The small rural school's foremost and largest problem is providing an adequate curriculum for students in a changing world. Often the small district cannot or is not willing to pay the per-pupil cost of curriculum specialists, specialized courses using expensive equipment no more than one period a day, and remodeled rooms to accommodate new…

Volume 2, Numbers 1 and 2 of the ERIC/CRESS (Educational Research Information Center/Clearinghouse on Rural education and Small Schools) newsletter focus on the status of CRESS and innovations in the small rural school. Issue Number 1 discusses the status of the Clearinghouse at the end of 3 months into the second year of operation. A 14-item…

Describes Wisconsin's cooperative education service agency program organized to help groups of small rural schools get special industrial education expertise that would be too costly for a single school to support. Presents K-12 curriculum descriptions for a cluster of five school districts with sequenced course content. (MF)

A program promoting international education in South Dakota's rural elementary schools has provided staff development opportunities and assistance in curriculum modification based on information about the status of international education in the schools and student knowledge of the world. The program succeeds where key teachers and administrators…

"Making good things better" was the theme of the 1985 AASA Small School District Administrators' Conference. The keynote speaker listed four efforts school leadership should take: encouraging people to change, accelerating the growth of people, setting organizational goals, and continuing personal growth. A full day of the conference focused on…

Using the Biomedical Sciences Preparatory Program (BioPrep) for illustration, this paper discusses an approach to educational improvement through the development of curriculum that emphasizes experiential learning and the involvement of students in real-life problems. Opening sections describe BioPrep, a program designed to prepare rural high…

This paper describes Colton School District's (Washington) project of the Rural School of the 21st Century. The goals of the 6-year project, initiated in 1988, were to incorporate technology into all aspects of education and to use technology in restructuring the school system. The Colton School District consists of 184 students in a single K-12…

Oregon offers this guide to assist educators in establishing career education programs in small schools, K-12. Section 1 gives suggestions for promoting awareness, exploration, and preparation and lists goals for incorporating career educational concepts into all areas of the curriculum. Emphasis is placed on vocational clusters and special…

Three schools in Minnesota have designed a shared-resource project to address the areas of career, gifted and talented, and chemical and drug education, to provide guidance and counseling services, to add and enhance course offerings, and to develop an individualized instruction program (IEP) for every tenth- and eleventh-grade student. (MM)

This report, which focuses on improving education in rural Nebraska, grew out of a 2-week teachers' institute held in Walthill, Nebraska, in June 1993. "Introduction: The Vision of Community-Based Schools and the Future of Rural Places" (Toni Haas, Paul Nachtigal) examines current civic and social trends in rural communities and the role…

Although research increasingly reports benefits for students attending small schools, curriculum diversity is usually a concern for these schools. This paper describes a successful concurrent program involving a small high school in rural Texas and a nearby community college that stresses individualized instruction and compliance with state…

Divided into three major sections, this description of career and vocational education in small Oregon schools includes the following: (1) Introduction and Implementation (describes career awareness for grades K-6, career exploration for grades 7-10, career preparation for grades 11 and 12, and career education requirements for graduation and…

The Kansas State Energy Curriculum Institute (KSECI) was conducted for 2 weeks in June 1984 at Kansas State University, Manhattan, and was attended by nine rural elementary teachers from northeast Kansas. The program included the dissemination of energy curriculum materials, field trips, guest speakers, media production, and other energy education…

Key points of presentations are captured in this report of a conference which addressed issues of concern to educators in Alaska's small schools. A total of 119 presentations are briefly summarized. Contents are organized under five headings: effective leadership strategies, curriculum and instruction, computers and telecommunication, assessment,…

Texts of speeches delivered before general sessions and abstracts of papers presented in concurrent sessions are collected in this document which also contains the conference program, a directory of presenters, and the 13 conference cosponsors' recommendations for enhancing the quality of rural and small school education. The six addresses to the…