KREA is a non-profit organization committed to rural school districts, educators, students and communities.

The aim of KREA is to provide a structure through which rural school districts and communities can unite in their efforts to:

• Build capacity and understanding in addressing the issues unique to Kentucky’s rural school districts and communities.

• Educate others about the value of rural education to the state's economy and the future of the Commonwealth and it’s communities.

• Promote quality learning experiences for all of Kentucky’s rural students enabling them to excel in a global and evolving landscape of work and economic opportunity.

• Serve as a unified voice for representing Kentucky’s learners, rural school districts and communities to legislative bodies and public officials

• Work to secure resources, both academic and financial, necessary to provide high quality equitable educational opportunities for students in all Kentucky’s rural school districts and communities.

When discussing education, policymakers and reformers often focus on urban — and sometimes suburban — schools and communities. But rural schools educate about 20 percent of America’s students, and urban reforms may not translate well to their unique circumstances.

In this episode, host Nat Malkus talks to Jeff Hawkins of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative and Campbell Scribner at the University of Maryland about the unique challenges and strengths of rural schools, the history of consolidation and local control, and why rural schools perform better than urban and town schools.

In 2016, the National Rural Education Association (NREA) released its Research Agenda 2016-2021 identifying ten rural education research priorities. As the Research Agenda draws to a close, it is time to take stock of the state of research within these ten priority areas and to identify new research directions. In addition, recent political, instructional and health challenges suggest that new research is needed to support rural education in a post-COVID-19 world. For this special issue we invite scholarship that synthesizes research in an area of education either within or beyond the ten priority areas including:

In particular, we seek work that summarizes, synthesizes and critiques the current state of research in an area pertinent to rural education. Research reviews should point to new directions and shifting understandings of rural education contexts and intersections with the broader field of education. Reviews may be aligned with one of the ten priorities or they may make the case for new priorities for rural education research. In considering rural salience, authors are encouraged to address four questions: