The Economic and Opportunity Gap has a great deal of information, ideas and resources focused on children and families living in poverty. Specifically, how teachers and other professionals working with students can reflect, improve, and implement inclusive practices. The information in this book is based in research, such as the foundational starting piece that nearly one-fourth of our children in the United States are living in poverty, a whopping 21%. This number, one that is doubled in some communities and does not consider children in families near the poverty line, is striking when compared to other similarly situated countries. Understanding that many students and families are on the trajectory of poverty will come to light as readers make their way through from statistics, to research, to definitions, to action items.

Showcasing the voices, perspectives, and experiences of rural English teachers and students, Teaching English in Rural Communities promotes equity, diversity, and inclusivity within rural education. Specifically, this book develops a Critical Rural English Pedagogy (CREP), which draws attention to issues of power, representation, and justice related to rurality. Based on the assumption that "rurality" is a social construct, CREP critiques deficit-laden stereotypes and renderings of rural places and people that circulate in media, popular discourse, and even education at times. In doing so, CREP opens up possibilities for educators and students to use the English classroom as a space to better understand the complex issues they face as rural people and ways to promote more nuanced and comprehensive representations of rurality. In particular, this book highlights English rural classrooms whereby students examine representations of rurality in literary and media texts; decenter dominant settler-colonist narratives of rural spaces, places, and people; develop understandings of Indigenous perspectives and cultural practices, particular related to land stewardship; and engage in local outreach to promote inclusivity within rural communities. This book also gives special attention to ways race and racism may factor into literacy education in rural contexts and possibilities for rural educators to attend to these issues.

Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal--that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It's because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing--it's just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform--battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by--our public school system.

In this interdisciplinary volume, sociolinguists and sociologists explore the intersections of language, culture, and identity for rural populations around the world. Challenging stereotypical views of rural backwardness and urban progress, the contributors reveal how language is a key mechanism for constructing the meaning of places and the people who identify with them. With research that spans numerous countries and several continents, the chapters in this volume add broadly to knowledge about status and prestige, authenticity and belonging, rural-urban relations, and innovation and change among rural peoples and in rural communities across the globe.

After writing extensively about different cultures, Nancy Brown Diggs chose to focus on one closer to her own, the Appalachian, and was surprised to learn that it is her own-and quite different from the image conveyed by the media. Rich in anecdotes and interviews that bring her research to life, this book offers a study of Appalachians today and explores what they are truly like, and why, concluding that is a culture to be celebrated, not denigrated.

College Aspirations and Access in Working Class Rural Communities: The Mixed Signals, Challenges, and New Language First-Generation Students Encounter explores how a working class, rural environment influences rural students' opportunities to pursue higher education and engage in the college choice process. Based on a case study with accounts from rural high school students and counselors, this book examines how these communities perceive higher education and what challenges arise for both rural students and counselors. The book addresses how college knowledge and university jargon illustrate the gap between rural cultural capital and higher education cultural capital. Insights about approaches to reduce barriers created by college knowledge and university jargon are shared and strategies for offering rural students pathways to learn academic language and navigate higher education are presented for both secondary and higher education institutions.

Early Australian pioneers were blocked from advancing into the interior of the continent by the Great Dividing Range that runs along the east coast of the country. In their endeavours to expand the colonies westward and to open Australia economically, these early developers eventually found routes across the Great Dividing Range and into the interior. With this expansion, the larger and more productive Australia was born, for better or worse. Today, Australians face a divide of a different kind, but one that, nonetheless, requires crossing if we are to secure our national wellbeing into the future. The emerging division between rural and metropolitan Australia, along with the social, cultural and health inequities between the two groups has been the focus of government and social programmes in Australia for generations, yet the condition persists and is today exacerbated by the inexorable movement of Australian populations to larger regional centres and to our major coastal cities. For many years health researchers and health service providers have embraced the idea that scientific research into the social, economic, physical and psychological aspects of health problems in the community is the tried and true way to progress policy and initiate action for improvement of our healthcare system. The age-old grail is to demonstrate scientific facts and implement policy on that basis. If this process is maintained, all will be well. The wellspring of this current work is its embodiment of a city/country dichotomy in the life of the author. The strongest message about healing the divide between the two cultures (if indeed this might even be possible) comes not via scientific investigation directly, but via the existential and phenomenological experience first and foremost and is informed by the scientific motif after the fact. The divide, which is the focus of this work, has emerged in the interplay between an essentially nineteenth century European based rural ideology of frontier freedom, self-reliance, rugged determination and independence and an emerging Asia-centred urban ideology underpinned by more modern twenty-first century concepts of economics, life, space, place and opportunity. The book combines personal experiences of rural living with overviews of initiatives that aim to reduce inequities between rural and metro communities by training and supporting health professionals to work in rural areas where there is often an acute shortage of practitioners to meet the needs of these communities. This shortage of professional people in rural areas contributes to the growing separation of rural and urban cultures and to the poorer health status of rural people compared with that of urban populations. In this context, the book Across the Divide: Health and Wellbeing in Rural Australia explores options for reducing these divisions and improving the health and wellbeing of rural populations in Australia. It focuses on health status and the emerging inequities experienced by rural people and explores ways of improving access to services and practicing health professionals, health education and health literacy.

