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To find what the passage of the Great Schools, Thriving Communities initiative would mean to your region by Senate district and school district, click on the Senate district below:

Senate district 1
Bethune; Weldon; Otis; Hi Plains; Genoa-Hugo; Platte Valley; Akron; Arriba-Flagler; Brush; Briggsdale; Frenchman; Lone Star; Arickaree; Liberty; West Yuma; Buffalo; Stratton; Haxtun; Limon; Platte Valley; Idalia; East Yuma; Valley; Agate; Kiowa; Plateau; Pawnee; Kit Carson; Burlington; Karval; Cheyenne R-5; Woodlin; Holyoke; Fort Morgan; Elbert; Julesburg; Prairie; Elizabeth; Ault-Highland; Eaton; Wiggins; Keenesburg; Big Sandy; Miami-Yoder; Edison; Gilcrest; Calhan; Greeley; Windsor

Senate district 2
Cripple Creek; Park County; Canon City; Cotopaxi; Platte Canyon; Woodland Park; Clear Creek; Hanover; Fountain; Ellicott; Florence; Peyton; Calhan; Cheyenne Mountain; Manitou Springs; Miami-Yoder; Edison; Salida; Widefield; Falcon; Big Sandy; Colorado Springs; Lewis-Palmer

Senate district 8
Rangely; Steamboat Springs; Meeker; Hayden; Rifle; South Routt; Moffat County; North Park; East Grand; Parachute; Summit; West Grand; DeBeque; Roaring Fork; Eagle

Senate district 9
Lewis-Palmer; Academy; Falcon; Manitou Springs; Colorado Springs; Peyton

Senate district 11
Harrison; Colorado Springs; Manitou Springs; Cheyenne Mountain

Senate district 13
Fort Lupton; Greeley; Gilcrest; Johnstown; Windsor; Brighton; Keenesburg; Eaton; St Vrain

Senate district 20
Jeffco

Senate district 31
Denver; Cherry Creek

Senate district 32
Denver

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To find what the passage of the Great Schools, Thriving Communities initiative would mean to your region by Senate district and school district, click on the Senate district below: Senate district 1 Bethune; Weldon; Otis; Hi Plains; Genoa-Hugo; Platte Valley; Akron; Arriba-Flagler; Brush; Briggsdale; Frenchman; Lone Star; Arickaree; Liberty; West

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Temperatures
*pics and video!*
Fav Teacher
Padlet
Data

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What made your favorite teacher great?

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Create, Share, Collaborate, View your mind maps !
Try now !

Why WiseMapping ?

How it works ?

What's a mind map?

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.

WiseMapping is based on an Open Source project. Depending on your requirements, there are two options available.

WiseMapping is perfect for individual note-taking, collaborative planning, teamwork and class rooms.

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WiseMapping is a free, fast and simple online mind mapping for individuals and business. Sign up to start organizing and sharing your ideas and thoughts.

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED

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More specific, more serious!

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Find Colleges | College Search Step-By-Step

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Get a step-by-step guide to using College Board's College Search.

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How do you rate?

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What is the problem?
What is being done to solve it?

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About 1,000 freshly minted teachers graduated in Colorado last year with credentials in elementary education.

Genoa-Hugo Elementary school, an hour east of Denver, only needed one of them. But, "they had zero applications last year," said Robert Mitchell, Academic Policy Officer for Educator Preparation with the Colorado Department of Higher Education. "That is somewhat telling."

He says Colorado's rural school districts are on the brink of crisis when it comes to finding enough teachers to lead classrooms. Even urban districts along the Front Range are struggling to fill positions.

Mitchell says Colorado is just not producing enough teachers. So far this year, enrollments in the state's teacher prep schools are down 23 percent compared with five years ago.

Math, science and special education teachers are especially coveted.

"We fought over a math teacher a couple of years ago with Greeley, and we won," said Amy Spruce, recruitment and retention administrator with the Adams 12 Five Star Schools district, northwest of Denver. It includes Westminster and Thornton.

Spruce has been in the HR field for many years. She's seen the ebbs and flows of teacher supply. But now, she says, "we are dealing with a teacher shortage."

