CURMUDGUCATION: Can Principals Turn Around Rural Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: Can Principals Turn Around Rural Schools:

Can Principals Turn Around Rural Schools

Rural schools are often left out of discussions of ed reform and public schools and all the rest. I'm acutely aware of this because I teach in a rural district, centered in a small town of around 7,000 people, but spread across many townships. We don't think of ourselves this way, but if you look at the map, we are on the northern end of Appalachia, and many of the issues that are stirring the educational pot across the country play out far differently here.

So when the School Turnaround Learning Community ran a piece about rural school leadership, I was interested.

The School Turnaround Learning Community is run by the Center on School Turnaround, which in turn is "at" WestEd, an educational "research, development and service organization" that won the job of running school turnaround stuff for the US Department of Education. Its leadership ranks are loaded with professional bureaucrats and policy researchy types, so it's that kind of official government reformy thing. And they are probably scrambling a bit because managing School Improvement Grants seems to have been part of their bread and butter, and those grants have gone-- well, if not away, at least somewhere under ESSA.

This brief piece was written by Caitlin Scott, who works at Education Northwest doing researchy CURMUDGUCATION: Can Principals Turn Around Rural Schools: