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A First Person Account of the Rural Trust's Education Renewal Zone Initiative in Missouri  By Vicki M. Hobbs Although unique in many respects, Missouri also epitomizes within its borders much of the rest of the United States. While north Missouri, with its row crops and flat bottomland, looks toward Iowa and Nebraska from the heart of agrarian America, the Bootheel region, with its diverse population and vestiges of segregation, lies squarely within the Cotton South. St. Louis with its old wealth and inner-city issues serves as the easternmost outpost of the aristocratic East, while Kansas City looks west toward the plains, mountains and individualism of the Western frontier. Missouri finds itself torn, not only geographically, but educationally as well. Missouri has a significant urban population with six Metropolitan Statistical Areas, but just as significant are the 35 percent of schools and the 22 percent of students who are rural in both definition and reality. In fact, 13 percent of Missouri's students attend small rural schools, ranking Missouri as ninth among all states in small school enrollment. The State of Education in Missouri Because Missouri exhibits an array of both the challenges and resources evident in many other states with respect to rural education, the idea emerged within the Rural Trust to create a holistic approach that simultaneously encompasses both the problem of rural teacher training and supply, and the opportunity afforded by the application of appropriate technology in rural schools. The idea was to involve a diverse collaborative of schools, communities, higher education institutions, and statewide organizations in addressing these issues. Missouri is suffering a critical teacher shortage in several curricular areas, but it is rural schools that are most profoundly affected by such shortages. Good rural schools find that the teachers they attract are, after intensive on-the-job training in the classroom, highly marketable to larger districts at salaries far beyond those paid by rural schools. Poorer rural schools simply can't find the teachers to hire to be able to offer a quality curriculum. But Missouri also has a fairly extensive technology infrastructure. Approximately 98 percent of its school districts have access to a state and E-Rate subsidized T-1 line for Internet access, while more than half of all districts have videoconferencing or two-way interactive television capabilities. A statewide video backbone makes cross-district and/or cross-consortium access to distance-learning courses at least potentially possible. However, the lack of school technology support personnel, coupled with the inequitable access to modern technologies, plagues smaller and rural schools. The Rural Trust's Educational Renewal Zone (ERZ) Initiative, therefore, was born out of a merger between the community-based educational philosophy of the Rural Trust, the needs of small rural schools in Missouri, and the opportunistic positioning of Missouri's educational institutions, agencies, organizations, and infrastructure. The philosophical underpinnings of the ERZ Initiative purport that:
What we learn in this first-time effort to construct Education Renewal Zones (ERZ) in Missouri should be of significant help in implementing the model in other states. Basic to this model is identifying a small teacher training institution, a selected number of K-8/K-12 school districts in general geographic (or virtual) proximity to the teacher training institution, and a cadre of educational support organizations, institutions, and agencies working in coordination with all ERZ partners. As a consultant with the Rural Trust, I found the role of organizing and bringing together this group of people for a series of introductory, presentation, and planning meetings to be a meaningful and rewarding experience. Our approach in doing so -- that is, pre-selecting a group of six colleges and four organizations each to present their vision for reinventing rural education in Missouri -- was a unique (and troubling) approach for some. Participants were not asked to submit written proposals with specific guidelines and monetary limits, but were asked to devise and verbally present the institutional and organizational innovations that they saw as most beneficial to the future of rural schools in Missouri. The Rural Trust would not serve as the "evaluator" of the presentations, but would rely on the recommendations of a five-member, rural superintendent response team to select the final participants. The Rural Trust would not serve as a granting organization, but would take the lead in soliciting external foundation support for the initiatives devised by the Missouri ERZ partner institutions, organizations, and agencies. In a 12-month time frame starting in November 2000, the ERZ Initiative went from a broad-based introductory meeting of all potential partners to the final selection of three teacher education institutions: Northwest Missouri State University at Maryville, Central Methodist College at Fayette, and Southeast Missouri State at Cape Girardeau; one technical college: Linn State Technical College; and four supporting organizations: SuccessLink, Missouri Distance Learning Association, GreaterNET, and the Center for Occupational and Research Development. Both the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Coordinating Board for Higher Education have been and continue to be involved in all phases of planning and program development. We anticipated that the year-long planning effort would occur simultaneously with the efforts of the Rural Trust to solicit external foundation support for the ERZ Initiative. However, the untimely downturn of the economy and the tragedies of September 11 served to bring fund development efforts to a screeching halt. Nevertheless, the initiative officially began Phase I implementation in January 2002. Phase I efforts do not live up to the scope or breadth of the initiatives planned, but are nevertheless a meaningful start. Phase I activities include:
Beyond the scope of the Phase I efforts, the five-year ERZ plan will concentrate on restructuring teacher and technology coordinator recruitment and retention, improving teacher technology and place-based training, and developing relationships among institutions, schools and communities to best integrate technology into rural schools. The Rural Trust plans to do this by offering innovative programs and recognizing community and school needs. We will offer scholarships for education program students who plan to focus on rural and place-based education, and establish partnerships between ERZ rural school districts and inner city schools as a part of the routine preparation of rural teachers. We will develop on-line teacher certification programs that will focus on such things as place-based education and PRAXIS examination preparation for teachers wishing to achieve additional certifications in specific content areas. We will also create "circuit riders" for each ERZ to provide direct pre-service supervision, new teacher induction support, mentor teacher training, modeling of instruction, on-going professional development and recruitment. These are just examples of the long list of plans for the future. As we embark on this significant, multi-year effort in restructuring rural teacher education while capitalizing on the opportunities afforded by technology, we believe that our efforts foretell the mainstream future of rural education, where each community is integrally and substantively involved in educating its youth, and where rural youth grow up as the products of a nurturing, economically viable, and supportive community.
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