Finding Teachers From Other States

"The sheer number of teachers that we need aren't available so we've started going out of state to recruit where there's a surplus of teachers like Michigan or Utah where they're just churning out more teachers than they can hire, trying to convince them to come to Colorado," Spruce said.

Though Colorado's shortage mirrors what's happening in many other states, she has noticed that in the states with teacher surpluses like Utah, teaching just seems to be a more elevated profession and colleges sell the career more. Students here, she says, seem to enter college knowing what they want to do and more often than not, it's not teaching.

Jack Kronser, interim human resources chief in the Adams 14 district just north of Denver that includes Commerce City, has spent 23 years recruiting for schools. He says finding teachers with the right skills is doubly challenging now.

"We don't necessarily have the right pool of teachers here so we will go out of state to find those math teachers, those speech language therapists, the minority teachers," he said. "With a smaller pool of candidates, there are fewer high-quality teachers."

Why The Shortage?

"Our political landscape right now -- it is extremely difficult to be teacher right now in our state in my mind," said Don Anderson, director of the East Central Board of Cooperative Educational Services , which provides services to local member school districts.

"In the last five to six years, we've had several mandates that were truly unfunded, went through a recession, put more on people's plates and didn't take anything off. And so that political landscape has caused people to ask, 'Do I really want to be a teacher?'"

Politics in individual districts also feeds the shortage.

(Photo: CPR/Nathaniel Minor)

Principals and other school officials say that Jefferson County has lost hundreds of teachers because of political turmoil there.

Pueblo, a district struggling academically, has had to bring teachers out of retirement to fill posts.

At Adams City High in Commerce City, a principal took a job in another district last year. That means a new principal, and a new principal means a new culture. If teachers aren't sold on it - they leave. Several did, causing a scramble this year.

In several metro Denver middle and high schools at the start of this year, there were still job postings for math and science teachers. That means more uncertainty: a last-minute need for qualified substitutes, classes divided among other teachers, special instructional coaches brought in to help existing teachers handle the changes.

No Respect, College Debt

Research nationally points to several reasons for the shortage: school conditions, lack of respect, student misbehavior, teachers being scape-goated for society's ills, higher-paying jobs elsewhere, high college costs forcing students to major in fields that will help them pay back loans more easily.

New testing and new teacher evaluations have added to the pressures of the job. The news media doesn't help either, says Superintendent Denille LePlatt of the Primero district near the New Mexico border.

"We're getting so much negative press on those two, it makes it hard for people who are in education to be positive, let alone recruit more," she said.

The CDHE's Robert Mitchell is concerned about the large number of teachers who'll be retiring soon. But there's one thing that really keeps him awake at night:

"We've traditionally depended on the sons and daughters of educators that went into teaching, that is starting to dry up a little bit," he said. "[I've been] talking to more and more teachers who are recommending to their children not to go into teaching. That is going to be a bigger issue down the road."

Rural Colorado Struggles The Most

Urban Colorado has its struggles - but elsewhere, it's worse.

"I don't use the word crisis very often but we are on the brink of crisis in the rural school districts," Mitchell said.

Rural Colorado already had some big hurdles. First, there's the isolation. When the East Central Board of Cooperative Educational Services' Don Anderson was a principal in Burlington, he'd often travel to career fairs with a prop.

"I took a map so they could see, 'you are 2.5 hours from Denver and 3.5 from the mountains so you need to know where you are going!'" he laughs.

Low salaries in rural Colorado "kill us out here," Anderson said.

Starting pay in many rural districts is around $30,000, or even less than $25,000 in a few. They can't compete with Front Range districts, he says. And some northern Colorado districts can't compete with Wyoming, which pays up to $20,000 more.

Anderson planned a career fair in Limon last April. Twenty-five rural districts wanted to be there.

"We had three teaching applicants," he said.

So it was canceled.

Perennial shortages used to just be in math, science and special education, "but today, it's the entire gamut, its history, PE, elementary," he laments.

Eastern plains and southern districts often have to correct misconceptions about Colorado. Superintendents say especially when recruiting from Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, some candidates think they'll be in the mountains.

"It's a poor community, there isn't a bustling social scene, said Las Animas superintendent Elsie Goines. "There has to be a lot of intrinsic rewards."

The school making up the Arickaree school district is located in the middle of a farm field in eastern Colorado. The closest town is 10 miles away, says superintendent Shane Walkinshaw.

