The Rural Challenge, based in Granby, Colo., will focus on helping such schools build on the strengths of their small scale. Regional teams will help the national board identify the schools, communities and organizations that will become part of a rural network committed to transforming rural education. Approximately half of our country's public school districts are rural ones - as are a third of the nation's schools and a quarter of America's teachers and students. These thousands of rural public schools are astonishingly diverse. Like the Annenberg Challenge grants already announced in several metropolitan areas, the Rural Challenge, headquartered in Granby, Colo., will focus on fundamental schoolwide reform rather than on individual programs and projects, and will promote a similar set of educational principles and school characteristics.
Rural education is no stranger to hard times and hard problems.
Mr. Annenberg has offered an unprecedented opportunity for rural America to play a leadership role in the movement to rethink and rebuild the nation's public schools. Murrah said the Rural Challenge will conduct this search primarily through a series of regional teams it will create to assist and advise the national board and the national staff. Our strategy is to work closely with a wide-ranging group of partners, not simply to provide resources to isolated and unrelated grantees. The idea is to develop a critical mass of reformers and allies who, by acting together, can transform rural education. Initially, the Rural Challenge will unite a select group of respected rural school reform networks to deepen their own work, to work collaboratively with each other, and to prepare themselves to assist the next wave of participating schools, communities and support organizations.