Linda Hall Leaving Center for Rural Education

Earlier today Linda Hall announced her departure as the Director of the Center for Rural Education. The announcement was made on the U.S. Department of Education's Rural Education listserv.

To ListServ subscribers:

Today marks my last day as the owner of the Rural Education listserv here in the Office of Vocational and Adult Education of the U. S. Department of Education. My assignment ends tomorrow and I will return to Federal Student Aid, another of the Department's operating units. Thank you for all of your comments as we established the Center for Rural Education. Richard LaPointe will assume the leadership role for the Center until the Director's position is filled.

Linda W. Hall

Rural Task Force July 2006 Meeting

Minutes from the July 17, 2006 meeting of the Secretary's Task Force on Rural Education have been posted on the Center for Rural Eduction section on the U.S. Department of Education's website. Of particular interest was a presentation by Phoebe Cottingham, Commissioner, Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences on the rural work of newly funded Regional Educational Laboratories. Dr. Cottingham reported that:

• Six of the startup Fast Response projects being conducted by the labs focus on rural education policy issues.

• Fourteen Fast Response projects have explicit analysis of rural education status or progress.

• Two major experimental tests of using virtual technology to improve middle school math teaching in rural schools.

• Six rigorous studies of state programs to improve science-math learning will include rural schools.

• About a third of the new work conducted by the labs is about rural education.

The next meeting of the Rural Education Task Force is scheduled for October 2006.

Take Me Away

Sometimes it's easy to take for granted how fortunate we are to live in wonderful rural places. My high school classmate Cowboy Brad Fitch recorded a song that reminds me of that every time I hear it. Take Me Away was written by Brad's brother Doug and describes what it's like to live away from the mountains.

Here are the lyrics:

Not long ago, seems like yesterday, the mountains were my home, I thought I'd always stay
Summer days of blue, and nights of shining stars, lately I can't take the sight of city lights and cars

There were times before, times I'd wish away, up among the peaks, beside a glacial lake
Living in the sky makes it hard to leave 'cause the city's got me down, down where I can't breath

To purple mountains majesty even for a day, not so very far from here, just a world away

Looking out my door this is what I see, houses row by row, planned so expertly
But the wind and rock and snow are calling out to me, it's the summits that I know where I long to be

Take me away, far far away from here,take me away, bring me home, the mountains are my home
Far away from here, send me on my way, take me home

Eleanor Roosevelt on the first White House Conference on Rural Education

I ran across an interview with Eleanor Roosevelt in which mentions the first White House Conference on Rural Education that was held October 3-5, 1944. This I Believe About Rural Schools was originally published by Chari Ormand Williams in The Nation's Schools 45, no. 3 (March 1950): 31-36.

You were responsible for making possible the first White House Conference on Rural Education ever held. What do you think are some significant outcomes of this conference, which rural educators believe has charted the course of rural education in this country for the next 50 years?

There were a number of worthwhile outcomes: the reawakening of public interest in rural education; the organization of similar conferences on the state level; nine regional conferences on rural life and education held annually under the auspices of the department of rural education of the N.E.A.; organization of the National Conference of County and Rural Area Superintendents of Schools; the rapid increase in the reorganization of rural school districts in the last five years, and many others of equal importance, it seems to me.