This edition of RPM includes a set of stories related to school consolidation initiatives and state responses: a West Virginia legislative study ties higher dropout rates to large districts and schools; Mississippi’s governor wants to eliminate many districts without examining research evidence; and two rural Arkansas districts are seeking an innovative response to that state’s minimum enrollment law. There’s important analysis of the devastating effects on high poverty districts of changes to the Title I formula; South Carolina ramps up efforts to recruit teachers; Rural Trust loses a good friend; Rural School Funding News; and more…

Two federal grant programs, both financed with stimulus funding, are trying to get states and school districts to make major changes to their educational structures and approaches. The programs seem divergent, but both emphasize common curriculum standards, tracking student data, and evaluating teacher performance on the basis of student test scores. RPM looks at how Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation are likely to affect rural schools…

The Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation federal grant programs include provisions that push states and districts to measure teacher performance based on the test scores of their students. It remains to be seen how strict these requirements will be and how much they will be tied to other performance issues like pay, promotion, and tenure. It is, however, clear that states and districts will be required to do more around issues of teacher evaluation. This paper examines seven systems for assessing teacher performance…

This edition of RPM includes a Review of Changes to the Race to the Stop Guidelines and now they are likely to affect rural schools; a new analysis of the effects of Title I number weighting that demonstrates how low poverty districts benefit at the expense of high poverty districts; an examination of interpretation of Race to the Top criteria; analysis of graduation rates in rural high poverty rural districts in the southwest and southeast; highlights of state policy developments in Arkansan, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee, Rural School Funding News, and more….