Education Commons^™

Clues To Rural Community Survival, Milan Wall

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Myths about the future of small towns:

- Towns that are "too small" have no future

- A community's location is key to its survival

- Industrial recruitment is the best strategy for economic development

- Small towns can't compete in the global economy

- The "best people" leave small towns as soon as they can

- The rural and urban economies are not independent

Onaga, Kansas, Heartland Center For Leadership Development

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Leadership, entrepreneurship, wealth retention and youth development are all pieces of the recent successes of Onaga, Kansas, a very rural community of 704 people. Driving down Kansas Highway 16 and seeing the sign “Onaga, next five exits” would make you think it’s a large town. Indeed, it isn’t. But it’s the brainstorm of community developers who propose that adding such a series of signs would encourage more travelers to stop in.

“Onaga has a lot of assets that other communities would die for!” That is the sentiment of the part-time community development specialist for Onaga. This kind of sentiment is …

St. Paris, Ohio, Heartland Center For Leadership Development

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

On the surface, St. Paris, Ohio, (population about 2,000) looks like hundreds of other small Midwestern farm towns—quiet and pleasant—a nice town to drive through on a Sunday afternoon. Like many communities, the town has enjoyed a “gentle growth” of about 4 % over the past ten years.

But underneath that traditional exterior, a persistent entrepreneurial spirit breeds new business with an aggressiveness that can be felt from the coffee shop to the farms that surround the town. Like many small towns in west-central Ohio, St. Paris enjoys a very diverse economic base that would be the envy of other …

Flathead Reservation, Montana, Heartland Center For Leadership Development

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Looking out the window of a crowded office in Polson, Montana, one can picture a tipi village where the employee parking lot is now—a combination tourist attraction and outdoor sales show room for the traditional Plains-style tipis made by a local company that markets them throughout the nation. The company owner, and the person with the idea for selling the tipis, is a Native American who is a “serial” entrepreneur—someone who has started several businesses over time, then sells them off and starts another.

The Flathead Indian Reservation, which occupies more than one million acres from Montana’s scenic Flathead Lake …

De Las Escuelas De Estados Unidos A Las Escuelas De México: Desafíos De Política Educativa En El Marco De La Gran Expulsión [From Us Schools To Mexican Schools: Educational Policy Challenges In The Context Of The 'Great Expulsion'], Víctor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This Spanish-language chapter, drawn from a larger book intended to advise Mexico's new national leadership on various issues related to migration, focuses on the steadily growing, overlapping populations of US-born and US-school-experienced children in youth now enrolled in Mexican schools. It notes that that population, numbering more than 600,000, is enrolled all across Mexico, albeit not equally distributed, with municipios (counties) with high international migration rates also hosting high return rates. Moreover it notes that this population's US school experiences were highly varied not only because of their different durations, but because schooling in urban Southern California varies from that …

Why Domain-Specific Science Knowledge Matters In Teacher Certification: Focusing On Evidence For Effective Science Teaching, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Lyrica L. Lucas, Amy Tankersley, Elizabeth Hasseler

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The landscape of teacher preparation is complex. From a research perspective, how to prepare teachers presents as a multilevel, multivariable puzzle. For decades, federal and state policymakers, educational researchers, and administrators, along with teacher education institutions, school districts, and other stakeholders have tried to determine and measure the key malleable factors that result in effective teaching (NRC, 2010).

Periodically, state departments of education review secondary science teaching endorsement policy guidelines. As revisions occur, teacher educators in higher education and district administrators need to engage in a multidisciplinary discussion about:

1. the ways in which strong domain-specific science content knowledge contributes …

Small Places, Big Successes: Rural Towns Revitalizing Themselves, Milan Wall

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Key Indicators of Transformative Change

Income Taxes 2000-2016

- Federal Adjusted Gross Income 20%

- State Adjusted Gross Income 56%

Property Tax Valuations 2000 2018

- Ord 131%

- Valley County 280%

Community Strengths And Opportunities, Heartland Center For Leadership Development

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

Community Strengths and Opportunities

The following is a list of twenty characteristics found among thriving communities, based on research conducted by the Heartland Center for Leadership Development. The Heartland Center found that thriving communities will tend to possess a variety of these characteristics, but not all twenty characteristics. Review these characteristics. Based on your community, rate each characteristic as a (1) agree, (2) neutral or (3), disagree.

Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, Heartland Center For Leadership Development

Heartland Center for Leadership Development Materials

The people of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming view entrepreneurship as the key to future survival. Entrepreneurship, they say, will encourage more people to shop locally, while attracting more outside dollars into the community. Locally owned businesses are important for a community that faces such challenges as a 54% unemployment rate, 28% living on per-capita payments to tribal members, and 62% living below the poverty level. While there are many opportunities for economic development, the twist is finding the right strategy and maintaining traditional cultural and tribal values that are important to the two tribes that share this reservation.

Outcomes Of The Iowa Parent Partner Program Evaluation: Stability Of Reunification And Re-Entry Into Foster Care, Jeff M. Chambers, Sandy Lint, Maggie G. Thompson, Matthew W. Carlson, Michelle Graef

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

In an effort to facilitate family engagement with services, improve reunification outcomes, and empower the families they serve, child welfare agencies across the country have developed and implemented programs designed to provide peer mentoring. These programs work to identify parents who have successfully navigated the child welfare system in the past and train them to mentor parents who are currently in the system. The current study used a quasi-experimental design and propensity score matching to examine the outcomes for children of families served by the Iowa Department of Human Services Parent Partner program, one of the earliest and most established …

Buffett Early Childhood Institute: Five Year Report 2013-18, Buffett Early Childhood Institute

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

The Buffett Early Childhood Institute began operations in June 2013. We were charged with creating a new model for how public higher education can engage in early education by helping to transform the lives of young children and their families. This report presents a by-thenumbers profile of who we are and what we’ve accomplished in our first five years. Following the numbers you’ll find brief descriptions of programs, initiatives, financials, and the Institute itself.

The Nebraska Panhandle: An Assessment Of Birth-Grade 3 Care And Education, Panhandle Birth – Grade 3 Leadership Team

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

This report summarizes the collaborative work of the Panhandle Partnership, Inc., Educational Service Unit (ESU) 13, and the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska in documenting and assessing birth through Grade 3 programming in the Nebraska Panhandle. The report summarizes findings from 15 school-community conversations and includes data snapshots from local communities that provide information about the status of young children and the services and supports that exist to serve them and their families. Work in the Panhandle was undertaken on the basis of an agreement between the three organizations to work together to better understand and …

Nebraska Child Care Market Rate Survey Report 2019, Greg W. Welch, Elizabeth Svoboda, Amanda Garrett, Kathleen C. Gallagher, Molly Goldberg, Alexandra Daro

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 was reauthorized with renewed emphasis placed on the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program, which seeks to provide equal access to quality child care for families. The CCDF program is necessary to ensure children from low-income families have the opportunity to experience stable, high-quality early experiences while their parents experience a pathway to economic stability. A primary goal of the CCDF program is to ensure that low-income families receive CCDF funds to help them access quality child care in the same manner as families that pay the full …

Islamophobia In U.S. Education, Shabana Mir, Loukia K. Sarroub

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown in scale and visibility far beyond its association with the horrific attacks of 2001. The US government’s “War on Terror,” which began after the attacks, often pervades the domestic landscape as a war on Islamic religious “extremism.” The definitions and content of such religious extremism are so extensive that they encompass large numbers of Muslims, and they highlight Muslims as being inherently problematic. For example, the success of the 2016 presidential campaign can be said to have relied significantly on a right-wing Islamophobic fear-mongering that shariah was set to take over the US. As we grappled …

Risk Factors For Depression Among Early Childhood Teachers, Amy Roberts, Kathleen C. Gallagher, Alexandra Daro, Iheoma U. Iruka, Susan Sarver

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

This study examined possible risk factors associated with teachers’ depression in a variety of early childhood settings. Teachers with lower pay, no health insurance, multiple jobs, greater job stress, and more adult-centered beliefs reported more symptoms of depression. To reduce these symptoms, efforts should be made to support teachers’ mental health at multiple levels, including individual, environmental, and policy.

Researchers used data collected in 2015-16 from a large survey of early childhood educators in Nebraska. Four early childhood settings were sampled: licensed family child care homes (home-based), licensed child care centers (center-based), state-funded PreK programs, and elementary schools serving children …

Moving From Talk To Action: What Does Successful Institutional Change Related To Equity, Diversity And Inclusion (Edi) Look Like?, Mark A. Puente, Kiyomi D. Deards

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Conference Presentations and Speeches

Slides of a talk: Puente, M.A., Deards, K.D. (2019). Moving From Talk to Action: What Does Successful Institutional Change Related to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Look Like? IDEAL’19: Advancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Libraries & Archives.

Includes:

Where is the Change? Strategies & Tools ARL’s Future Plans Resources Action & Assessment