Strategies for Rural Minnesota School Districts: A Literature Review

The purpose of this literature review is to gain greater understanding of strategies that can be effectively applied in Minnesota's rural school districts to address their education challenges. In particular, the authors sought to identify strategies that could either: (1) maintain (or improve) students' academic achievement at less cost to the school district, or (2) improve student academic achievement, or that of traditionally less successful subgroups, at the same cost. For some strategies found in the rural education research literature, study results only addressed the strategy's effectiveness in solving a specific problem (e.g., teacher retention) rather than its impact on student achievement or school costs. The authors employed a "bottom-up" approach in their investigation by focusing on strategies tried by rural school districts and the evidence for their effectiveness. Appended are: (1) Acknowledgments; and (2) Summary of strategies and available level of evidence. [This paper was prepared for the Center for Rural Policy and Development.]