"We're 45 minutes form a grocery store so that takes some getting used to," he said. "A lot of times when we're successful with keeping someone [teachers] it's because they were raised in a rural setting so it feels like home to them. If you're coming from the city and you come out to where we are, it can feel like you are in the middle of nowhere."

When there isn't a pool of candidates, rural districts hire who they can get. If a candidate just has a general bachelor's degree, he or she can take alternative licensure classes and get an emergency authorization that's good for a year. Goines barely found a math teacher this year.

"I managed to find a young man whose waiting hear back to here if he can join the state patrol training and so in the meantime he's decided to work part time for us to be a math teacher," Goines said. "We'll know in January if he's actually going to stay the rest of the year."

She and her fellow superintendent's biggest hope?

"If we bring a new teacher out, if all works out they meet someone, they get married and they stay!" she said.

How To Entice Teachers

Short of matrimony, already cash-strapped rural districts are now thinking they need to focus on incentives -- forgiving student loans, paying for continuing education, or off -setting housing costs for teachers. Primero district already does this. Housing units across the street from the school are $300 a month - and are full.

State legislation for loan forgiveness for teaching in rural Colorado is another budding idea.

Garfield County's School District 16 east of Grand Junction will pay for a teacher's master's degree if a new teacher commits to five years. In the eastern plains region, says Don Anderson, to encourage speech therapists and others to get the master's degree they need to allow them to administer and analyze tests - his organization will pay $4,000 for a two-year commitment.

"So we usually end up giving them $8,000 and they commit four years to us," he said.

Rural districts are also brainstorming ways to grow-their-own teachers - partnering with teacher colleges to talk to local 11th and 12th graders. Another idea is targeting people with bachelor's degrees in the community for an alternative licensure program.

Primero's LePlatt tries to sell teachers on the congenial atmosphere of the small school.

"We don't have an administration office, we don't have separate schools, we're [an] all-in-one campus," she said. "So it makes it really easy to talk to everyone every day. We try to focus on the family atmosphere -- both for our students and for our staff."

Mitchell, at the department of higher education, tries to stay optimistic.

"There are a lot of barriers, a lot of obstacles but we will find a way around them over them, through them, whatever we have to do, we will get great teachers in those classrooms," he said.

But he, like Adam's Five Star's Spruce, thinks the shortage will be problem for a while. Spruce says that will persist until perceptions are changed about the teaching profession:

"If everybody realized what they [teachers] had to do, they should be really elevated to that professional dignity of a doctor or someone like that," she said. "They're really shaping the future for our state."

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A Colorado Teacher Shortage Puts Rural Schools On The Brink Of Crisis

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About 1,000 freshly minted teachers graduated in Colorado last year with credentials in elementary education. Genoa-Hugo Elementary school, an hour east of Denver, only needed one of them. But, "they had zero applications last year," said Robert Mitchell, Academic Policy Officer for Educator Preparation with the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

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Teachers are a little late to get the legislature to bump up the state's education budget

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Budgets are generally planned a year ahead - and teachers are a few weeks late to get more state education funding.

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For the Fort Morgan Times
Posted: 06/10/2018 02:07:52 PM MDT

Lawmakers reacted to the good news that the state had a billion-dollar surplus for 2018-19 by applying those dollars to a variety of priorities, including education.

The surplus, revealed by state economists in December and again in March, allowed lawmakers to put $150 million into K-12 public education, over and above the funding from the school finance act, to whittle away at the state's long-existing debt, the result of budget cuts that started in 2010.

The 2010 cuts that topped more than $1 billion was the result of the state's budget shortfall, including an inability to cover K-12 funding required by Amendment 23, an initiative passed by voters in 2000. The Great Recession resulted in budget cuts in many areas, but K-12 took among the biggest hits.

It's taken eight years for that billion-dollar debt to drop even a little. Both Gov. John Hickenlooper and the General Assembly agreed early on to take $150 million from that surplus to pay down the debt, which after that payment leaves a balance owed of about $672 million.

Rural schools got a second funding boost of $30 million out of that surplus, too. That's the second year that one-time only money has been devoted to helping the 147 school districts with less than 6,000 students.

