service policies requiring delivery of service to rural areas were major factors in how the telephone system evolved during the 20th century. In the 1990s, telephone penetration rates were similar for…

This paper examines the costs of rural schooling in South Australia from the internal allocations of resources in four country and four metropolitan schools. Case studies considered only secondary education and the differences between how metropolitan and country schools allocate resources to students; subjects; and activities such as…

Numerous reviews and studies have documented high levels of substance use and abuse in the United States when compared to other developed nations. Previous research has identified several factors which place adolescents at risk for substance abuse. This study was designed to replicate and validate some of these risk factors with youth from rural…

The major towns and cities of the Southern Highlands are sometimes not categorized as "Appalachian," yet they have considerable impact on the character of the region. This study examines the distribution of selected human activities and quality of life variables in 156 counties in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North…

The Regional Parenting Survey is a study of the needs and problems of parents, their sources of advice, and their awareness of local services. Randomly selected samples of parents were interviewed in five Appalachian states. A preliminary analysis is presented of 400 parents of third grade children, half living in urban counties and half in…

This report explores the status of the teaching of psychology as a separate course on the pre-college level and examines the nature of the differences between urban-suburban and rural teachers, their courses, and their classes. One hundred sixty-two urban-suburban and 166 rural school teachers in Illinois were surveyed via questionnaires. Students…

Current welfare reform efforts are based on the assumption that limiting government support will promote personal responsibility, driving welfare recipients to obtain additional education and training in order to meet employment targets. But is education and training--human capital--the answer to poverty and welfare dependency, especially in rural…

This paper examines patterns of change in the number of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan Texas counties, 1980-1990. Specifically, the paper analyzes how changes in AFDC enrollment can be explained by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and the extent to which factors explaining…

As part of litigation challenging the equity and adequacy of school funding in Alabama, educational resources and school conditions were examined in the highest and lowest funded school districts in the state. Identification of these districts revealed that all eight of the highest funded districts were urban systems, while all eight of the lowest…

The South Australian State Department of Education, Training and Employment allocates funding to schools in much the way that the literature suggests is a generic basis for funding schools. This includes per school base funding, per student funding for all students, additional per student allocations based on year levels, and additional per…