The lion's share of writing about education improvement for the past two decades has focused on improving urban schools. Given the yawning gaps between the low-income and minority students that populate those schools and their suburban counterparts, this makes a great deal of sense. Unfortunately, this focus has neglected the tens of millions of students who attend schools in rural areas. Many of the issues that they face, from the impact of the opioid epidemic to deindustrialization to a lack of infrastructure, take on a unique character in rural schools. And many of the reforms that have proven so successful in urban areas do not translate so easily to rural contexts. This volume looks at both the macro-factors affecting rural schools (like deindustrialization and the opioid crisis) as well as the specific steps rural schools have taken and can take to improve.

This is the personal journal of a young American woman, living for six months amongst the Dodoth cattle-herdsmen in Northern Uganda. It is also an adventure story, for during this period the Dodoth were caught up in an escalating cycle of violence with their age-old rivals, the Turkana tribe. The animating tension of this feud was the tradition of cattle raiding, but it escalated to unprecedented levels of violence when the new nation states of Uganda and Kenya were drawn in to police these ancient clan frontiers. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas s total immersion in the life of this tribe in 1961 takes us with her, as with clarity and a lyrical eye for detail she brings their whole culture alive. For though she was not an academic herself, she had spent much time in the field with her mother, who was the world s leading authority on the Bushman of the Kalahari. So it was natural for Elizabeth Marshall Thomas to take her own young children on this adventure, where she proves herself such a brave, humane and unshockable witness to the life of the warrior herdsmen.

"La singularidad de Manojo de recuerdos. Memorias de un isleno en Cuba esta en el respeto, casi absoluto, de la forma de expresarse y de contar de este isleno que se aplatano en Cuba, pero que conserva parte del lexico propio de los canarios y muestra la influencia del habla popular, de sus frases, refranes, etc., en todo un proceso de transculturacion. Es un testimonio para la reflexion, que despierta la sonrisa y, a veces, un asomo de lagrimas, porque es una historia dura, dolorosa, de alguien que ha regado con su sudor el campo durante muchos anos, pero que tiene la capacidad de seducirnos con una sensibilidad enternecedora. Es un espejo donde pueden mirarse aquellos que vivieron esa epoca, pero es ademas un testimonio de la emigracion que viven cientos de hombres y Mujeres en muchas partes del mundo. (...) Un "Manojo de recuerdos," tiene el merito de ser un texto donde se cuenta desde la experiencia vital de un hombre despierto, vivaz en su pensamiento y palabra; tiene la virtud de no aburrirnos y de hacernos agradable la lectura."

How do you sufficiently progress beyond the status quo when an entire rural community views the status quo as sufficient progress? Educating children in poverty remains the most important educational challenge of our time. What few people know is this: the rate of child poverty in our nation's rural communities is actually higher than it is in our country's urban centers. Hardball Leadership is a best practices guide for rural school leaders who are passionate about closing the achievement gap and committed to leading their districts to significant academic improvement. Based upon original research that examined the leadership practices of effective rural superintendents who led their districts to dramatic academic improvement, this book's insights include: *Establishing a strong academic culture where every student can and will be successful *Developing a system for improving teacher instructional performance *Fostering an academically-focused partnership with the board of education *Managing school-based controversy in a productive way *Building and sustaining a financially strong district This leadership handbook will help rural school leaders build an academic pathway that will lead their students towards a happy and prosperous life.

The origin of rural poverty is complex and multidimensional. Some aspects of this origin include culture, climate, gender, markets, and public policy. Similarly, the rural poor population is quite diverse both in the problems they face and the possible solutions to those problems. This book examines nature and characteristics of rural poverty and how it develops, its persistence, and how it has caused destruction to environmental resources. The quest for global stability and peace has placed poverty issues at the centre of deliberation. In the year 2000, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) directly addressed the problem of poverty and its alleviation. Natural resources degradation is usually understood in terms of over use of scarce non-renewable and potentially renewable resources. It entails damage or destruction of key natural resourcessuch as soils and forestsand the subsequent production of wastes. Low-income rural dwellers have much lower levels of consumption than middle and upper income groups, but occupy much more land per person than middle and upper income groups. Yet, low income groups consume less food and generally have diets that are less energy and land intensive than higher income groups. However, low income populations deplete natural resources for settlements, farming and extraction of resources for many urban dwellers. This book has created the linkages between poverty in rural areas and environmental resources degradation. It draws conclusions from examples from all over the world and emphasises on a case study in rural Ghana. This book is recommended for academicians, rural development professionals, environmentalists and the general public.