NRCRES Website

The other day I was wondering whether the National Research Center on Rural Education Support (NRCRES) had gotten a website yet. Son of a gun, they do! It's a pretty good-looking site. The site contains information about the center's work and articles for downloading from what appears to be work done under previous contracts.

One downside to the site is that it doesn't quite have a national feel to it. A major concern has been that the center would focus a disproportionate amount of attention on rural education issues in the southeast since it located at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Lending credence to this concern is that the majority of articles available for downloading in the Journal Article Gallery focus on studies involving African American students in the Southeast. While research on educational issues facing rural African Americans are of great importance, it would be helpful for us in the west to have access to similar types of studies focusing on Hispanic and Native American populations.

Adding to the regional, rather than national, feel of the NRCRES website is a slide show of scenes that look to be in the east and southeast. Adding some slides from the Southwest, Rocky Mountains, West coast, and Northwest would help create a national feel. Adding some pictures of people and schools would add an education feel to the site.

Another curious thing about the site is that it highlights an inconsistency between what NRCRES says is a research priority and its research program. The very first research topic listed by NRCRES is the "retention of qualified teachers." Yet there's no mention of teacher retention any of the three current research programs. Is this example of a federally funded project saying one thing and doing another? Having worked on other federally funded projects I've learned that what people do is more important than what they say.

The other interesting thing is that the center's work will focus on the "retention of qualified teachers" rather than on the retention of quality teachers. Anyone who has been a teacher knows that just because someone is qualified doesn't mean that they’re effective. I'll take effective over qualified every time.

Take a few minutes and visit the NRCRES website http://www.nrcres.org/. It's a pretty good start.