This study sought to obtain a current picture of special education teacher recruitment and retention in rural districts and to understand the professional development needs of rural special educators. Surveys, administered through telephone interviews with a national sample of special education administrators and teachers, confirmed the difficulties in hiring appropriately qualified teachers. Additional demands of the position may place teachers at risk for attrition. The authors identified important areas of professional development to support rural teachers in their positions: (a) working with paraprofessionals and parents, (b) low-incidence disabilities, (c) emotional and behavior disorders, (d) classroom management, (e) skills in collaboration and inclusive practices, and (f) curriculum content.

Bullying involvement status (i.e., bully, victim, bully–victim) and school adjustment were examined in a sample of 1,389 fifth graders (745 female, 644 male) including 145 special education students who were served in general education classrooms for at least 50% of the day. The sample was drawn from 35 rural schools in seven states across all geographic areas of the United States. School adjustment difficulties including internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were most pronounced in students who were identified as bully–victims (students who were identified as both victims and perpetrators of bullying). In contrast, bullies tended to have more positive interpersonal characteristics and fewer negative ones than youth who were identified as victims or bully–victims. Furthermore, compared to their nondisabled peers, students who received special education services had elevated rates of involvement as victims and bully–victims, but not as bullies. Implications for intervention are discussed.

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An extended body of research has documented the outmigration of the “best and brightest” youth from rural areas. Some of this scholarship has suggested that rural schools and educators may be complicit in this process as they devote extra attention and resources to the highest achieving students—those most likely to leave their rural communities after high school. Using data from a national multimethod study, we find mixed support for this hypothesis. To the contrary, our data suggest that the highest-achieving rural students are among those with the greatest community attachment, and that student perceptions of local economic conditions are far more influential in shaping postsecondary residential aspirations than the advice of educators, or the poverty level of the school.

Adolescents who grow-up in rural areas often experience a tension between their attachment to the rural lifestyle afforded by their home community and a competing desire to gain educational, social, and occupational experiences that are only available in metropolitan areas. While these diverging pressures are well-documented, there is little information about linkages between rural high school students' views of their communities, their postsecondary aspirations, and their school adjustment. To address this issue, this study examined perceptions of community and residential aspirations in an ethnically diverse sample of 8,754 rural adolescents (51.5% female) in relationship to their competence and risk status in high school. Participants were from 73 rural high schools across 34 states. In addition, ratings on participants' school adjustment were provided by teachers (n = 667). High competence students (i.e., those in configurations of high positive and low negative teacher-rated characteristics) expressed positive perceptions of their rural lifestyle and many, particularly girls, indicated an interest in staying in or returning to their home community. Low competence youth (i.e., those in configurations of low positive and high negative teacher-rated characteristics) appeared to be less connected to their community and were more likely to express their intent to leave and not return. These results appear to qualify current concerns about "rural brain drain" and also suggest that the lack of attachment to the community may be a compounding risk factor for rural adolescents who have significant school adjustment problems.

This study examined the school adjustment of adolescents with disabilities and their nondisabled peers in a national sample of rural high school students. The total sample consisted of 7,376 students: 6,704 nondisabled students, 70 students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), 512 students with learning disabilities (LD), and 90 students identified as English language learners (ELL). Teacher ratings on the Interpersonal Competence Scale-Teacher (ICS-T) were used to assess students' adjustment on seven factors: academic, affiliative, aggressive, internalizing, popular, Olympian, and shy. Cluster analyses were used to identify distinct configurations of competence and risk separately for boys and girls. Differences between educational classifications were identified for the ICS-T factors and for the interpersonal competence configurations. Students with EBD were overrepresented in Multi-risk configurations (aggressive high-risk profiles), students with LD were overrepresented in both the Multirisk and Disengaged (non-aggressive high-risk profiles) configurations, and students identified as ELL were overrepresented in Disengaged configurations.

A randomized control trial was conducted to evaluate the impact of the Rural Early Adolescent Learning Program (Project REAL) on teachers' awareness of peer groups at the beginning of the 1st year of middle school. Two schools were randomly assigned to the intervention condition and 2 to the control condition. Thirty-nine teachers and 466 students (252 girls, 214 boys) participated in the study. As part of Project REAL, teachers were taught about social dynamics and early adolescent peer group processes. Social cognitive mapping procedures were used to assess and compare students' and teachers' perceptions of 6th grade peer groups. As compared with teachers in the control condition, intervention teachers were more likely to accurately identify peer groups. In addition, when the analyses were restricted to students who were involved in bullying, intervention teachers were more likely to accurately identify peer group membership. However, there were no significant differences between intervention and control teachers for the accurate peer group membership identification of specific bullying involvement subtypes (i.e., bullies, victims, bully victims).

This study involved a pilot examination of the impact of the Supporting Early Adolescent Learning and Social Strengths (SEALS) model on the 6th grade academic and social context following the transition to middle school. Two middle schools from a high poverty Appalachian school district were randomly assigned to the intervention and control condition. Following the SEALS training, students in the intervention school had higher peer norms for academic effort. Also, teachers in the intervention school had sustained levels of positive efficacy for meeting the instructional, behavioral,