December 2011 Archives

I started writing this blog near the end of April, so we're a bit shy of having a full year to review. But the past eight months have been chock-full of breaking news, interesting research and complex issues.

Our fantastic Web folks tracked down the posts you read most, and here are your Top 10:

10. Rural School a Step Closer To Obama Speaking At Graduation
This was a relatively short entry on small, rural Bridgeport High School, in Bridgeport, Wash., being one of three finalists in the the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. The reason for all the interest? President Obama would speak at the winning school's graduation. However, the White House ended up choosing Booker T. Washington High School, in Memphis, Tenn., as the winner.

9. Rural School Relies On Agriculture, Attracts National Attention
When I first wrote about the Walton Rural Life Center in rural Walton, Kan., I said it was one of the most innovative rural schools I'd seen. That still holds true. The once-struggling school reinvented itself as a hands-on, agriculture-focused charter school, and that's led to increased enrollment and improved test scores. Students learn reading and math by growing vegetables in a greenhouse and caring for farm animals such as chickens and goats. How cool?!

8. Rural Schools Hurt By Title I Funding Formula
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, issue tackled by rural education advocates in 2011 was changing the way federal Title I funds are distributed. They say the current formula hurts small, poor districts by giving more money to districts with high concentrations of student poverty. This post about their main advocacy effort, the Formula Fairness campaign, offered a detailed analysis showing nearly one out of four school districts with the highest poverty rate nationally would be better off if the formula for distributing that money made no effort to target high-poverty districts. The campaign has rallied a number of co-sponsors to legislation that would address the issue, called the All Children are Equal Act. The House Education and the Workforce Committee likely will consider the proposal after Congress reconvenes in January, according to the Formula Fairness campaign.

7. How Rural Students Use and Perceive Their Libraries
The post ranking at No. 7 was about a research article that focused more on library usage as a general issue, rather than how that was different for rural schools. In fact, the rural angle of the study was the participants, and the findings weren't relegated to rural schools. Researchers wanted to know whether and how students were using libraries, as well as their perceptions of the library's strengths and weaknesses. I assume this post's primary readers were media specialists.

6. Making Data-Driven Decisions in Rural Schools
Modern federal and state accountability systems require educators to look at student test scores now more than ever, and this post summarized a webinar on using data to support instructional decisions. The presentation was one in a series relative to the needs of rural educators, so it had a strong rural angle. It included five recommendations for districts, saying the most difficult one for rural schools to implement would be developing district-wide data systems.

5. Rural Schools, Brain Drain and Community Survival
The No. 5 and No. 4 entries were separated by less than 10 page views. This post is related to an issue that appears twice in our Top 5—rural students' college enrollment rates, which are lower than any other geographic area (and the national average). The post described the findings of research on the role schools play in the "brain drain" phenomenon, in which the most talented rural residents leave in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Interestingly, researchers found schools were not only agents of brain drain, but they also reinforced social boundaries.

4. Study: Poor, Rural Families Need Support for Special Needs Students
I try to feature as much rural education-related research as I can, and this study was one that gave some advice to rural educators working with special needs or low-income students. This study originally was published in 2003 but appeared in a spring 2011 issue of the Rural Special Education Quarterly, which is published by the American Council on Rural Special Education. The top three tips? Provide special programs for female students with disabilities, consider the hardships of low-income families when creating family involvement programs, and advocate for anti-poverty programs.

3. Defining Disrespect From Rural Teachers' Perspective
Coming in third was a post on the way rural teachers define disrespect and the implications that has for training them to manage student behavior. It featured a study published in Rural Special Education Quarterly on a rural Ohio district with five schools. They talked about the need to further study the behaviors teachers most frequently cited as disrespectful so better training could be provided to manage those.

2. Rural Superintendents Share Financial Success Secrets
It doesn't surprise me that this post landed at No. 2. Is there any rural school leader who doesn't want to know how to improve his/her district's finances? Rural schools nationally struggle with finances for a myriad of reasons: they lack economies of scale, and funding formulas often are based on enrollment, which typically is lower in rural areas. This post detailed a study on a group of successful, rural Texas superintendent who shared their strategies to stretch limited resources.