Both of those boosts were incorporated into the school finance act and the 2018-19 state budget.

The School Finance Act added $222.57 per student for a new base funding level of $6,768.77. But that isn't the end of that discussion - a ballot measure, known as Great School Thriving communities, intends to seek a tax hike in November that would put $1.6 billion into public school finance. In addition, an interim school finance committee will spend a second summer looking for ways to re-think how Colorado funds its public schools. Those results and recommendations are expected before the start of the 2019 session.

The General Assembly took other steps in 2018 to help rural schools.

The teacher shortage that affects virtually all school districts across Colorado also got more attention from lawmakers in the 2018 session.

Three bills signed into law will help with teacher shortages in rural areas.

Senate Bill 85 expands an existing program that provides incentives for rural teachers to obtain certification in concurrent enrollment or further their professional development and who commit to teaching in a rural school district for three years. The program offered 20 slots, valued at up to $6,000 each, and under Senate Bill 85 expanded to 60 slots.

The measure was prompted by a request from the state's Rural School Alliance, which wanted to expand that program to offer incentives to other school professionals, such as speech language pathologists, psychologists, school nurses, counselors and social workers.

But the bill ran into trouble in the Senate when Senate President Pro tem Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling insisted that the program should stick to incentives for teachers. A compromise was struck on the day before the session ended. That allows the Department of Education, which runs the program along with the Department of Higher Education to fill as many slots possible with teachers, and any openings after that can go to other special services providers.

Hickenlooper signed the bill into law on May 24.

Another measure designed to address the rural teacher shortage is the "Rural Colorado Grow Your Own Educator Act," also known as House Bill 1002.

Under this law, signed on May 25, the Department of Education will identify specific areas of the state and subject matters in which there is a teacher shortage, limited to rural school districts.

The school district would then provide a teaching fellowship to a fourth-year college student in a teacher preparation program. The program will cover up to 100 teaching fellows; each student will get $10,000 to cover the costs of that last year of college. Under the law, the costs are to be divided 50/50 between the state and the college or university.

If the school district offers the teaching fellow a job for two years and the fellow does not take the job, the fellow must pay back the stipend.

The state is backing up the program with a half-million dollars for the next few years through House Bill 1002.

A third law, setting up a grant program, will devote $1 million per year until 2022. The grant program under House Bill 1412 targets the problem of keeping teachers once they're in the school district, although this law applies to all school districts, not just rural ones.

Under House Bill 1412, which Hickenlooper signed on May 24, the Department of Education will award grants to help with a variety of costs, such as job-sharing for teachers, on-site early childhood care for teacher families; mentorship programs, professional development, and planning and collaboration time for new and mentor teachers. Grants will be awarded for three years under this program.

House Bill 1309 will use another $1.2 million of state funds to create a new teacher licensing program, also intended to address the teacher shortage.

The law, signed on May 29, sets up some of the guidelines for the Grow Your Own Educator program, but it also creates a "teacher of record" license, to be used when a school district is unable to find qualified applicants.

The teacher of record license can be given to a student who has completed most of the bachelor degree requirements, hasn't yet completed student teaching, is enrolled in the "grow your own educator" program and will be hired in a position where there is a critical teacher shortage.

The General Assembly rejected measures that sought to jail public school teachers who go out on strikes, turned down efforts to pay for full-day kindergarten and for a third year, rejected a proposal to set up tax credits that could help rural communities with housing costs for employees, including teachers.

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For the Fort Morgan Times Posted: 06/10/2018 02:07:52 PM MDT Lawmakers reacted to the good news that the state had a billion-dollar surplus for 2018-19 by applying those dollars to a variety of priorities, including education.

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See where your school ranks!

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Rural school districts throughout Colorado continue to experience significant difficulty finding qualified educators to serve as classroom educators, school leaders, and/or special service providers within their individual school districts. The Colorado Center for Rural Education was created to address these issues. Our center is not limited to the University of Northern Colorado community.

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Colorado Rural Schools Alliance - Education, Rural, Education Jobs

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Colorado rural schools alliance education advocacy organization

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Are you INTJ or ESTP? Find out by taking this quiz!

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Answer the questions below honestly about yourself and we'll score the quiz and let you know how others see you. This quiz supposedly came from Dr. Phil, but we have been unable to authenticate it, so take it with a grain of salt.

