One of a series to aid facilitators who train rural career guidance program staff, this module emphasizes the importance of planning in the development of a comprehensive career guidance program. A conceptual model for a planning and implementation cycle is presented, examined, and applied to the initial steps of program planning. Topics addressed…

The transparency masters appearing in 14 modules in the "Facilitator's Guide to Staff Training for the Rural America Series" have been compiled in this document to facilitate their duplication and to insure the integrity of the entire system by placing an extra copy of each transparency in a binder for easy access. The masters are in the…

The history of Arizona public schooling had a modest beginning in 1864 when the first Territorial Legislature allotted $1,500 to five existing mission schools. The third territorial governor, Anson P. K. Safford, launched a crusade to establish public schools, and by 1877 there were 28. The 1885 Legislature authorized the founding of a Territorial…

This collection of conference papers covers various aspects of rural education in changing times. The conference focused on changes and innovations in rural education and on reasons why rural educators can be optimistic. The proceedings report includes brief papers and workshop summaries on topics ranging from rural public relations to…

This study examines the effects of recent statewide education reforms on small, rural schools in 13 Appalachian states. Education reform measures passed in the Appalachian states during 1982-1987 focused on improving schools through the following major approaches: (1) increased accountability through testing students and changing accreditation…

Contributions of rural high schools to their local economic climate are both underestimated and undervalued. Functions that high schools can and should perform in rural economic development today include providing occupational training to meet immediate labor market needs, raising community educational attainment levels to meet long-term…

Faced with declining enrollments and increased costs, Iowa's Corwith-Wesley and Lu Verne School Districts are seeking solution through utilizing provisions of the Iowa Code which allow for co-curricular sharing and dissolution of one school district with attachment to another. Beginning in 1980-81, the two small districts are sending grades 7-9 to…

Addressing the problems of recruiting and retaining qualified teachers for small and rural schools, this digest outlines improvements that could be made by teacher education programs, state education agencies, school superintendents, and teachers themselves. Suggested guidelines for teacher education programs stress nontraditional approaches that…

Attention is being directed to telecommunications and computer technologies as a possible way of delivering education to small rural schools in a cost-effective way. Characteristics of new technology and environmental changes having particular relevance for rural schools include the abilities to transcend space, network, redefine learning as…

Begun in 1978 to provide Queensland's South-West and Central Priority Country schools with a comprehensive maintenance and repair service for most audio-visual equipment, the Technical Maintenance Officer Service (TMO) serves 76 schools with total enrollment exceeding 13,000 pupils dispersed over a 469,000 square kilometer area. Two trained…

Oneonta and the campus of the State University have been the principal home of the Saturday Seminar Program from its beginning in 1958. Oneonta is the center of a sparsely-settled rural region of New York and the area has many small schools with an average size, K-12, of about 400. Since smaller enrollments often limit the range of course…

The time period and the pioneer conditions that existed when north central and northwestern North Dakota were settled determined the type of rural schools that were established there. Those areas were settled between 1885 and 1910. Most of the settlers in that area of the state were of Scandinavian (particularly Norwegian) extraction. The vast…

Political organization is an alternative to the so-called inevitability of losing one's rural school or one's small community; People United for Rural Education (P.U.R.E.), organized to promote the survival of rural schools and the concept of rural as a credible way of life, has been an effective political organization. The reversal of urban…

The movement toward school consolidation was triggered by James Bryant Conant's contention that larger schools are more efficient and offer more comprehensive programs. Many studies seem to support the claim that larger schools are cheaper to operate. Yet problems with these studies include wide variation in the minimum, optimum, and maximum sizes…

Dissatisfaction with the quality of education in large elementary and secondary schools has been one of the factors leading to rediscovery of the small school in America. The question is whether small schools are truly better places for educating elementary and secondary students. Although often viewed as being essentially rural in nature, small…