Rural school-community partnerships: the case of science education

The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE, 2004) administers a formula grant program to states that is intended to increase the academic achievement of students in mathematics and science by enhancing the content knowledge and teaching skills of classroom teachers. Partnerships between high-need school districts and the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty in institutions of higher education are at the core of these improvement efforts. These programs articulate the President's priority of using partnering to close the achievement gap in math and science between majority and minority and/or disadvantaged students in order to keep the U.S. competitive in international markets. However, in rural communities, the infrastructure for developing these partnerships (i.e., nearby institutions of higher education, stable economic base, human resources) is often not available. In this article, the authors explore how, within the context of a previous national educational reform effort--the National Science Foundation's Rural Systemic Initiative (RSI)--rural communities overcame these obstacles to form viable and meaningful partnerships that strengthened both their schools and communities. This information offers a number of lessons learned about how partnerships are, or are not, formed in the rural community context, which can inform the work of the current Math and Science Partnership efforts. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)