This online screening is not a diagnostic tool. Only a trained medical professional, like a doctor or mental health professional, can help you determine the next best steps for you.

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Answer the questions below honestly about yourself and we'll score the quiz and let you know how others see you. This quiz supposedly came from Dr. Phil, but we have been unable to authenticate it, so take it with a grain of salt. This online screening is not a diagnostic tool.

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Explore the five categories of Emotional Intelligence or EQ.

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"Your EQ is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them," says Howard Gardner, the influential Harvard theorist. Five major categories of emotional intelligence skills are recognized by researchers in this area.

Understanding the Five Categories of Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

1. Self-awareness. The ability to recognize an emotion as it "happens" is the key to your EQ. Developing self-awareness requires tuning in to your true feelings. If you evaluate your emotions, you can manage them. The major elements of self-awareness are:

Emotional awareness. Your ability to recognize your own emotions and their effects.

Self-confidence. Sureness about your self-worth and capabilities.

2. Self-regulation. You often have little control over when you experience emotions. You can, however, have some say in how long an emotion will last by using a number of techniques to alleviate negative emotions such as anger, anxiety or depression. A few of these techniques include recasting a situation in a more positive light, taking a long walk and meditation or prayer. Self-regulation involves

Self-control. Managing disruptive impulses.

Trustworthiness. Maintaining standards of honesty and integrity.

Conscientiousness. Taking responsibility for your own performance.

Adaptability. Handling change with flexibility.

Innovation. Being open to new ideas.

3. Motivation. To motivate yourself for any achievement requires clear goals and a positive attitude. Although you may have a predisposition to either a positive or a negative attitude, you can with effort and practice learn to think more positively. If you catch negative thoughts as they occur, you can reframe them in more positive terms - which will help you achieve your goals. Motivation is made up of:

Achievement drive. Your constant striving to improve or to meet a standard of excellence.

Commitment. Aligning with the goals of the group or organization.

Initiative. Readying yourself to act on opportunities.

Optimism. Pursuing goals persistently despite obstacles and setbacks.

4. Empathy. The ability to recognize how people feel is important to success in your life and career. The more skillful you are at discerning the feelings behind others' signals the better you can control the signals you send them. An empathetic person excels at:

Service orientation. Anticipating, recognizing and meeting clients' needs.

Developing others. Sensing what others need to progress and bolstering their abilities.

Leveraging diversity. Cultivating opportunities through diverse people.

Political awareness. Reading a group's emotional currents and power relationships.

Understanding others. Discerning the feelings behind the needs and wants of others.

5. Social skills. The development of good interpersonal skills is tantamount to success in your life and career. In today's always-connected world, everyone has immediate access to technical knowledge. Thus, "people skills" are even more important now because you must possess a high EQ to better understand, empathize and negotiate with others in a global economy. Among the most useful skills are:

Influence. Wielding effective persuasion tactics.

Communication. Sending clear messages.

Leadership. Inspiring and guiding groups and people.

Change catalyst. Initiating or managing change.

Conflict management. Understanding, negotiating and resolving disagreements.

Building bonds. Nurturing instrumental relationships.

Collaboration and cooperation. Working with others toward shared goals.

Team capabilities. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

What factors are at play when people of high IQ fail and those of modest IQ succeed?

How well you do in your life and career is determined by both. IQ alone is not enough; EQ also matters. In fact, psychologists generally agree that among the ingredients for success, IQ counts for roughly 10% (at best 25%); the rest depends on everything else - including EQ.

A study of Harvard graduates in business, law, medicine and teaching showed a negative or zero correlation between an IQ indicator (entrance exam scores) and subsequent career success. Three examples illustrate the importance of emotional competencies.
Learn More: How the Four Traits of Emotional Intelligence Affect Your Life The Benefits of Emotional Intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

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"Your EQ is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them," says Howard Gardner, the influential Harvard theorist. Five major categories of emotional intelligence skills are recognized by researchers in this area. 1. Self-awareness.

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Facts and figures galore!

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This site is designed for persons who are interested in educational changes taking place in rural America. This site provides access to recent data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as well as the Census Bureau.

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UNC
CU
Metro
CSU
Adams State
Etc...

