ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses reform efforts, their intended and unintended consequences for education in general and their particular impact on education in rural America. It suggests that the failure is more fundamental than a failure of reform; it is a failure of the Old Story. Rural Education could tell a New Story, one with promise for reforming all of education. Some reform efforts, while quietly underway on local and state levels, burst on the national political agenda in 1983 with the publication of The National Commission on Excellence in Education's report on A Nation At Risk. The New Federalism of the Reagan years placed education for economic development on the political agendas of the states. The chapter also discusses various interconnecting factors that limit the potential of reform efforts for improving rural education. State and national policies that treat all schools alike have a differential, often negative impact on rural schools because they ignore the effects of scale, isolation and diversity.
