The purpose of this article is to promote the use of GIS and place-based education (PBE) in rural mathematics classrooms. The pedagogy of place is disappearing from rural communities because of declining enrollments, lack of support, and federal mandates to focus more on basic academic skills. However, PBE does not stand in opposition to…

Rural schools face the challenges of motivating and retaining students, often in the face of severe resource constraints. This paper synthesizes fifteen years of the author's rural research on secondary students' school-related motivation, distilling it into strategic principles for rural teachers and administrators. Effective motivational…

Rural schools, particularly high poverty rural schools, often have difficulty hiring and retaining qualified teachers. Here, we discuss three programs the Arkansas Department of Education has used to attract teachers to teacher Geographic Shortage Districts (GSDs) through material incentives. Unfortunately, none of the programs have had much…

This article synthesizes problems impacting rural primary and secondary schools and describes how schools and relevant organizations have responded to the challenges. Given the context of a globally-compressed world, the focus of the literature review is on international rural education research and strategies. The exploration took the path of…

The Air Toxics under the Big Sky program developed at the University of Montana is a regional outreach and education initiative that offers a yearlong exploration of air quality and its relation to respiratory health. The program was designed to connect university staff and resources with rural schools enabling students to learn and apply science…

This article describes a collaborative, distance-delivered, teacher preparation program for rural, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) teacher candidates. Multiple institutions partnered with one university in order to diversify the teaching force in the region and meet the needs of CLD students living there. In describing the program's…

The politics of rural educational leadership are both intense and concentrated. Rural educational leaders need to be savvy and politically skilled if they are to inspire educational stakeholders and accomplish organizational objectives. The local school system is an organization with a political culture that can be characterized as a competitive…

In this article we address the role of rural schools in community development. We first discuss the largely historical linkages between rural schools and the communities they serve, and what this means for both school and community well-being. We then consider the newly revised standards for preparing school administrators, developed by the…

The "highly qualified teacher" requirement of No Child Left Behind has put pressure on rural school districts to recruit and retain highly qualified regular and special education teachers. If necessary, they may utilize uncertified, rural teachers with provisional certification; however, these teachers may find completing the necessary…

Many Alaskan schools are located in extremely remote or "fly-in" places. These geographical extremes affect the recruitment and retention of teachers to remote rural schools. Through a partnership between the Southwest Region School District of Alaska and the Department of Education at Alaska Pacific University (APU), 14 pre-service teachers…

In rural Oklahoma, the role of the superintendent is often vastly different than that of superintendents in large cities. The superintendent is the leader of the school district, which is typically the community's largest employer. There are a few examples of superintendents who embrace this sometimes overwhelming responsibility and who are often…

The Rural Education Bureau of the New Mexico Public Education Department has established a program to address the special needs of schools and communities in the extensive rural areas of the state. High poverty rates, depopulation and a general lack of viable economic opportunity have marked rural New Mexico for decades. The program underway aims…

One process for retaining experienced, qualified teachers is to provide them with opportunities to grow professionally (Blase & Blase, 2001). The intent of this paper is to provide information about meeting the needs of experienced, qualified rural teachers, especially in the area of professional development. A story line of one rural science…

This article describes the approach of a five-year initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation, to improve the teaching of mathematics and science in 10 rural school districts of Missouri. Traditional challenges of improving the professional practice of teachers are addressed through a regional partnership. External project evaluation…

As part of a Canadian International Development Agency funded project working with rural teachers in central China, recent graduates Lebans and Radigan spent a month teaching in Chinese schools. The primary purpose of the project is to work with members of the Sichuan Provincial Teacher Training Centre and rural teachers from Wenchuan County…