Rural Policy Matters: March 2011


Last Updated: March 30, 2011
 

Rural Policy Matters: March 2011

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Facts and Figures About States With Highest Percentages of Rural Students Qualifying for Special Education Services
Question: In which five states is the percentage of rural students who qualify for special education services is highest?

Rural North Carolinians Address Important Education Policies
Punitive and unequal disciplinary policies and funding inequities are just two of the public policies that the North Carolina Rural Education Working Group addresses. This month the group held a conference to draw attention to the issues and to their work...

Rural Trust Webinar Series Features Rural Innovations:
Search Institute: Building Assets—Reducing Risks
The Rural Trust is conducting a series of webinars featuring rural school innovations, including programs that won federal i3 grants and proposed to work in rural communities. The March webinar featured the Search Institute’s BARR program, which builds developmental assets among high school students...

Save the Children Joins Funding Formula Campaign
The national non-profit Save the Children is the newest sponsor to join the Formula Fairness Campaign...

Number Weighting in a One-Page Handout
Ever wish you had a simple tool to help you explain how the Title I formulas work and why they provide a lot less money to low-income children in some school districts than others? Now you have it...

Paying Teachers for Performance:
Issues and Dilemmas for Rural Schools, Part One
Recent calls to change the way most teachers are paid have focused on “pay for performance,” that is, paying teachers according to how well they teach. Pay-for-performance criteria have been included in recent federal grant programs, and several states have begun collecting data that could be used to implement these programs. But problems arise in defining and measuring good teaching. These problems get thornier in rural schools, where teachers often wear multiple hats, teach several subjects and grades, and work for salaries that are lower than their counterparts in urban and suburban areas...

Rural School Funding News Special Series:
Financing Rural Schools: Characteristics of Strong Rural School Finance Systems
Characteristic Nine: Sufficient Pay and Other Supports to Ensure Teacher Quality. Teachers’ salaries are by far the largest portion of school district budgets. And because a strong teaching force is critical to students’ success, a good school finance system must account for the costs associated with getting and keeping successful teachers in all schools. Unfortunately, teacher recruitment and retention have historically been serious challenges for many rural districts. For these reasons, teacher issues are key for advocates working to improve school finance systems in their state...

 

Rural School Funding News

South Carolina Faces Multiple Budget Woes
South Carolina lost its chance to receive federal stimulus funding and is facing nearly a billion dollar shortfall in the state budget...

Kansas Lawmakers Propose Constitution Change
A legislative committee in Kansas has proposed giving the legislature sole control over the state’s school finance system...

California Lawsuits Must Have Different Focus
A California judge has ruled that school funding lawsuits may move forward only if they change their focus...

Wyoming Backs Off Local Control
The Wyoming legislature passed several measures the will decrease the control local school districts have over spending and teacher evaluations...

Alabama Funding Discrimination Lawsuit Moves Forward
An Alabama lawsuit claims that several provisions of the state’s constitution, particularly those related to limitations on rural property taxes, are rooted in historic efforts to deny educational opportunity to African Americans and continue to limit the ability of rural counties to raise sufficient funds for schools...

 

Graph

Percent Rural Students Eligible for Free or Reduced Meals, 1992–2009
The percentage of students in rural schools who are eligible for free or reduced lunch has been rising steadily for a decade...