1. How Two Rural Schools Prepare Kids for College, Part 1
This post had more than double the number of page views as the second most-read post, and I'm certain that's because it was featured in a newsletter published by ASCD, formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which is an educational leadership organization. The post highlighted an online discussion hosted by the American Youth Policy Forum on the success strategies of two rural schools. I concentrated on Patton Springs School in Afton, Texas, which has a 100 percent graduation rate and enables students to finish with up to 30 college credits. The broader issue of lower college enrollment rates for students from rural areas was one of the most significant we've covered this past year, and we'll look for more ways to do so in 2012.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!

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Hope you're enjoying this festive time of year! The following are a few rural education stories I wanted to share with you this week.

Rural School Districts Suffering From Bus Transportation Cuts
California became the first state in the country earlier this month to cut all transportation funding for public schools, and rural district leaders say their students will be the ones hardest hit.

California Gov. Jerry Brown slashed bus transportation to help solve the state's budget crisis, and the change takes effect the second half of the school year.

As you can imagine, rural school leaders are devastated. Bus transportation is a critical, and costly expense, for rural districts where students live in far-out areas, and the cuts will disproportionately hurt those children (the reduction equals the amount districts would have received in state busing money), according to an article in The Sacramento Bee. Urban districts might have reserves or a backup transportation plan; many rural districts do not, according to an Associated Press story.

Eighteen percent of the state's students ride a bus to school, but that figure is as high as 90 percent in rural areas, according to The Sacramento Bee. The paper reports one school saying it would lose about one-fourth of its students if it stopped busing, while another said its children would have to spend at least 1 1/2 hours on the road if another bus were eliminated.

The state's largest school district has filed a lawsuit to block the cuts, and the Small School Districts Association plans to lobby lawmakers to restore transportation funding in January. We'll do our best to keep you posted on the fallout.

Virtual Learning Helps Rural Residents
Rural school districts nationally have been contacting a Maine adult and community education center to learn about a Virtual Learning Center launched a little more than a year ago, according to a story in The Bangor Daily News in Maine.

Those in Regional School Unit 3's family literacy program are spread across 11 rural towns and 440 square miles, so attending an adult education class in-person can mean a lengthy commute. The Virtual Learning Center has solved that problem for some.

The family literacy program has been the recipient of a $25,000 grant from the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, and visitors to it include the former first lady's secretary and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The Maine Department of Education has more information on how this Virtual Learning Center works.

Grant Opportunities For Native American Education Programs Announced
The federal government is accepting grant applications from school districts that want to reform and improve school programs for Native American students. Application deadlines begin Jan. 9, and awards will be made in July.

Officials expect to distribute more than $100 million in grants, and they're looking to fund "comprehensive programs that address the language and cultural needs of Indian students, including professional development for teachers of Indian students, and that are designed to help Indian students meet the same state academic content and student academic achievement standards used for all students," according to a description of the grant.

There's a second grant opportunity relative to Native American students, and you can read more about it here.

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Colorado's rural schools have been in the limelight this month after a court ruled the state's education funding system is flawed, and the state education department created a new council to focus on rural schools' needs.

Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport ruled Dec. 9 on the Lobato v. State of Colorado case, which involves 21 mostly rural school districts and parents who are challenging the way the state distributes money to its public schools. Rappaport found the state's education system was "irrational and inadequate" and violates the state's constitution; plaintiffs have estimated the system is underfunded by up to $4 billion, according to an Associated Press article. Rappaport directed lawmakers to create a funding system to fulfill constitutional requirements, and the case likely will be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

[UPDATED (2:30 p.m.): Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper announced today the state will appeal the trial court ruling, saying "the judge's decision provided little practical guidance on how the state should fund a 'thorough and uniform' system of public education." Read the full story here.]

