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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Education grant competition did little to address rural challenges

To even the playing field for rural schools in the Investing in Innovation (I3) grant competition, the U.S. Department of Education awarded two points to plans that addressed unique rural challenges. A review of the applications shows many of the schools awarded the two-point bonus did little to actually address those rural challenges, the Rural School and Community Trust reports. "Most applicants making the claim propose using innovations that did not originate in rural schools and have had little or no prior use in rural schools," RSCT writes. "Although some proposals pledge to adapt the innovation to rural contexts, most are vague about this process."

RSCT's report notes of the 1,698 I3 applications received by the department, 652, just over 38 percent, made the rural competitive preference claim. Of the 49 grant recipients, 19 recipients, just under 39 percent, made the claim. Some applications making the rural preference claim, "explicitly insist that the innovation not be adapted in any way, for the sake of fidelity to research design," RSCT writes. Just two proposals were designed to operate entirely in rural schools, and the portion of the other projects that was truly rural tended to be small relative to the total scale of the project.

Judges award two-thirds of the total available rural preference points to the 19 grant recipients, but they made little effort to explain their scoring decisions, RSCT reports. "In most cases there was little evidence that readers gave attention to the requirement that innovations be designed to address 'unique challenges' of rural students or schools," RSCT writes. RSCT concludes that open competition is not the best solution for innovation in rural schools, and "the quest for innovation will require greater attention to the distinct character of rural communities in our society, as well as greater reliance on rural people for their own ideas and for the ways by which ideas from elsewhere might be best adapted to their needs." (Read more)

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