When five shrinks to four: Assessing the four-day school week in rural locales

In rural school districts across the country, four-day school weeks have proliferated. Currently adopted in 1,600 schools in 600 school districts, 90% of which are rural, four-day school week policies have prospered largely without a robust body of evidence to support their expansion. J. Cameron Anglum presents an overview of four-day school week policy expansion and describes a few of the studies into its effects on students, families, and communities.

Growing Your Own Educational Leaders: Implications for Rural School Districts and Institutions of Higher Education

The purpose of this article is to examine a ‘grow your own’ model of leadership preparation and placement of educational administrators in the state of Tennessee. The growing need for school and district administrators in the rural counties of Tennessee mirrors a nationwide issue, and state policymakers and practitioners must respond appropriately to sustain adequate K-12 educational leadership that is representative of state demographics. Recommendations for policy and practice are provided for state and local education agencies as well as principal preparation programs in higher education.

Using Caregiver Support to Promote Efficacy of Nontraditional Instruction Provided to Students With Extensive Support Needs

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most dramatic and far-reaching events to impact education in recent years. At the onset of this global crisis, schools were required to pivot, with little warning or planning, to educate the more than 50 million school-aged children in the United States through some form of nontraditional instruction (NTI), which often involved technology-based distance education. While shifts to NTI for short time periods may be feasible for many students, the potential impact of long-term NTI on students with extensive support needs (ESNs) and their families, especially in rural areas, may be particularly acute. In this article, we discuss specific strategies that address and incorporate what we know about extended NTI in rural school districts, including both lessons learned and areas of concern, with particular attention to the role and importance of caregivers. We outline ways that caregivers can be supported and how natural environment teaching provides one useful framework for efforts to reduce skill regression and to increase the overall potential for skill generalization when traditional schooling is interrupted.

Examining National Trends of Teacher Certification in Autism: Implications for Rural Schools

This study examined the national trends of teacher certification in autism in an effort to better understand the characteristics of individuals who seek this credential, how these characteristics change over time, and where teachers with this certification are currently working in an effort to identify recruitment and retention strategies to areas most in need. This ex post facto study consisted of a secondary analysis of the 2011 to 2012 Schools and Staffing Survey Teacher Questionnaire and the 2015 to 2016 National Teacher and Principal Survey Teacher Questionnaire. The results suggest that the majority of licensed teachers who receive an autism certification are working in special education. In addition, while overall trends indicate an increase in the number of teachers who report an autism certification, fewer teachers with this certification are working in rural school districts. These results have important implications for school-service delivery for students with autism spectrum disorder, specifically those living and attending school in rural communities.

Exploring Secondary Teachers’ Willingness to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs

The growing English language learner (ELL) population is expanding in the United States from concentrated, urban areas to smaller, rural school districts in which mainstream content teachers provide most instruction for these students (DelliCarpini & Alonso, 2014). Most mainstream content teachers at the secondary level, however, have had little or no training in teaching ELLs and do not currently provide the differentiated instruction necessary for ELLs to be successful (Musanti & Pence, 2010; Rubinstein-Avila & Lee, 2014). Previous research has explored teacher attitudes toward ELLs in mainstream classes and the teacher beliefs related to teacher identity, teacher responsibility, and self-efficacy which all emerge as relevant to teaching ELLs. However, there is no prior research on the association these three factors potentially have with teachers’ willingness to differentiate their instruction for ELLs in mainstream classrooms. This study explored these three factors of identity, responsibility, and self-efficacy as well as EL training, their relationship to each other, and their potential correlation with a teacher’s willingness to differentiate (WTD) instruction for ELLs in a mainstream classroom. Results indicate that identity and responsibility correlate most with a willingness to differentiate, but self-efficacy, along with several other emergent factors, are also relevant.

Professional Development for Secondary School Teachers and Educational Professionals in STEM Fields

Rural communities are geographically isolated and have limited access to specialized services and ongoing support from content educational experts. As a result, rural school districts across the nation face many challenges related to the recruitment, retention, and professional development for their teachers. Studies have reported that rural school districts experience a shortage of specialized teachers and it is likely that rural school teachers will teach in content areas outside of their area of expertise. Finding mathematics and science teachers is a constant challenge. In response, we developed the Professional Development for Secondary School Teachers and Educational Professionals (PD-STEP) into STEM Fields Model, which utilizes research-based lessons aligned with curriculum standards and purposefully centered on (a) agricultural mathematics, science, and technology knowledge and skills; (b) specific needs of English language learners; and (c) indigenous, authentic agricultural topics through field-based experiences for teachers. The PD-STEP into STEM Fields Model encompasses the development of a lesson plan template and lesson topics that incorporate teachers’ professional development training on food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences. These professional development activities explore opportunities available in the career paths described by the United States Department of Agriculture and engender resource-rich partnerships among university faculty and rural school teachers.

Innovating a Promising Practice in High Poverty Rural School Districts

This article gives meaning to innovating promising practices in high poverty rural contexts, as experienced by the Rural Math Excel Partnership (RMEP). The project sought to develop a model of shared school-family-community responsibility to support student success in foundational math courses as preparation for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and health (STEM-H) careers. RMEP was one of the two rural development grant awards in the 2012 federal fiscal year, the first year for awards in the rural priority area of the U. S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation (i3) program. High poverty rural areas may have major implications for fidelity of implementation and measurement of intended impacts that raise important questions about project organizational structures, capacities and evaluation needs. If significant external funding and a partnership approach are key catalysts for innovating solutions to educational challenges, the answers to 10 questions of readiness could have major implications for project success.