The same day of Rappaport's ruling, the Colorado Department of Education announced the establishment of a new Rural Education Council to oversee, support, research, and advocate for the needs of rural schools. Department officials said it formed the council in response to research, "A Rural Needs Study: Improving CDE Services to Rural School Districts"; the study's chief recommendation was organizing this kind of council to oversee a statewide plan for rural education.

The 17-member council is made up of eight rural superintendents from different regions of the state, as well as local school board members, teachers, and principals. A majority of the state's districts—142 districts, out of 178—are classified as rural, and they enroll 20 percent of the state's 843,316 students, according to a story in The Gazette, in Colorado Springs, Co.

The Rural Needs Study by Phil Fox and David Van Sant that sparked the council highlighted eight problems and numerous potential solutions for rural districts. Those included:
• initiative fatigue (solution: two-year moratorium on new initiatives)
• reporting and data overload (solution: streamline data requests to match rural capacities)
• fear of state consolidation (solution: modify state law to allow voluntary consolidation for certain-sized districts)
• no voice at the Colorado Department of Education (solution: create new position, assistant commissioner for rural districts, to oversee those schools)
• problematic teacher license process (solution: computerize and simplify it)
• improving staff development (solution: expand state's role in staff training)
• challenges of staff recruitment and retention (solution: provide incentives to help rural districts attract and keep good teachers)
• need for inter-district cooperation (solution: lead and encourage districts to do so).

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Frontier schools, or modern versions of one-room schoolhouses, struggle financially because of low enrollment, but they manage to keep their doors open by operating multi-grade classrooms and making their buildings integral parts of the community, according to a new study.

The fall issue of The Rural Educator, the official journal of the National Rural Education Association, featured an article about this topic, "Challenges and Sustainability Practices of Frontier Schools in Montana." The full research report is available on the Montana Small Schools Alliance Web site. The article in the journal won't be available online for at least a couple of months.

The Montana Small Schools Alliance commissioned the study on frontier schools, which are more specifically defined as a school districts with 200 students or fewer in communities with five or fewer people per square mile. In Montana, 42 of its 56 counties fit that description.

Nationally, the percentage of elementary students in public schools with fewer than 200 students is highest in rural areas at 10.4 percent, and that's at least three times more than any other geographic area, according to the study.

Researchers Claudette Morton, of the Montana Small Schools Alliance, and Hobart Harmon, an independent consultant, surveyed teachers, administrators and school board chairs in 141 frontier Montana school districts. They also held six meetings with community supporters of the schools from February 2009 through April 2010.

More than three-fourths of the surveyed districts enrolled 75 or fewer students, and nearly one-third were made mostly of low-income students. It's interesting to note that 24 percent said they had no students eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, a federal program based on poverty, and that's possibly because those schools did not offer a lunch program, according to the study. Many frontier schools don't have a kitchen or cafeteria.

School officials said the top five challenges they faced included:
• low student enrollment (28.3 percent ranked it as most important);
• inadequate financial resources (9.4 percent ranked it as most important);
• unrealistic federal expectations (9.4 percent ranked it as most important);
• academically unmotivated students (4.7 percent ranked it as most important);
• mixed grade levels of students (4.7 percent ranked it as most important).

Most said low enrollment was a problem because fewer students translated into less funding, elimination of staff, and possible school closure or consolidation. Those who cited inadequate financial resources said a lack of money affected everything from the physical buildings to the district's overall ability to provide programs for all students, and that unrealistic federal expectations elicited concerns about over-emphasis on testing and a general preference for local control.

The challenges noted least frequently were: student use of illegal drugs (2.5 percent); meeting teacher certification requirements (5.5 percent) and student use of alcohol (5.9 percent).

Researchers grouped the practices that helped keep these small schools alive into four categories: general operations, staffing, fiscal, and distance-learning technology. For general operations, 67.9 percent of school officials said operating multi-grade classrooms helped keep their schools open, while 41.9 percent said using school buildings for important community events did so. In terms of staffing, making special in-service opportunities available and creating partnerships with other districts were among the top practices.

