Introduction to Rural Educational Leadership

Change generally emerges when the status quo no longer serves most people. It is at that point that different ideas take root and begin to direct the process of change. And where do the different ideas come from? Wendell Berry (1987) argued that they come from the periphery, which in the context of the 21st century, is the countryside. America’s educational system is not improving, and hasn’t been for decades. Despite the fact that the system flatlined with the advent of the standards and testing movement, the creation of standards and tests has reached a kind of fever pitch—with few stopping to question whether teaching to standards—teaching the same material to all students everywhere—makes any kind of sense from a learning standpoint. The fallout from our standards/testing fetish has been welldocumented: a narrowing of curriculum, inhibited curricular imagination among teachers, and a deadening drill/kill experience for youth that has contributed to a spiking drop-out rate. And there is even more insidious fallout, because a standards/testing milieu enables those interested in privatizing and corporatizing America’s educational efforts to use predictable test failures to squeeze their way into the educational arena, putting the very concept of “public” schools at risk. In short, schools are not serving most students well. Where are the ideas that will replace those that drive the status quo? Where will they come from? This issue of the Peabody Journal of Education will argue that Wendell Berry was right, that change in the educational system will come from the countryside, from rural educational leaders with a deep commitment to true education in their particular place on earth. In this issue we will highlight the critical needs and special conditions that affect rural education and we will highlight the possibilities that exist for improving the conditions that exist in all schools. Rural school leaders need to decide when to exercise their voice, and be bold and confident in the face of cultural and stereotypical characterizations of rural life and living and therefore, by extension, cultural and stereotypical characterizations regarding the worth and quality of rural education

Place-based Learning: instilling a sense of wonder.

Place-based learning is powerful. It can be implemented in rural, suburban and urban school districts as well as universities. Contextualizing learning with the students lived experiences will increase student achievement and in the words of Rachel Carson, create “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life (2011).

Assessing the Impact of Twenty-first Century Rural School Consolidation

The purpose of the study was to make a qualitative assessment of the impact of school consolidation on several rural Nebraska communities that have recently lost their schools. This research uses a multiple-case study design with interviews conducted in three Nebraska communities. The data from this research fell into four broad themes: social capital changes resulting from consolidation, the effect of the consolidation on the children of the community, the future of the community, and circumstances driving consolidation. Data indicates very differing views about consolidation; respondents with children in school were generally supportive of the consolidation and felt that it benefited their children; the respondents all expressed a concern about the loss of the community although, the majority of the respondents did not have an alternative to the loss and decline of the community; the consolidations in the study were all second or third consolidations and respondents believed the original consolidation were the beginning of the decline of the community

Assessing EDAD candidate\u27s leadership growth and perceptions: ethical principles and acting fairly

Moral and ethical leadership has evolved over the years, and while early standards were often religious in nature, many standards remain. Every year principals are terminated for immoral activities, failure to assume leadership obligations, or breaches of ethics. Because of the critical role that principals play in school and community leadership, preparation programs should teach and assess principal candidates\u27 dispositions such as fairness and integrity. This paper is an analysis of educational administration student growth using an electronic portfolio system to measure self-perceptions of readiness to implement the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards and self-perceptions of dispositions of effective leadership identified by the Standards for Advanced Programs in Educational Leadership (Schulte & Kowal, 2005). The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standard in five states, “An Education leader promotes the success of every student by acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner (ISSLC, p. 15). Data is collected at the beginning and end of the program that measures growth of the student in two areas. 1. The growth in their self-perceived readiness to implement the ISLLC standards and; 2. A measurement of student self-perceptions of growth using the Advanced Programs in Educational Leadership disposition index. In the pages that follow there will be an examination of self-perceived growth of the ISLLC standards and self-perceived growth of their dispositions, and secondly an examination of the difference in the growth rate of standards compared to dispositions

Not All Threats Are Equal

School leaders must be fully prepared to respond to all types of threats that occur. In order to respond to threats most appropriately the school needs to have a systematic approach that combines education, prevention, intervention, discipline, security and crisis preparedness measures. All threats must be assessed carefully and swiftly balancing the First Amendment rights of the student making the threat and the safety of the school. All threats are not equal but, all must be dealt with

Introduction to Rural Educational Leadership

Change generally emerges when the status quo no longer serves most people. It is at that point that different ideas take root and begin to direct the process of change. And where do the different ideas come from? Wendell Berry (1987) argued that they come from the periphery, which in the context of the 21st century, is the countryside. America’s educational system is not improving, and hasn’t been for decades. Despite the fact that the system flatlined with the advent of the standards and testing movement, the creation of standards and tests has reached a kind of fever pitch—with few stopping to question whether teaching to standards—teaching the same material to all students everywhere—makes any kind of sense from a learning standpoint. The fallout from our standards/testing fetish has been welldocumented: a narrowing of curriculum, inhibited curricular imagination among teachers, and a deadening drill/kill experience for youth that has contributed to a spiking drop-out rate. And there is even more insidious fallout, because a standards/testing milieu enables those interested in privatizing and corporatizing America’s educational efforts to use predictable test failures to squeeze their way into the educational arena, putting the very concept of “public” schools at risk. In short, schools are not serving most students well. Where are the ideas that will replace those that drive the status quo? Where will they come from? This issue of the Peabody Journal of Education will argue that Wendell Berry was right, that change in the educational system will come from the countryside, from rural educational leaders with a deep commitment to true education in their particular place on earth. In this issue we will highlight the critical needs and special conditions that affect rural education and we will highlight the possibilities that exist for improving the conditions that exist in all schools. Rural school leaders need to decide when to exercise their voice, and be bold and confident in the face of cultural and stereotypical characterizations of rural life and living and therefore, by extension, cultural and stereotypical characterizations regarding the worth and quality of rural education

Place-based Learning: instilling a sense of wonder.

Place-based learning is powerful. It can be implemented in rural, suburban and urban school districts as well as universities. Contextualizing learning with the students lived experiences will increase student achievement and in the words of Rachel Carson, create “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life (2011).

Introduction to Rural Educational Leadership

Without going too deep into theoretical perspectives regarding social and organizational change (as with, say, Hegel’s dialectic), it can fairly be argued that change occurs when the center doesn’t hold, or said another way, when the status quo no longer serves most people. It is at that point that different ideas take root and begin to direct the process of change. And where do the different ideas come from? Wendell Berry (1987) argued that they come from the periphery, which in the context of the 21st century, is the countryside

Crossing Into Uncharted Territory: Developing Thoughtful, Ethical School Administrators

In this distrustful, unstable, and ethically polarized era, there is a need to prepare school administrators to resolve a myriad of moral dilemmas. As professors of school administration, how can we make sure that our future leaders have the capacity to make thoughtful, ethical decisions? How do we prepare these leaders to develop, foster and lead tolerant and democratic schools? What follows is a small action research project aimed at elevating moral and ethical wherewithal among graduate students studying school administration. Ninety-Six percent of the students indicated that learning through dialogue or Socratic questioning, deepened their understanding of the topic. Most importantly, one-third of the students indicated that the dialogue caused them to uncover errors and incorrect assumptions in their own thinking and change them as a result

The Rural School Leadership Dilemma

The idea that rural schools and communities, indeed, even rural people, are somehow substandard or second-class has deep historical roots. The goal of this essay is to reveal that history so as to render stereotypical conceptions all things rural less powerful and more easily dismissed by rural school professionals. Consequently the focus is on one dilemma every rural school leader faces: when to speak up in the face of rural denigration