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No Educator Left Behind: Rural Schools

No Educator Left Behind is a series providing answers from the U.S. Department of Education to questions about the federal No Child Left Behind Act and how it will affect educators. If you have a question about No Child Left Behind, send an e-mail to Ellen Delisio, and we will submit your question to the Department of Education.

Question:

What assistance does the No Child Left Behind Act provide to rural school
systems?

U.S. Department of Education:

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) gives rural schools and districts unprecedented flexibility to consolidate federal funds from various formula grant programs in order to meet their unique needs. Rural schools and districts also benefit from the historic levels of federal education funding.

The Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP) gives rural schools the ability to combine federal funds from select education programs, making it worthwhile to compete for federal grant money. Through REAP, an additional $167 million will be available exclusively to rural schools in fiscal year 2003, in addition to the significant funding increases rural and urban school districts already are set to receive as a result of NCLB.

In fiscal year 2002, more than 85 percent of eligible small rural school districts (4,028 out of 4,700) took advantage of REAP's rural and small school program, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The rural and low-income school program funds went out to more than 1,700 schools.

Read previous questions and answers in our No Educator Left Behind archive.