Frontier schools formed consortia of districts to leverage purchasing power, and they sought bids and comparison pricing to stretch their dollars. Finally, rural districts used distance-learning technology to deliver professional development and provide enrichment opportunities for students.

"Educators and other residents live on the frontier because they identify with and want to contribute to this unique way of life, but increasingly they face challenges that attract little attention from those who could help provide meaningful solutions," according to the study. "Frontier schools are an important segment of public education that deserve the urgent attention of policymakers, researchers, technical assistance providers and private foundations."

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More than 40 public and private groups are joining forces in what officials are calling an unprecedented effort to turn around one of the country's worst rural school districts, and some hope to use it as a model for improving other rural schools.

Reconnecting McDowell centers on McDowell County schools, a roughly 3,600 student district in West Virginia's southernmost county that has continued to struggle since a state takeover 10 years ago. Its schools have the worst dropout rate in the state and among the lowest test scores in reading, science, and math.

The five-year plan organized by the American Federation of Teachers aims to transform schools by also addressing related issues such as poverty, substance abuse, and outdated infrastructure. The plans sound somewhat similar to the Harlem Children's Zone in that schools will become access sites for social and health services for students and their families, according to an Associated Press story.

Why McDowell County? The state's former First Lady, Gayle Manchin, also serves as vice president of the West Virginia Board of Education, and she made numerous appeals to the American Federation of Teachers for help.

As in other rural areas, technology is a challenge in parts of McDowell, with some places lacking even dial-up access to the Internet. The project will expand broadband and cell phone coverage through its partners, all of whom will contribute something of value, such as money, products, services or expertise.

Those leading the effort didn't set out measurable goals, but the covenant says they will find ways to gauge progress. Organizers also didn't give financial estimates on what it would take to transform McDowell, and the only specific contributions outlined thus far include:
• Frontier Communications: providing $100,000 to work with Globaloria, a nonprofit that combines social networking and learning with technology, on online learning projects;
• AFT Educational Foundation: committed $150,000 for the planning process;
• First Book, a nonprofit that connects book publishers to needy students: promised to provide books for every county child for at least three years. The AFT and its staff will give $14,000 to immediately provide a book for every McDowell child and fund a library makeover for one school;
• The Pittsburgh, Penn.-based Benedum Foundation: providing a $100,000 planning grant.

Expect to see planning for the next six months, and education initiatives beginning in the 2012-13 school year.

If you want to read more coverage on Reconnecting McDowell, check out The Charleston Gazette in Charleston, W. Va., or The Washingon Post.

[UPDATED (Dec. 22): U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a statement today applauding the "groundbreaking educational public-private partnership" in McDowell County. He called it a "great example of how union-management collaboration and leading non-profits can come together to push for dramatic improvements in education." If you want to read Duncan's full statement, go here.]

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Stories have been cropping up this past week about rural schools receiving federal money to improve their distance-learning offerings, and most of it's coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program.

Federal officials announced 100 distance learning and telemedicine grants last week that would go to 34 states and one territory to better those services.

The Cincinnati Enquirer ran a story about three rural districts in Northern Kentucky that received nearly $500,000 to create a collaborative distance-learning system, enabling them to share classes as one large virtual school and offer a wider array of courses.

The Bangor Daily News in Bangor, Maine reported its $3.4 million grant will touch all of the state's 16 counties. The money for schools will help pay for curricula on wind, solar energy, and "green" agriculture, and it will pay for adult learners to have statewide access to the Maine Adult Education Consortium, which offers classes to improve their skills and find better jobs.

In addition, five Alaska school districts will share part of $2.3 million to improve opportunities for Native-Alaskan students living in rural villages accessible only by boat or plane, according to the Alaska Dispatch in Anchorage, Alaska.

We just reported on how technology can be a game-changer for rural schools if they can overcome the challenges of implementing it, so this money surely is welcome news for many communities.

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Technology can give rural students access to teachers and classes they otherwise wouldn't have, but remote schools often struggle with a lack of infrastructure, money, and technology proficient leaders.