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Math
Science
Social Studies
English

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Physical Education
Art
Music
STEM
Drama
Industrial Arts

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GT
ELL
Special Education
Occupational Therapist
Speech Language Pathologist

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School Counselor
Psychologist

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When it comes to SIG, my mind is obviously made up. So I'd forgive you for skipping anything I write about it; you have every reason to think I'm going to be bearish. That goes double for a post about a new federal study finding different but still discouraging SIG results.

" Another opportunity for Smarick to beat up on this federal program? Pass."

But if you're still with me, please stay for a few more minutes. Yes, the new federal IES report A Focused Look at Rural Schools Receiving School Improvement Grants offers additional reasons to rue our decision to spend billions on "turnarounds." But that's not the big takeaway-at least not for me.

Over the last year or so, as my colleagues at Bellwether and I have worked on a large project related to rural K-12, I've become more attuned to the particular needs of rural communities and schools and how these needs differ from those of urban America. (In full disclosure: I have a personal interest in this subject, as one side of my family comes from a small working farm in a rural area.)

This study takes an in-depth look at the experience of nine rural schools that received School Improvement Grants; its goal is to understand how the schools' rural location influenced efforts to improve student performance. The brief has limitations: it does not look at student achievement, and the nine schools are neither a representative sample of rural SIG schools nor of rural schools in general.

But some findings may be generalizable to other rural schools because some of the factors that hindered improvement efforts in all nine schools appear to be directly related to their rural-ness: "(1) distance to an urban center or metro area, (2) geographic spread with a low population density, and (3) small community size."

The report focuses on two of the most challenging issues: recruiting and retaining teachers and increasing parental involvement. As the study shows, while both also confound urban reform efforts, in rural areas, the distance between school and home gives both issues different contours.

Three factors in particular seem to complicate efforts to recruit and retain highly effective teachers in rural SIG schools. Long commutes dissuaded teachers willing to teach in a rural school but wanting to live in a town or a city; one school reported that two of its teachers left when they could no longer afford the cost of their hour-long commutes.

The geographic isolation of many rural communities can mean limited housing options and even more limited job opportunities for teachers' spouses. While housing costs may be lower in rural areas, "barely competitive" salaries eat up those margins quickly.

The SIG schools' human-capital strategies included increasing teacher pay via performance-based compensation, pay for additional hours worked, and signing bonuses. These were not always effective.

Working additional hours-even if compensated-was seen as a deterrent (possibly because it adds to the length of a work day already expanded because of long commutes). Along those lines, two schools were requesting SIG funds to help reimburse teachers for commuting costs, and two schools offer existing, non-SIG support for commuters.

Administrators reached out to local colleges of education to encourage graduates to consider their rural SIG schools, but they were generally only able to recruit interns. Other principals tried to improve school climate. Nearly all schools formed professional-learning communities (PLCs), but the small size of the schools necessitated that PLCs cross subject areas and grade levels-cutting against the theory behind PLCs.

As for parental involvement, work schedules were the largest barrier to engagement and attendance at events such as parent-teacher conferences, report card pickups, and volunteer activities. Respondents from more than half of the schools also believed that "parents don't value education."

A lack of public and private transportation in rural areas and the distance between home, work, and school also prevented parents from becoming more involved. At one school, a teacher noted that good attendance at parent-teacher conferences and other events was facilitated by the school's proximity to student homes. Only 47 percent of teachers at this school cited parent involvement as a "major or moderate" challenge to school improvement, the lowest of the nine rural schools.

However, almost all parents attended athletic events, which were seen as "the one unifying force in the community." One high-school teacher reported attending football and basketball games in order to engage with parents.

Early student-achievement results suggest that rural SIG schools are seeing similarly paltry gains as urban SIG schools. This report, however, suggests that the causes of these struggles may be quite different, calling for different interventions.

Indeed, as our recent report on rural charter schools notes, while a new-schools strategy may be appropriate in some cases, such practices-which were initially developed and then evolved over years to address the an urban context-might not easily translate to rural America.

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The challenges facing struggling rural schools

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When it comes to SIG, my mind is obviously made up. So I'd forgive you for skipping anything I write about it; you have every reason to think I'm going to be bearish. That goes double for a post about a new federal study finding different but still discouraging SIG results.