• Exploring Rural Education Innovation •
One-in-three American schools are rural; one-in-four American students attend school in a rural community. Four out of every ten rural students are low-income. Yet the national education reform movement has focused primarily on the needs of low-income urban students. Little has been done to advance the understanding of how to help these schools serve their diverse populations and provide educational equity.
As part of its mission to discover limitless learning opportunities for all Idahoans, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, a private family foundation based in Boise, launched the Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho (ROCI). ROCI brings together some of the nation’s best thinkers to conduct research on the challenges of rural education and identify innovations, programs and models to address them. This effort will inform a national body of work on rural education and explore implications for increasing the educational attainment and economic competitiveness of Idahoans and Americans.
“Rural schools educate almost as many children as big city schools, but they haven’t received anything like the same level of attention from policy makers, the public, or educational innovators. I believe ROCI will right the balance and bring creative new solutions to the problems of rural schools. I hope ROCI puts rural education on the map, as a national priority for policy makers and funders, as a magnet for the most talented young teachers and principals who have previously focused only on urban education and as a priority for philanthropies.”
“We believe rural schools can be a better place for innovation because of their close relationships with and support from the community, as well as their ability to mobilize and respond quickly to needs, but we want to know for sure. Our foundation’s board believes Idaho can be a national leader, a model in closing the achievement gap for students who might have disadvantaged backgrounds and circumstances. Enabling them to realize their full potential and contribute to communities will strengthen the economic fabric of our state and nation.”
“The needs of rural students probably haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. ROCI will identify proven reforms that could be introduced into rural communities and help develop new strategies carefully tailored to the needs and conditions of rural America. Through this project, we’re going to help Idaho and other states with rural communities develop strategies on human capital, funding, school choice, technology, accountability and more. I hope this work will have a profound influence on policy makers, the education reform community and anyone interested in the needs of underserved kids.”
Bryan C. Hassel is codirector of Public Impact. He is a recognized expert on education technology, charter schools, education entrepreneurship, and teacher and leader policy. Dr. Hassel received his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University and his master’s degree in politics from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned his B.A. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which he attended as a Morehead Scholar. He is a senior research affiliate with the Center on Reinventing Public Education, and a nonresident senior fellow with Education Sector. Dr. Hassel is author of several studies on uses of education technology including “A Better Blend: A Vision for Boosting Student Outcomes with Digital Learning” and “Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction.”
Edward Kissam is an applied researcher who has worked on policy, program planning and evaluation issues in adult education, community radio and immigrant settlement in the rural United States for more than 30 years. He is the author of Working Poor: Farmworkers in the United States (Temple University Press, 1995). From 2003-2007 he led a USAID-funded longitudinal survey of community-based accelerated learning for primary school students in 10 rural provinces in Afghanistan and provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Education. Mr. Kissam currently serves as a trustee of the Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund which supports initiatives contributing to the well-being of immigrants in California and nationally.
Paul A. Lewin is an assistant professor in the department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at the University of Idaho. He does research in rural economic development and assists extension and communities across Idaho through programming and analysis in community economics. Before joining the University of Idaho, Dr. Lewin worked in community and economic development across Latin America and subsequently as an economist in both government and private sector positions in Europe and the United States. His research program includes entrepreneurship, migration, community economic resilience and dynamic changes of community and small regional economies. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
Daniel Player is assistant professor at the University of Virginia and director of Partners for Leadership in Education. He was formerly a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research. An economist, Dr. Player focuses on the education workforce, particularly the links among policy, funding, performance incentives and the quality of teachers and principals. He has also studied the economics of rural areas and farmers’ adoption of new methods.
Marguerite Roza is the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University and senior research affiliate at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Dr. Roza’s research traces the effects of fiscal policies at the federal, state and district levels for their implications on resources at school and classroom levels. Her calculations of dollar implications and cost equivalent trade-offs have prompted changes in education finance policy at all levels in the education system. She has led projects including the Finance and Productivity Initiative at CRPE and the Schools in Crisis Rapid Response Paper Series. More recently she served as senior economic advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her work has been published by Education Sector, the Brookings Institution, Public Budgeting and Finance, Education Next and the Peabody Journal of Education. Dr. Roza is author of the highly regarded education finance book, Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go? (Urban Institute Press, 2010).
Terry Ryan recently left his position as vice president for Ohio Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute to become the president of the Idaho Charter School Network. Mr. Ryan began his career in education as a teacher in Poland and worked with the Polish Ministry of Education and the Foundation for Education for Democracy in the mid-1990s. He was awarded the Paterson International Fellowship from the University of Denver in 1994 and was a research director for the UK-based 21st Century Learning Initiative. Ryan was a 2008 New Schools Venture Fund/Aspen Institute Fellow and is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s degree in political economy from the University of Denver’s Graduate School of International Studies.
Kai Schafft is associate professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He directs the Center on Rural Education and Communities and serves as editor for the Journal of Research in Rural Education. Trained as a rural sociologist with strong interests in the relationship between social and spatial inequalities, his work broadly looks at the multiple associations between the well-being of rural schools and rural communities. He is the co-author, with David Brown, of Rural People and Communities in the Twenty-first Century: Resilience and Transformation (Polity, 2011) and co-editor, with Alicia Jackson, of Rural Education for the Twenty-first Century: Identity, Place and Community in a Globalizing World (Penn State Press, 2010).
Too often charter schools in rural America face challenges that states could help them avoid. In a report released by Bellwether Education Partners, Andy Smarick examines the state policies that can hinder or foster the growth of rural charter schools and argues for a new approach to charter schooling in rural America…
As part of 2014 National School Choice Week, Bellwether Education Partners will host a webinar to discuss Andy Smarick’s soon-to-be-released report on charter schooling in rural America. Smarick examines the state policies that can hinder or foster the growth of rural charter schools…
Leadership in rural school districts is very personal, and often a force for progress or stagnation.
That’s among the early observations of Paul Hill, founder and former director of the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, who is leading a consortium that’s studying…
What if I told you there were millions of American boys and girls living in communities where half of students are low-income, just one in five adults has earned a bachelor’s degree, and only 27 percent of high school graduates go on to college? What if I told you these students are more likely than their peers in any other geographic area to live in poverty?
An Idaho-based family foundation has launched a new consortium to identify best practices, support innovations, and research national trends in rural education.
The J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation has funded the new Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho…
ROCI – Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho
E-Mail: info@rociidaho.org
Twitter: @ROCIdaho