A new article, "Remote Technology in Rural Schools," takes a deeper look at some of those hurdles and the innovative solutions schools have found to overcome them. The story, by Dan Gordon, appeared in the October issue of T.H.E Journal, an education technology news magazine for K-12 district leaders, IT personnel and administrators. The piece appears to be available only to subscribers.

It's the second in a two-part series on "how schools in different types of communities meet the challenge of implementing technology." The first story focused on urban schools and appeared in the September issue of T.H.E. Journal.

For many rural districts, infrastructure, including little or no access to broadband or the Internet, is among their biggest problems. The article cites a report published this summer, Bringing Broadband to Rural America, that found 28 percent of rural Americans lacked access to broadband, which was a percentage nine times bigger than the 3 percent who lack access in non-rural areas.

Rural schools also are less likely to have full-time tech-savvy leaders, with only 36 percent of rural districts reporting they had such staff members compared to 79 percent of city districts, according to a 2008 U.S. Department of Education report. Twenty-three percent of rural districts didn't have any sort of technology leader.

The article goes on to talk about a couple of technology-related partnerships between rural districts and universities, such as Vanderbilt University's Aspirnaut program that includes a "one-room school on wheels" where students use laptops to work on STEM content during lengthy bus commutes. The program has expanded beyond the bus to 10 rural districts in Arkansas and Maine.

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The White House has announced a new initiative to expand and improve educational opportunities for American Indian and Alaska Native students, and leaders of those communities welcome the news.

The president signed an executive order earlier this month to give those students more opportunities to learn their native languages, cultures, and histories and to receive an education that prepares them for college and a career.

Last week, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the appointment of William Mendoza to lead the newly created White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education. Mendoza, an Oglala and Sicangu Lakota, is a former teacher and principal who has been working as a director and senior advisor to the secretary on American Indian and Alaska Native education policies.

In a press release, Mendoza said the initiative will work to identify ways for dropouts to re-enter education or training programs, acquire industry-recognized certifications, and find jobs. He also wants to expand access to high-quality education programs, especially in STEM fields.

"We're working hard to reduce the American Indian and Alaska Native student dropout rate and making sure students who stay in high school are ready to start their career by the time they complete college," Mendoza said. "The Obama Administration is also committed to strengthening the capacity of [Tribal Colleges and Universities], which play an important role, often serving as anchors in some of the country's most remote areas."

Recent studies have shown show that a wide achievement gap exists between American Indian and Alaska Native students and the rest of the country. They have a higher dropout rate than any other ethnic group, and many native languages are on the verge of extinction. American Indian and Alaska Native students often live in the country's poorest and remote areas.

Reaction to the initiative was positive. The Indian Country Today Media Network, a national platform for natives, based in New York City, reported that two U.S. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Dan Boren, D-Okla., the ranking member of the panel's Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs, praised the administration for its effort.

"The Obama administration is stepping up efforts to keep more students in Indian Country from dropping out, and indeed thriving in educational settings," Markey said in the article. "From Newtonian calculus to Native culture, the educational system in tribal communities must better serve the scholars of the future, and this initiative should help."

The North Kitsap Herald in Poulsbo, Wash., reported Suquamish Chairman Leonard Forsman was among the 565 tribal representatives who heard the news during the Tribal Nations Conference, and he said in the article he appreciated the opportunity to meet with high-ranking government leaders. He credited Obama's administration with numerous accomplishments in Indian country.

"We haven't had a president before provide this much access with tribal leaders," he said in the article.

The story also reports Obama was adopted by the Crow Nation in 2008 and given the name "One Who Helps People Throughout the Land."

Earlier this month, the White House also recognized 11 Native American leaders among its "Champions of Change" for finding unique ways to address challenges in their communities. Their accomplishments include starting suicide prevention programs, preserving traditions and languages, preventing bullying, and building safer communities.

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A study about improving rural students' reading skills published earlier this year has prompted a series of four responses both criticizing and supporting its findings.

