Case Studies of Rural Schools Implementing Comprehensive School Reform Models

Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, CA on April 14, 2004.

Small, rural schools will likely continue to educate significant portions of students in the U.S. while facing the challenges of limited resources, isolation, declining enrollments, aging facilities, limited curricula, and diminishing political influence. These challenges prompted the question of whether small, rural schools could benefit from CSR grants.

The study addressed two major objectives:

1. Given the relative isolation and limited access to resources, will small, rural schools be able to utilize additional funds to adopt and implement a comprehensive school improvement effort?
2. If these small, rural schools are able to garner the additional resources and implement a comprehensive school reform model, will such efforts positively impact student learning?

School improvement is a process that depends on the cooperation and involvement of many individuals and groups to make it work. This seems to be particularly true of small schools located in the fish bowl environment of small rural towns. Although these schools are isolated from the social and political mainstream, their small size places their inhabitants under close scrutiny and direct observation. In addition, small towns and their schools can become comfortable with the status quo and conservative in their willingness to explore new educational innovations. Case study methodology was chosen in order to closely examine and observe these dynamics and their influence on an externally driven and funded school improvement process.

For more information on Comprehensive School Reform (CSR), please visit:

• SEDL's CSR Web Site
• Follow-up Study of Rural Schools: Implementing CSR Programs in the Southwest
• Follow-up Study of Schools Implementing Comprehensive School Reform in the Southwest