I'm Paying the Time for Someone Else's Crime: Principals and Core Teachers at Rural Middle Schools under Chronic Academic Stress

Specifically, students living in areas with "pronounced rural poverty and socio-economic diversity [tend] to score lower on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and mandated high stakes achievement tests, and graduate at lower rates than peers in states with less rural poverty and diversity" (Byrd & Brown, 2012, p. 1). [...]there is a recognized need for internal and external support, which can be used to facilitate the change effort process, the necessary time to work on the change, and the need to build relationships (Glickman et al., 2014). [...]education change theory recognizes that "overload and fragmentation" occur, which results when there are too many change initiatives or when these initiatives are disjointed (Glickman et al., 2014, p. 357). [...]a certain amount of coherence with the education change process is needed. Study Background The culture of academic improvement for college readiness was a goal of a State Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) project for each of its middle schools. [...]the findings in this study were derived from a larger study designed to capture the creation of a college-going culture in 18 urban and rural GEAR UP middle schools.