Talk:Rural School and Community Trust

Annenberg Rural Challenge

The Annenberg Rural Challenge

The Annenberg Rural Challenge was a national rural educational reform movement organized in the 1990s to re-establish the significance and importance of the nation’s rural schools. The Rural Challenge and the state networks it created can be understood as a response to decades of school consolidation efforts during which time large numbers of America’s rural schools were closed.

In the early 90s, the Annenberg Foundation sought to infuse change in public education with a large infusion of grants to local education agencies. Five hundred million dollars were allocated for improvements in the performance and achievement of students in the nation’s most needy schools. Virtually all of these dollars were slated for grants to urban school districts. A small group of rural school advocates approached the Annenberg Foundation to request that it establish a grants program targeted directly at schools in rural America. The grants program was named the Annenberg Rural Challenge. A board of directors was created and a call went out for rural educators in the states to apply for grants to support innovation in rural education. The Directors received were an allocation of fifty million dollars for rural education with the stipulation that grantees provide matching funds. Applications were sought from state networks, originally labeled founding partners. For a full description of the formation of the Annenberg Rural Challenge, please see Perrone, V., Canniff, J., Casey, M.E., Cochrane, C., Fontaine, C., Ulichny, P., Williams, B., & Woods, D. (1999). Living and Learning in Rural Schools and Communities: Lessons from the Field. A Report to the Annenberg Rural Challenge. Harvard University Graduate School of Education. This report can also be located in the ERIC data base: 443609.

A national team of evaluators led by Dr. Vito Perrone at Harvard used a qualitative evaluation process to document the work of state networks and schools that received grants. The evaluation report included this summation: The Annenberg Rural Challenge represents a large national effort to transform rural schools and communities. Among its dominant themes are that students should come to know their local communities well, that communities should see schools and students as critical assets, and that communities and schools need to become more integrated

Perrone offered a short list of the animating values that found currency with Rural Challenge participants. These are important because they reveal the nature of the educational alternative that the movement held forth in opposition to traditional educational practices. • Face to face relationships are important • A sense of community is important • Democracy as a way of life is important • A high quality education that builds student self-efficacy is important • A school that promotes community well being is important • A school that provides students wide access to post-secondary possibilities without loosing touch with local place is important • Communities matter as the base on which relationships flourish • Communities provide the space for ties to others who have gone before • Communities serve as the base for personal and family growth • Schools and communities have a natural reciprocity • Rural schools are not small versions of big schools. (Report to the Cross-Site Gathering, 1998)

Jonathon Sher, one of the framers of the Rural Challenge, predicted that the Rural Challenge could well tip “ battle over the soul of rural school reform” in favor of “an alternative to the factory model” (Sher, 1995). At this time the most recent iteration of the standards and accountability movement was in its incipient stages so Sher perhaps did not anticipate the formidable adversary that would emerge to contest for dominance in rural education. The Rural Challenge was conceived as a movement. The goals of the Rural Challenge included one that sought to create “a powerful and sustainable rural school reform movement that actively involved teachers, students, families, communities, and the broader public, as well as educational professionals” (Sher, 1995).

Submitted by Dr. Miles Bryant, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miles Bryant (talk • contribs) 16:08, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

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