Education reforms that have proven effective in urban areas might not see the same results in rural schools, particularly those involving single-gender education.

That's one of the key findings of a new study, "Female-only classes in a rural context: Self-concept, achievement, and discourse," published in the Journal of Research in Rural Education.

The study's authors say rural educators need to consider their local context when implementing reforms, and they wrote that factors such as community support and the availability of resources can affect results.

"For example, the level of community support for the education reform itself in this study was not strong, which is of particular importance for tight-knit rural communities," they wrote. "In urban and more ethnically diverse communities, single-gender classes have been embraced for both male and female students as a way to curb the lack of academic success. However, in this rural community, parents of male students were hesitant to embrace single-gender classes."

The year-long qualitative study of three 6th grade classes in a rural east Texas community aimed to look at the effects of female-only classes on reading and math achievement, discourse, and academic self-concept (or the perception of one's competency) when compared to peers in co-ed classes.

The study's authors said little research has focused on single-gender education in a rural context, and they expected different results from urban settings.

The middle schools with the all-female classes hoped to boost students' test scores, but the study found those classes didn't accomplish that, nor did they improve students' college attainment or expectations.

And, unlike other studies that showed single-gender education either had a positive or no affect on female students' self concept, this study found students in all-female classes had a lower self-concept and no difference in achievement. Still, all-female classes demonstrated higher levels of complex thinking in classroom discussions, and they engaged in more conversation overall.

"This finding indicates a need for carefully controlled studies of single-gender classrooms in a variety of contexts, including rural districts," according to the study.

The study's authors noted that because this program only was implemented in one school district, their findings should not be generalized to other rural communities.

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South Dakota law has required school districts with fewer than 100 students to reorganize, but a change in state law gives districts a new way to avoid that fate.

Schools that agree to share resources, such as teachers and superintendents, no longer will be forced to consolidate or shutter, according to the legislationsigned by Gov. Dennis Daugaard in March.

The brains behind the legislation was Dennis Goodwin,the superintendent of the Platte-Geddes Community School District #11-5. He wrote in a blog post earlier this year that he knew in November that his district would have to find solutions to deal with its funding shortfalls; an effort to add a 1 percent sales tax to non-farm items statewide was voted down at that time. Meanwhile, the school district's spending was flat while its revenue fell. His district enrolls 437 students.

Goodwin worked on a plan to "integrate" districts, which would allow districts to cut costs and, in some cases, to prevent consolidation. He presented his proposal to the state's secretary of education, and lawmakers proposed a bill by December. Top-level staff, such as superintendents and business managers, would be shared, and as teachers retired or resigned, their spots would be filled with teachers from another district who would provide instruction online. The changes would only apply to high schools.

He called it the "integrated model," and he proposed pioneering it with other districts.

"The integrated model allows for those small school districts to stay open and keep their schools in those communities," he wrote. "They benefit from the other school districts by sharing resources and adopting identical curriculum, as all of the districts will have within the integrated group."

Four districts, including Platte-Geddes, plan to consider sharing teachers this fall, but no administrators will be shared. One of those districts, South Central, has just 22 students more than the state-required minimum.

Goodwin, who has been superintendent for one year, will be leaving his South Dakota job for a Minnesota school district, according to a story in The Argus Leader, which has followed this issue closely. Goodwin told the newspaper he decided to move to be closer to his wife, who lived in that area.

Dan Guericke, of the Mid-Central Education Cooperative in Platte will take the lead in helping South Dakota school districts looking to expand their collaboration.

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One North Carolina school choice advocacy group is pushing to create more charter schools in rural counties.

Like most states, North Carolina's charter schools are clustered in urban areas. Eighty-five of the state's 100 counties are rural, and only 37 of those have charter schools. That means 48 rural North Carolina counties don't have a public charter option. Nationally, only 16 percent of all charter schools are rural, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, which supports both private and public school choice, created the N.C. Public Charter School Accelerator program, and one of its goals is creating charter schools in rural areas. Other priorities include helping charter schools win approval to open, and provide high-quality instruction.

