in this paper, we discuss the implications for gifted students of challenges facing rural schools. We explore 4 challenges with particular relevance to rural schools: (a) declining population, (b) persistent poverty, (c) changing demographics, and (d) ongoing accountability requirements. recommendations positioned to address these challenges include providing special instruction using distance education, making use of broad definitions of giftedness, making use of various acceleration strategies, and encouraging talented students to plan for meaningful careers in their home communities. introduction The purpose of this paper is to review relevant literature-particularly literature published in the past 5 years-that helps explain how challenges facing rural schools impact gifted students. These challenges are not new, and they certainly have an impact on many students in these schools, not just those who are gifted. Nevertheless, we believe that the challenges and schools' responses to them have different ramifications for gifted children than for other, nongifted peers. Arguably these challenges give educators opportunities to explore creative alternatives, but challenges often elicit restricted and conventional responses (e.g., see DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). For example, in many rural schools, educators persist in using age-based grouping even when students of various ages are placed in the same multiage classroom. And often, rural districts ask teachers of the gifted to travel to several small schools-an approach that not only Journal for the Education of the Gifted 516 contributes to teacher burnout but also consigns students to special instruction that tends to be both time-limited and superficial. Furthermore, even creative responses are likely to have different impacts on different groups of students. Approaches selected by rural schools-even those with a great deal of promise for most studentsmay or may not provide particular benefits to gifted students. In addition, only some school districts address challenges strategically. Many take a reactive stance, grudgingly changing to meet external demands in predictable ways (e.g., Sarason, 2002). In order to illustrate these dynamics and their likely implications for the education of gifted students, we explore four challenges with particular relevance to rural schools: (a) declining population, (b) persistent poverty, (c) changing demographics, and (d) ongoing accountability requirements. Declining population Despite considerable variability, many rural regions of the United States, especially those that are more remote, have been losing population (McGranahan & Beale, 2002). Some commentators also talk about a related issue-the loss of the most highly educated people from rural areas, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "brain drain" (Artz, 2003). Not only researchers, but rural residents as well are aware of the tendency for children to leave rural communities once they receive a college degree. In fact, some families discourage their children from attendin...

This qualitative case study of Island Community School 1 provides a detailed description of how one school incorporated place-based, environmentally conscious education over the course of more than a decade. The study explored the conditions that supported and constrained this approach in an isolated rural community. Data came primarily from interviews with educators, students, and community members but also from participant observation. Four themes helped explain relevant dynamics: leadership by the principal, interaction with seasonal residents, teachers' varied practices, and school culture invested in student inquiry. The research illustrated an approach that prepared students in one rural community with environmental awareness and skills that might serve them wherever they choose to live as adults.

We've accepted the invitation to respond to Mary Ann Duffy's essay review of Out of Our Minds in order to promote continued consideration of the species of anti-intellectualism that schools help to sponsor. Although we intended the book for a U.S. audience, three of six published reviews have appeared in journals outside the United States. Two were Canadian (the other Canadian review is at the following URL: http://olam.ed.asu.edu/ epaa/v5n5.html). We suppose this trend of international reviewing might constitute unhappy evidence for our case.In any event, the Canadian reviewers liked the book and were (productively) provoked by it. In both instances, moreover, the authors were practicing classroom teachers. We wrote with these folks clearly in our mindseven if our analysis is less close-in to practice than practitioners usually prefer. As to our not providing very satisfactory solutions, about all we can do is paraphrase Simone De Beauvoir's response when criticized for writing depressing novels: It wasn't our goal (and may not be in our power) to detail solutions to these problems, but documenting them seems important nevertheless.In the three years since publication, we have seen no works that address anti-intellectualism (anti-intellectism, actually) with equal scope. The recent appearance of new reviews has heartened us somewhat. "Our" reviewers outside the U.S. have exhibited a sharp, shared feeling of passion and commitment for the issues; they have understood why we made the effort. Among U.S. readers, however, the reception has been more muted, if also favorable. We had just hoped that in our native land others might begin to wonder at the relevant issues.In the sections of the response that follows, we try both to explain the choices we made when writing the book (years ago!) and, more important, to engage the enduring substance of issues. Our rejoinders are framed as

Most of the recent literature on the achievement effects of school size has examined school and district performance. These studies have demonstrated substantial benefits of smaller school and district size in impoverished settings. To date, however, no work has adequately examined the relationship of size and socioeconomic status (SES) with students as the unit of analysis. One study, however, came close (Lee & Smith, 1997), but failed to adjust its analyses or conclusions to the substantial bias toward larger schools evident in the data set used. The present study, based on the same large data set, but with size issues in the rural circumstance clearly in focus, reaches rather different conclusions, extending previous work for the first time to a more adequate examination of size effects on individual students. Findings challenge assertions about ideal and minimum size. Analyses include comparison of means and multi-level modeling. Methodologically, the study illustrates the challenge of using nationally representative data sets of students to investigate second-level contextual phenomena, such as school size. When aggregated to schools attended by nationally representative students, the result cannot be a nationally representative set of schools. Adjustment with weights to simulate such a distribution, moreover, is inadequate to overcome this threat if one is interested in investigating size relationships among the smaller half of US schools, as one must be in seeking to generalize results to the nation as a whole. The present study finds that the smallest national decile of size maximizes the achievement of the poorest quartile of students. Moreover, appropriate size is shown to vary by student socioeconomic status.