Three of the four responses already have been published in the Journal of Research in Rural Education, and the fourth is expected early 2012.

We wrote in June about the study creating all this debate, "Increasing Reading Skills in Rural Areas: An Analysis of Three School Districts," by Jean Stockard, the director of research at the National Institute for Direct Instruction and Professor Emerita at the University of Oregon.

The debate revolves mostly around Direct Instruction, a "model for teaching that emphasizes well-developed and carefully planned lessons designed around small learning increments and clearly defined and prescribed teaching tasks. It is based on the theory that clear instruction eliminating misinterpretations can greatly improve and accelerate learning," according to the National Institute for Direct Instruction's Web site.

This isn't the first time the Direct Instruction model has been criticized since its development in the 1960s. One study found it not to be as effective as traditional methods that allow teachers more flexibility, but that study wasn't consistent with at least 20 others that have showed it to be effective, according to Wikipedia.

Stockard's initial study involved districts implementing Reading Mastery, a highly structured and explicit reading curriculum using Direct Instruction. Those districts received intensive support and guidance from the National Institute for Direct Instruction. She compared the test scores of students in those districts who had the curriculum since kindergarten to students who began it in later years, as well as to samples of students statewide and nationally. The students who had the lessons since kindergarten outscored the other groups through the early elementary years.

The first article in the journal's response series is "Reading Mastery as Pedagogy of Erasure," by Karen Eppley, of Pennsylvania State University-Altoona. Eppley criticizes Stockard's work, primarily as it relates to Direct Instruction. Eppley contends Direct Instruction "deskills teachers" and cites other studies that have said "Direct Instruction teachers are not to function as transformative intellectuals who educate students to be thoughtful and active citizens but instead are specialized technicians whose job is to manage and implement curriculum."

Eppley's article says Reading Mastery, by requiring teachers to follow a script of instruction, forces teachers to ignore any possible links to their students' lives and assume their children bring no relevant knowledge to the classroom. The article also says it's a flawed methodology to compare students who had some intervention with those who had nothing and then fail to describe what the "nothing" involved.

Finally, Eppley draws the conclusion that Stockard believes the answer to improving rural schools' reading is to standardize and decontextualize the teaching of reading so that it eliminates any rural context.

Stockard responds to Eppley's work in the second article of the series, "Enhancing Achievement in Rural Schools: A Reply to Eppley." She sums up her position in her second sentence: "[Eppley's] paper contains numerous statements that misrepresent both the content of my original paper and the social science literature as well as a number of provocative philosophical comments."

Stockard encourages readers to read her actual paper rather than Eppley's summation because "her characterizations bear almost no resemblance to the actual content of the paper." Stockard says Eppley's claim that her paper suggests teachers intentionally avoid making connections to children "appear to be fabrications and included only to help support her polemics and cast aspersions." Stockard also says she doesn't explicitly recommend Reading Mastery curriculum as the answer to rural students' reading problems.

She contends Eppley's critique of her methodological error is "patent nonsense," and in reference to the rigid structure of Direct Instruction and its alleged erasing or ignoring cultural identity, Stockard says that's an "obtuse discussion" unsupported by research.

The third paper in the series comes from a colleague of Stockard's and one of the creators of the Direct Instruction model, Siegfried Engelmann. The article, Critique and Erasure: Responding to Eppley's "Reading Mastery as Pegagogy of Erasure," says Eppley's arguments and conclusions are not "merely unsupported by facts; they generate conclusions that are the opposite of what the facts show."

If Eppley were correct, teachers easily would be able to ignore students' backgrounds and follow a script to achieve great reform with at-risk students. But that is not so. The article continues its defense of Direct Instruction, saying Eppley "wants to believe that direct instruction teachers are inferior, without a shred of data, and she wants to believe that the teachers do not treat individual children as individuals, regardless of what the data show."

Stay tuned early next year for the final paper in this series.

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Rural Alaska teachers will attend cultural immersion camps to help them better understand the remote Native villages where they will work as part of a new federal grant.