Stan Chambers, media relations director for the group, said although funding has increased in some of the state's rural counties in recent years, achievement in many rural areas has been stagnant. The accelerator initially is targeting 16 counties in the eastern part of the state, and only half of those 3rd through 8th grade students on average passed end-of-grade reading and math tests, according to Chambers.

Although the state's charter schools office hosts workshops to help interested groups get through the application process, it doesn't have the resources to offer the intensive help the accelerator will be providing, according to one story on the project. The effort is modeled on similar programs in Chicago, Denver, and New Orleans, which target under-served students in urban areas; the North Carolina accelerator is distinctive in its focus on rural areas.

An intern with Parents for Educational Freedom wrote in arecent op-ed for The Daily Tarheel in Chapel Hill, N.C., that more rural charter schools would give families options and spur economic development in the state's 85 rural counties.

Still, this effort might draw criticism from some rural advocates. Charter schools often receive state and local per pupil allocations for its students. The Rural School and Community Trust has said that means traditional neighborhood schools suffer when students leave for a charter school.

"For example, a charter with a few hundred, or even several thousand, students might not make a big difference in the ability of a large school district to offer programs for students. But that same charter could trigger the loss of a devastating proportion of a small district's budget," according to the Rural Trust.

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One rural Kansas district had only one name on the school board ballot last month, and no one filed for two other open seats.

The USD 247-Southeast School District in Cherokee, Kan., which serves students in two rural counties, has 694 students spread across 326 square miles of mostly farmland, according to a recent story in The Joplin Globe. The sole candidate on the ballot, Joe Ulery, said in the story that it's a difficult time to be a school board member in a rural area grappling with shrinking budgets and declining enrollments.

Many rural school districts across the country likely face similar challenges. A 2011 study from the National School Boards Association found that board members in large districts faced more competition in getting elected. Seventy-five percent of small district leaders characterized their most recent race as somewhat or very easy, while only 56.7 percent of large district leaders said the same. And, in small districts, less than 10 percent said it was difficult, compared to 31.4 percent in big districts.

The USD 247-Southeast School District superintendent, Glenn Fortmayer, echoed Ulery's concerns.

"Our board members don't like to see names," Fortmayer said in the story. "It could be a relative, could be a best friend next door, could be the person they eat dinner with on Saturday night, could have gone to school with them since kindergarten. These are close-knit communities in terms of the social connection. Sometimes their vote affects their own personal income; their own wife might be coming home with less."

Kansas ranks No. 16 in the country for its percentage of rural schools; 49.8 of its schools are rural. And the state has had anywhere from 50 to 70 vacant school board seats annually during each of the past 12 years, according to the story.

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When Rocco Fuschetto started working as superintendent of Ignacio school district three years ago, he said he faced a host of challenges: low student test scores, low expectations for students and staff, and the general sense that education was not important.

Fuschetto is working to address those and other issues, and the school district's improvement efforts recently received the attention of John Hill, executive director of the National Rural Education Association. An acquaintance of Hill's is helping the district revise and rewrite its curriculum, and Hill visited the district to see their work. Hill wrote about the district in a recent e-mail to the membership of the NREA.

"The staff is student oriented," said Hill, who described employees as focused, devoted, and caring.

Rural Ignacio is surrounded by the 1,000-square mile Southern Ute Indian reservation, which is headquartered on the north edge of the town. Ignacio school district enrolls about 720 students who live across 210 square miles. The district has the highest percentage of Native American students in the state, and 63 percent of its students are considered low-income.

Fuschetto said his first change was implementing a dress code for staff: no blue jeans, shorts or printed t-shirts.

"We ask for higher expectations for all," he said.

Teachers were asked to post objectives in their rooms daily, and the district created a high expectation committee that invited 400 residents to a free dinner and asked them ways to improve morale and community involvement. A $49.8 million construction program will give the district new facilities by the fall 2015.

As for advice for other rural districts, Fuschetto suggested creating early release days weekly so staff could collaborate and work on curriculum.

"Create a vision and follow it, do not change in mid-course. Be firm but fair that it is everyone's responsibility and if you are not willing to put the time then look for another job," he said. "We have had several that left because of the amount of work."

He recommended giving staff a stipend for their extra work and offering bonuses, even in tough times, to show staff they are appreciated.

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President Barack Obama's budget proposes expanding early-childhood education, and some rural leaders say that investment needs to include money for facilities and infrastructure.

The U.S. Department of Education hosted a phone conference late last month for rural leaders on early-childhood education. Federal officials talked about a number of budget proposals, including the federal-state partnership to enable states to provide voluntary, universal high-quality preschool for 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families.

Two of the nearly 60 listeners brought up the need to be able to use federal money to provide space for preschool education. One of those was Jamie Palagi, a division administrator for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. Some of her state's rural communities don't have a childcare provider, and school buildings aren't appropriate for young children, she said.

She encouraged federal officials to consider allowing states to use money to address facility needs, which often isn't allowed.

Another rural participant, Superintendent Kerry Boyd from Yukon Koyukuk School District in Fairbanks, Alaska, echoed Palagi's comments, saying schools don't always have space to provide needed programs, and the community doesn't necessarily have available or affordable facilities.

Steven Hicks, the Education Department's senior policy adviser for early learning, acknowledged those issues and said the universal preschool program proposal would allow states to use some of the money for quality improvements, and department officials are trying to figure out what might be permitted.

"It would be based on I think the needs of individual states and what they need to do to make sure that we reach all 4-year-olds," he said. "Our goal is to reach all 4-year-olds, so whatever it takes is what we need to be thinking about. So those suggestions about physical structures, modifying current structures, remodeling, building, and the transportation needs I think are really good ideas to consider."

John White, the department's deputy assistant secretary for rural outreach, also suggested that rural leaders who are looking for facilities funding go to the federal rural development office, which provides money for community facilities, including schools.

Participants raised other questions during the call, such as the feasibility of implementing research-based home-visitation programs in remote areas and how rural areas would generate any required match to receive federal money.

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A recent change in the federal law governing access to student test scores is providing more information to tribal nations, which previously couldn't get that kind of information.

Native-student advocates say this information sharing will be a boost to efforts to improve the educational opportunities for their children, who often live in rural areas.

In Utah, about 2,500 Navajo students attend public schools, and the state department of education and Navajo Nation signed a memorandum of understanding to allow the tribe access to those students' achievement data. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act didn't until recently identify tribal education agencies as being eligible to have access to the data.

"We signed an agreement, an understanding that we will commit to one another to help promote the best education we can offer to our children," said Navajo Nation Vice President Rex Lee Jim in a statement.

The agreement will be retroactive to the 2011-12 school year. Before now, no student-specific information was shared between the Navajo Nation Department of Dine Education and the Utah State Office of Education.

Efforts to help Native students are needed. The head of the National Indian Education Association has said Native education is in crisis, citing a graduation rate of 69 percent, which is nearly 10 percentage points lower than the national average.

Oklahoma has the country's largest Native American student population with 130,000 students, and it offers the most Indian education programs. Its state school Superintendent Janet Barresi announced this past fall that she was working with the Choctaw Nation to launch a pilot implementation of a School Partner Data Tool. That tool will enable the sharing of student results with tribes, and the program eventually will be open to any tribe or community group partnering with the state's schools.

"We believe this necessitates real engagement between the school and the community to provide support to students and parents," Barresi said in a press release.

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The rural West Virginia school district that's the focus of a substantial turnaround effort regained full control of its schools today after more than a decade of state control.

The West Virginia Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to give full control of McDowell County schools back to the county school board. The state board also supported the continued employment of its superintendent, Nelson Spencer.

"I am so honored to be part of this vote to return control to McDowell County Schools," said state board member Gayle Manchin in a statement. "It is never easy to answer all the issues in any county. One lesson that we have learned is that no one can do it alone. Improving a school system is truly about a community building capacity."

Manchin helped conceive the idea for Reconnecting McDowell, the American Federation of Teachers-led partnership of more than 100 public and private groups working to improve McDowell County schools. The initiative launched in December 2011 and aims to improve the school district, as well as the surrounding community.

