A survey of superintendents in 10 small, rural school districts in Texas showed that they gave priority to the following leadership behaviors: (1) focusing all stakeholders' attention on instruction; (2) involving others in instructional planning; (3) communicating high performance expectations; (4) maintaining visibility; (5) supporting…

Two-thirds of Montana's school districts are rural, and most students attend schools with enrollments under 300. Such recent trends as peer tutoring, multigrade classrooms, and project-based learning have always been practiced in these small schools. One small community's successful effort to save its school, classroom practices in one-room…

Information technology offers advantages to small rural schools: access to courses not locally available, opportunities for collaborative work with other schools, and access to professional development courses. Federal money can help disadvantaged rural schools afford the technology, but the teacher must integrate good practices with technology to…

Describes the buildings of two K-12 schools, including the educational context and design goals. Includes information on the architects and design team, a general building description, and general construction costs and specifications. Also provides a rough site plan and photographs. (EV)

In Greece, education is organised vertically into three levels: primary, secondary, and higher. In primary education, according to the number of permanent teaching posts allocated, primary schools are divided into one-teacher, two-teacher, and up to six- or twelve-teacher schools. Although their effect on the size and number of schools has changed…

The Big Picture schools focus on a "one student at a time" model, which eschews subject based-internships, independent projects, and exhibitions of students' work. The company's goal is to help students acquire the motivation, skills, and personal qualities they will need for college and life. In 1996, Big Picture founder Dennis Littky…

Five years into an eight-year study of its high school improvement efforts, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is shifting its strategy for evaluating the $1.3 billion grant program. The foundation's initiative, which is underwriting change efforts in more than 1,800 schools, is the nation's largest privately funded attempt to improve high…

There is a strong relationship between students' socioeconomic status and their levels of academic achievement. Although educators should be held accountable for improving the performance of all students, including those living in poverty, schools alone can't eliminate the negative factors associated with poverty that lead to a large achievement…

The evaluation of the New Century High Schools (NCHS) initiative examined operations and student outcomes in 75 schools from 2002-2003 through 2005-2006. This report, the final in a series of annual evaluation reports, presents data collected over those years, with a focus on school year 2005-2006. The NCHS initiative grew out of a program theory…

This digest describes the development of the standard middle school and its impact on rural areas, discusses the original goals of middle schooling, and suggests how rural schools can meet these goals despite their small size. The earliest middle schools were innovative rural junior high schools that enriched their programs with additional…

Financial data of the 1992-93 school year were collected from 86 of the 99 surveyed Class C school districts in Montana, which range in size from 56 to 484 students in Grades K-12. This report consists almost entirely of data tables providing information on enrollment, taxable valuation, guaranteed tax base per mill, general fund budget,…

A 3-year project examined the potential of a computer-managed instruction (CMI) system to improve the academic performance of students in small rural elementary schools. A CMI system consisting of 32 student work stations, 6 courseware packages, 2 testware packages, and a management package was installed at 3 sites in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and…

This research paper describes strategies for increasing high school students' motivation in order to increase their academic success. The targeted population consisted of students in biology classes at a small high school in a growing middle-class community in rural Illinois. The problem of motivation was documented using anecdotal records,…

This paper summarizes a symposium on issues in rural education held at the 1996 European Conference on Educational Research held in Seville, Spain. The symposium aimed to gather contextual information about rural primary schools and included presentations from researchers in Sweden, Finland, Scotland, Ireland, and Greece. Participants from the…

This paper examines issues in rural education related to aims, curriculum, and finance. It questions the notion that educational restructuring is necessary for the purpose of improving economic competitiveness. Wigginton, a rural educator, proposes that the aims of education should be: (1) to provide a firm grounding in the basic skills; (2) to…