The issue of education and human capital development has held a high position on the national domestic policy agenda in recent years. Earlier this year, President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law, creating a new era of increased school accountability by evaluating student performance annually, providing additional resources to failing schools, sanctioning schools that fail to improve, and allowing greater parental school choice. Many States have already initiated a series of education policy reforms, including test-based school assessment, school restructuring, and statewide funding equalization.

The education reforms taking place across the nation are intended in large part to ensure that our public schools adequately prepare their students for the changed economic climate in which we now live. Due to the increased integration of computer and information technologies into the workplace, and the expanded need for workers with analytical, mathematical, and verbal skills, the demand for better-educated workers is accelerating. As a result, individuals with solid educational credentials, problem-solving capabilities, and technological expertise are in greater demand than ever before. Those who lack these skills are facing a life of unstable employment and low wages.

As successful as these changes may be in many settings, rural schools and communities present a distinctive set of challenges to education reform. Policies predicated on the model of the large urban/suburban school district and high-skill urban economies may have unexpected results-both positive and negative-when translated to the relative isolation, small size, and less-skilled economy of rural areas. Researchers have yet to explore and understand many of the ways in which educational change in rural settings is likely to affect both rural students and the economic and social vitality of their communities. Of particular concern are those rural areas still marked by poorly funded public schools, very low educational attainment, and high levels of economic distress. All of these serve as major obstacles to the educational progress of local youth and local development efforts.

Given the central role that education has played, and will continue to play, in shaping the economic and social welfare of rural communities, a national conference is being organized by the Economic Research Service and the Southern Rural Development Center for the purpose of engaging a cadre of highly talented researchers in addressing the important subject of rural education. The Rural School and Community Trust is serving as a co-sponsor of this important event. The intent is to stimulate a focused attention on rural education-related issues in America, particularly the capacity of rural schools to provide high quality education to their students and to serve as an engine for local economic development activities. A more contemporary understanding of these linkages is vitally important for articulating a possible set of education/economic development strategies that make the most sense for rural areas of the United States.

Once the conference is completed, each research paper will be peer reviewed by researchers having expertise in the subject matter area of the paper. Comments by reviewers will be subsequently shared with authors. Revised versions of the articles will then be published as a special issue in an appropriate social sciences journal. In addition, SRDC/ERS will publish a special policy series that will explore the rural education and community vitality linkages. This special series will be modeled after the highly successful policy series that the SRDC has initiated over the past two years (i.e., the Millennium Series and the Food Assistance Research Series).

Suggested themes/topics for rural education conference:

• Policy-related forces affecting rural educational achievement and workforce outcomes (such as distance learning, school size, school-to-work programs, standards-based reform, school finance).
• The role of schools in the local economy (such as economic impact of schools on local areas, impact of school closings/consolidation, education as an investment in local economic development, school-community partnerships).
• Interactions between educational outcomes and local economic development (such as school quality and economic growth/poverty, school quality and disadvantaged populations, community, social, and human capital interactions in educational/economic outcomes, brain drain, changing educational needs of employers).

Registration Information n Agenda

A National Research Workshop Sponsored by:
Economic Research Service
Southern Rural Development Center
The Rural School and Community Trust