The mountain area of the Southern States has recently aroused unwanted attention on the part of the people of the United States. That economic conditions were unsatisfactory, that social services, including education, were wholly inadequate and that these conditions, with the isolation prevalent in mountain sections, combined to set the people of these areas apart from normal farming communities, has long been a matter of common knowledge. Definite undertakings looking toward rehabilitation on a region-wide scale were not, however, until recently, seriously contemplated. The Federal Government, in the establishment and maintenance of the Tennessee Valley Authority, has now entered the region with plans for reconstruction of at least a large part of the area on an extensive scale. Interest in education, as perhaps the most important of the social services so long inadequate, motivated this study of educational conditions in the area. It is believed it will serve a useful purpose in furthering plans for continuing the improvements in social conditions, now so auspiciously begun, through providing authentic information not hitherto available. This bulletin is divided into three chapters, as follows: (1) Introduction; (2) School Conditions in the Southern Appalachians; and (3) Denominational and Independent Nonpublic Schools. (Contains 6 figures, 31 footnotes, and 25 tables.) [Best copy available has been provided.]