An Associated Press story describes the program that's being funded by the $1.92 million federal Department of Education grant.

The three-year initiative will be developed by the Rose Urban Rural Exchange program, which has been overseeing Alaska Native culture camps for urban educators for more than 10 years. These new cultural immersion camps will target rural educators, and the first week-long program will be held next summer for 30 teachers. Teachers also will go through a three-day cultural orientation.

The camps will introduce teachers to the new and often unfamiliar cultures of their students, as well as prepare them for communities that traditionally have distrusted outsiders, according to the story. Teachers will be assigned mentors through the University of Alaska to help them apply what they've learned in the classroom.

The hope is that teachers who better understand the villages where they work will develop stronger relationships with students and better ways of communicating with them and their families.

According to the story, the annual turnover rate in rural Alaska schools can be as high as 35 percent, compared with urban rates as low as 5 percent. Factors contributing to the high turnover include geographic isolation, high cost of living and pressure to improve low test scores.

"Cultural differences can add to the challenge. Alaska Natives living a subsistence lifestyle might think it's more important for a student to go hunting and put food on the family's table or to attend the funeral of an esteemed elder in another village than to skip such crucial events for a day in school," according to the story.

This story left me wanting to know more. It doesn't describe what has taken place in the camps for urban educators, or how that would be different in the ones for rural teachers. How will they determine whether these rural educator cultural immersion camps are successful? And is this a concept that's unique to Alaska, or are there other sites in the U.S. where this is happening?

Regardless, it's an interesting concept, for sure.

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Rural schools can support first-year, career-changing teachers by helping them adjust to their new communities and encouraging them to develop mentors, according to a new study.

"Career Changers as First-Year Teachers in Rural Schools" studied four career-changing first-year teachers in rural schools, and the Journal of Research in Rural Education published its authors' findings.

"The challenges new teachers face, the complexity of teaching in rural schools, and issues unique to career-changing teachers are all well documented in the literature," according to the study. "However, the relationships between these three dimensions are less well-understood."

Authors Sara Winstead Fry and Holly Anderson of Boise State University used that to guide their research. They didn't identify the names or locations of the teachers, but they did interview each participant at least three times as well observe their classrooms and informally communicate with their principals.

Each teacher studied completed a nontraditional, postbaccalaureate teaching-certification program at a metropolitan university in the Northwest. The unidentified state mostly is made of small towns and remote regions, so many new teachers find their first teaching jobs in rural areas.

The article cited isolation as one of the key factors that makes it difficult for rural districts to recruit and retain teachers, saying that often can be more profound in remote areas. And when nontraditional teachers begin in rural classrooms, the unique challenges and characteristics of rural schools may surprise them. The study says these teachers must understand their new school and the surrounding community.

The following excerpt explained why:

"The people who live in rural areas often have deep attachments to their communities (Woodrum, 2009), with their schools standing as important symbols of the community. Effective teaching (Eppley, 2009) and leadership (Budge, 2006) in rural areas require that educators recognize and respect this unique sociological dynamic. Teacher-preparation programs that place significant numbers of preservice teachers in rural communities do these individuals a disservice without substantial focus on rural conditions (Barley, 2009) and place consciousness (White & Reid, 2008)."

Some of the recommendations from the study include:

• Teacher education programs should offer new teachers a more practical analysis of school culture, such as the social dynamics of rural schools, and emphasize the importance of understanding the community. Colleges with a large number of graduates who go to work in rural areas also should offer coursework or workshops about rural conditions;
• Rural school leaders should guide first-year teachers on how to present new ideas in ways that will be welcomed by the community, as well as support them if resistance arises;
• Teacher education programs should introduce career-changing teachers to the benefits of mentoring and collegial relationships;
• Rural schools should offer formal mentoring programs or, if that's not possible, promote collegiality and encourage teachers to develop unofficial mentoring relationships; and
• Rural school leaders should actively work to familiarize new teachers with explicit teaching expectations, as well as the more subtle social and community expectations.

