Rural students comprise nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools in the nation. With increasing amounts of students living in poverty, rural school districts are combating many issues but with fewer resources than urban and suburban school districts. In addition, new Federal and state regulations continue to be enacted, sometimes to…

This study examines the leadership literacy of rural kindergarten principals in Guangxi, China, focusing on their administrative, pedagogical, and strategic planning competencies. Despite national initiatives to modernize early childhood education, rural school leaders face challenges in school administration, instructional leadership, and…

This article reflects on the connection between education, development, and social capital through the example of a specific type of rural school called Family Education Alternating Cycle Centers (CEFFA, the acronym for Centros Educativos Familiares de Formación en Alternancia). CEFFA schools are based on the concept of a cycle that alternates…

The purpose of this review was to scope the existing research literature that describes educational interventions using mid- and high-tech assistive technology (AT) for students with disabilities in rural settings. The authors conducted a systematic literature search and then analyzed the included studies to develop descriptions of current…

As roughly 7.3 million students in rural school districts head back to school this fall, they remain largely unaware that the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill) is due to expire on September 30, 2024 (Hartman et al., 2023). Enacted on December 20, 2018, and temporarily renewed in September 2023, this critical piece of legislation…

The American Institutes for Research® (AIR®) has conducted an independent evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Teach For America (TFA) Rural School Leadership Academy (RSLA), a 1-year professional development program designed for two streams of aspiring and current leaders. The objective of RSLA is to recruit and provide professional…

Community colleges are important settings for the development of social capital as well as institutions of higher learning. The democratic mission, geographic dispersion, and close relationship with multiple stakeholders throughout their service regions allow community colleges to be well-suited to act as liaisons and social architects…

We study the effects of increased school spending in rural American school districts by leveraging the introduction and subsequent expansion of Wisconsin's Sparsity Aid Program. We find that the program, which provides additional state funding to small and isolated school districts, increased spending in eligible districts by 2% annually and that…

This dissertation examined the leadership strategies used by rural, public-school superintendents in the Central Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky during and following the flood of 2022 that was considered a natural disaster. The context of this study was framed by a 1 in 1000-year flooding event that devastated school districts and…

School improvement and accountability pressures heightened at the turn of the 21st century, with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 and with the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. These actions spurred research to facilitate school improvement and meet state standards. Researchers identified a strong correlation between a…

This study examines the outcomes of non-school internships hosted by two Appalachian Ohio organizations: Rural Action and Building Bridges to Careers (BB2C). As intermediary organizations, these entities work outside the boundaries of formal schooling to address issues of youth outmigration and sustainable community development through high school…

A significant amount of recent research and media coverage has focused on the challenges related to K-12 teacher shortages, particularly in rural regions of the United States. Far less research, however, has been conducted on the challenges faced by rural community colleges related to recruiting and retaining both academic and professional…

The current debates in the area of researchers' positionalities criticize the notion of the 'insider/outsider' dichotomy and favour the idea of a fluid inbetweener position. However, these narratives foreground researchers' perspectives and often ignore participants' agency in constructing a researcher's positionality in the field. In this paper,…

Rural community colleges are uniquely situated to physically and subtly embed educational imprints into the everyday lives of local people. This reflective article explores how the everyday characteristics of American college towns offer a potential road map for rural community colleges to structure educational imprints into the lifeblood of local…

Social network theory posits that social interactions provide access to information and other resources but may also constrain opportunities. Although social networks have been analyzed in educational settings to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and the structures supporting or constraining educators, few studies address how social…