The school district has been under state control since October 2001. It regained partial control in 2010 in areas such as finance, curriculum, transportation, the establishment, and operation of a school calendar. But the state had continued to oversee personnel, board policies and facility issues.

The state Office of Education Performance Audits audited the district earlier this year. Their findings included:

• The McDowell County Board of Education has completed all tasks set forth in the Exit Strategy Document;


• Previous deficiencies that emerged in the January 2010 OEPA report in personnel, policy development, and facilities have been resolved in an exemplary manner;


• The school system is moving forward and showing progress; and,


• The superintendent is providing sound leadership and the schools are progressing.

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Rural lawmakers again are talking about changing the way the federal government funds rural schools, but they'll face a tough battle to make that happen.

A recent story in The Hill, a nonpartisan political newspaper in Washington, detailed two rural Democratic senators' efforts to rewrite the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the way it distributes federal Title I dollars. They also want to improve rural schools' chances of competitng for federal money.

The Hill story points out that the rural Democrats—Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas—will face opposition from those within their party who represent major cities and affluent suburbs. That includes party leaders, such as Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Charles Schumer of New York.

Still, Begich and Pryor are attracting attention for talking about the legislation and its funding issues. That has been a rallying point for rural advocates, who say the formula gives more money for low-income students to larger urban districts than to smaller rural ones. The Formula Fairness Campaign has been an initiative led by the Rural School and Community Trust to change that formula.

The Hill story said Democrats have focused more this year on gun control and immigration reform rather than changing Title I or reauthorizing ESEA, and that Republicans haven't made it a priority, either.

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A rural education advocate says the president's proposed 2014 budget is lacking needed support for rural schools, but a federal spokesman calls her analysis fairly narrow and incomplete.

The critic is Caitlin Howley, who works as associate director of the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center and has nearly 20 years of experience leading research and evaluating programs.

She wrote a piece for a rural news website, the Daily Yonder, in which she said the president's budget proposal does little to address the challenges faced by rural schools, which have smaller and ofter poorer tax bases, high transportation costs, and stretched-thin staff who have multiple jobs.

John White, deputy assistant secretary for rural outreach for the U.S. Department of Education, said a two-page document Howley referenced highlighting funding for rural schools is only one piece of the president's overall budget request. His full proposal includes other provisions that should be of interest to rural schools, such as initiatives in preschool education, college affordability, school safety, and K-12 reforms.

Howley gave specific examples in her critique, such as the Rural Education Achievement Program. Although the program helps many rural districts, the budget doesn't enable it to be more effective, such as increasing the number of students districts can serve and still be eligible for the funding, she said.

"Many rural districts, especially in the Southeast, are county-wide and as a result exceed the attendance threshold, despite facing the same rural challenges as their smaller counterparts," she writes.

In response, White said REAP was designed to help small rural schools, so increasing the number of students served wouldn't seem to support the intent of the program. And the president's administration has proposed expanding the REAP flexibility provision that allows eligible districts to combine funding under certain programs, he said.

Another issue Howley discussed was the rural-focused budget requests for competitive grants, such as the new High School Redesign competition and increased funding for School Turnaround Grants. She said federal officials needed to provide help through other agencies to boost rural communities economic opportunities. If not, better-prepared rural high school graduates still will leave for opportunities elsewhere.

White countered by pointing out ways in which the president's budget calls for the education department to work with other agencies, such as the Community College to Career Fund, which aims to put more resources into job training programs at community colleges, and the Promise Zone initiative, which is a comprehensive strategy to neighborhood revitalization.

Howley's piece also talked about the problem with competitive funding for rural schools generally, which is that rural schools need support to be able to compete with larger districts with more resources. If the aim truly was to help rural schools support students, "funding would be distributed based on need rather than the ability to submit a great proposal," she wrote.

White said Howley's list of competitive priorities to rural areas was incomplete and left out the Race to the Top District competition. That competition's rural winner, Green River Regional Education Cooperative, is serving more than 20 rural districts in Kentucky and accounts for more than 40 percent of all districts benefiting from the competition, he said.

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