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Developing a first-rate curriculum, attracting and retaining high-quality teachers, and addressing declining enrollment are the top three issues facing small, rural Illinois superintendents, according to a new study.

The results of "Issues Illinois Rural and Small Schools are Facing" are described in an article in The Pantagraph, a daily newspaper in Bloomington, Ill. The actual study doesn't appear to be online, but it was presented at the National Rural Education Association convention and research symposium in October and at the Illinois School Board Convention in November.

The study was led by three rural school superintendents with the goal of uniting their rural peers and giving them a voice. They asked 704 Illinois schools with enrollments of 2,500 or less to complete their survey, and 135 rural superintendents with an average of 666 students responded.

Twenty-one percent of rural respondents listed "curricular opportunities" as the top issue they faced, while 9 percent cited "quality staff" and 8 percent said "declining enrollment."

Here's some of what was said about the top three concerns:

• Curriculum: "Small schools want to offer a variety of quality curriculum, including advanced placement classes, and high-level math, science, and English programs. But small class sizes and resource costs make it difficult. Sharing curriculum with other districts, especially in areas such as foreign language, music, special education, and college classes, was favored by 54 survey respondents," according to the article. The most remote districts have the most difficult time sharing resources, the survey also found.

• Teachers: Rural schools need high-quality teachers who often can teach multiple and different courses, but it's difficult to attract and retain them. The article cited one school that's trying to find a replacement for a retiring high school teacher who teaches home economics, geography, and Spanish.

• Enrollment: Because Illinois' funding formula is based on enrollment, declining student populations mean less money for smaller districts. And less money carries consequences. One school district cited in the article said some of the nearby residents are petitioning not to build a new elementary school because of decreasing enrollment and possible consolidation.

The research study's authors—Tami J. Roskamp, Mary N. Parker, and Gary DePatis—have applied for a $3 million, three-year federal grant to study new ways on how schools can share resources to teach students.

Other concerns that respondents ranked high included adequate funding; providing technology, transportation, and professional development; and the threat of consolidations.

Posted by Diette Courrégé Casey at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Hispanic communities are on the rise in rural towns throughout the Great Plains, while across the country, Hispanic educators are hard to find.

Two stories, one in the New York Times and another in the Washington Post, talk about those trends separately, with the latter delving into the implications for schools.

The New York Times article, Hispanics Reviving Faded Towns on the Plains, explored the phenomena of the increasing number of Hispanic families in America's heartland in states such as Kansas, Montana and Nebraska.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

"For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains, including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one of exodus -- of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another demographic trend has breathed new life into the region.

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave."

The article highlights the small, rural town of Ulysses, Kan., where about half of the 6,161 residents now are Hispanic. And across the rural western half of Kansas, most counties have seen double-digit growth in Hispanic populations, according to the story.

One Kansas-born Princeton professor interviewed talks about how this could be the future for many rural communities in the Great Plains.

The story doesn't delve into what this means for schools, although it does mention one Kansas town, Bazine, that closed its high school a few years ago and was contemplating doing the same to its elementary school. The increase in Hispanic families has caused a spike in its population growth—the first time that's grown in more than 50 years—and its school enrollment is on the rise.

The other story in The Washington Post, With Hispanic students on the rise, Hispanic teachers in short supply, doesn't focus on rural schools, but it does talk about the severe shortage of Hispanic teachers and what that means for students.

According to the story, more than 21 percent of students are Hispanic, compared to 7 percent of teachers, making it the widest gap for any racial or ethnic minority groups. And the percentage of Hispanic students is expected to continue growing. Why does that matter?

"Research suggests that a more diverse faculty might lead to better attendance, fewer suspensions and higher test scores," according to the story.

Schools struggle to find Hispanic teachers, a challenge that's likely more difficult for rural communities that already have a hard time hiring high-quality educators.

I'd be curious to know more about what rural schools in the Great Plains are doing in response to the growth in Hispanic students, as well as how (or whether) they're trying to hire Hispanic educators.

Posted by Diette Courrégé Casey at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend