Education in Appalachia Conference 1987

THE FOXFIRE EXPERIENCE SCHOOL COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS

A dilemma that I always face in giving a talk is that I never know whether to be optimistic or pessimistic. I have a Dr. JekyllIMr. Hyde existence, and I keep vacillating between the two extremes. Sometimes I get very hopeful about the way things are going, and then something will happen that will shove me backwards and remind me again that, although we may be going forward, every step forward is accompanied by a couple steps backward. Some things we never seem to learn.

APPALACHIAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES THEIR ROLE IN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This is more a think piece than a scholarly text. It is based primarily upon my personal knowledge of and experience with the Appalachian region, including time spent in the public schools--elementary , secondary, and undergraduate college--as a university teacher, and as a public official, working at the federal and state levels, in efforts to bring improvement in life opportunities to the people of the mountains.

PARENT AND CHILD EDUCATION (PACE) PROGRAM

In 1986, the Kentucky General Assembly appropriated $1.2 million for a two-year pilot program. This pilot program, the Parent And Child Education (PACE) program, is an innovative union of adult education and early childhood education.

The PACE program is targeted for families with one child that is three or four years old and one or both parents without a high school diploma or high school equivalency certification.

AEL'S RURAL SMALL SCHOOLS PROGRAM EMPOWERING CHANGE IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

Many serious needs plague the rural communities and schools of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, the four-state region where the Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL) focusses its attention.

AEL has mounted a new effort, the Rural Small School (RSS) program, to help meet these needs. The problems of rural communities in the region affect their schools. Unemployment, for example, is high in our region, and it is highest in the most rural counties of the region.

OBSERVATIONS ON SCHOOL DROPOUT PROGRAMS IN APPALACHIA

From working with dropout programs sponsored by the Appalachian Regional Commission over the past two years and from examining several others as well, I can make a number of general observations in regard to successful dropout programs.

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EDUCATION IN THE STRATEGY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW AND AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This is not a thoroughly-documented research paper, but it develops some ideas which have grown out of a long series of research studies which we have done. We use data mainly to illustrate our ideas. Obviously, we think that they are important ideas.

MAKING DOLLARS BY MAKING SENSE LINKING RURAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN APPALACHIA

The idea that education is connected to economic development has become one of the cornerstones of the educational reform movement in the 1980s. This is a different rationale for making education a societal priority than the one espoused in the late 1950s and 1960s during the last big push for school improvement.

TRAINING FOR APPALACHIAN PRACTICE (TAP) PROJECT A MODEL FOR TRAINING APPALACHIAN HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS

We live in pragmatic times. The economic realities of the 1980s have transformed the most solid of progressive politicians into fiscal conservatives. The American people, we are told, want practical solutions for real problems. This trend is also evident within Appalachian scholarship and activism.

ETHNICITY AND EDUCATION IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL EQUITY

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of Appalachian ethnicity and its relationship to educational inequities in the southern Appalachian region.

A UNIVERSITY-BASED MODEL FOR LITERACY ENHANCEMENT THROUGH RURAL SCHOOLS

If the rural schools of the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee are to become optimally effective, the educational aspirations of the communities served and the resources available to the schools must be increased. Each of these factors is directly related to the levels of literacy of students, teachers and adults who are parents and community members. The Rural Education Project at Tennessee Technological University proposes to initiate a major thrust in literacy enhancement through the rural schools of the Upper Cumberland.