About Us


Who We Are

The Rural School and Community Trust is a national nonprofit organization addressing the crucial relationship between good schools and thriving communities.

Working in some of the poorest, most challenging places, the Rural Trust involves young people in learning linked to their communities, improves the quality of teaching and school leadership, and advocates in a variety of ways for appropriate state educational policies, including the key issue of equitable and adequate funding for rural schools.


How We Work

The Rural Trust provides a variety of services—training, networking, technical assistance, coaching, mentoring, research—and materials to increase the capacity of rural schools, teachers, young people, and communities to develop and implement high quality place-based education.

We encourage rural people through education, research, organizing and advocacy to become knowledgeable, persistent, and effective citizens who are actively engaged in policy issues that directly affect the quality of education in their communities. We also serve as a resource for educators and policymakers at the state and national levels—identifying and analyzing policies and practices that strengthen rural education, and changing policies that are detrimental to rural schools.

The staff of the Rural Trust's Capacity Building Program helps build the capacity of grassroots leaders and community-based organizations to engage in local school reform in vulnerable rural communities, create strong out-of-school supports for student learning, and establish a network of rural activists who will develop and advocate for policies and practices to improve education for students.

The Rural Trust's Public Policy Program has four objectives: (1) to articulate education policy issues from a rural community perspective; (2) to legitimize that perspective in national and state policy deliberation; (3) to inform and develop a rural community constituency for education policy reform; (4) to organize and engage that constituency in public policy deliberation.


Our Publications

The Rural Trust publishes the monthly newsletter Rural Policy Matters, which provides news of interest to citizens and community groups working on state-level policy issues affecting rural schools. In addition, the Rural Trust maintains a Web site. We have an active publications program that includes Why Rural Matters, a biennial snapshot of the condition of rural education in each of the 50 states, and numerous special reports and white papers.


Rural Trust Form 990

The Rural School and Community Trust's most recent Form 990 is available upon request. Please send your request to Susan Jaradat, Finance Manager, 4301 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 100, Washington, D.C. 20008 or by fax to (202) 872-4050 or by email to . There may be a small fee to cover postage for requests of hard copies, no charge for electronic copies.