ABSTRACT
Nearly 27% of American school children attend schools in rural areas or small towns. Forty percent of all teachers are employed in rural locales, which contain almost half of the country's public elementary and secondary schools and 60% of the public school districts. Yet, only 22% of the total dollars spent on education in the United States goes to rural schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998b, 1998c, 1998d, 1999d; National Education Association [NEA], 1998; United States Government Accounting Office [USAO], 1996).
