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GARY EICHTEN: Major funding for Minnesota Public Radio programming is provided by 3M, maker of Scotchgard brand protectors. The forecast for Minnesota is for mostly cloudy skies this afternoon with a chance of showers over all, but the southeastern sections of the state. Highs today will range from the upper 40s northwest to the low 60s in the southeast.

Continued cloudy tonight with a chance of showers everywhere except in the northwest. Overnight lows will be in the 30s. Then tomorrow, showers are possible in the east in the morning. Otherwise, it'll be partly cloudy, and highs should range from the mid-40s in the north to the mid-50s in the south.

During this hour, we will present a special Mainstreet Radio report on rural schools and follow that up with two studio guests to talk with us for the remainder of the hour about the problems and the successes in rural education. Joining me in the studio will be Gary Alkire from the University of Minnesota's Educational Policy and Administration Department And Ron Hennings, superintendent of the Chosen Valley Public Schools in Southeastern Minnesota. We begin, though, with a special report from Mainstreet Radio.

A legislative auditor's report this year said that the smallest 85 school districts in Minnesota should be closed in order to save $10 million a year in education costs. Many policymakers say small rural schools are inefficient and cannot give kids the education they need.

But that kind of argument doesn't go over very well in places like Rothsay, Minnesota, population 450. People in Rothsay are proud of their school. In fact, they say, far from being doomed to extinction, their small school could serve as a model for education reform. John Biewen of Mainstreet Radio has this special report.

SPEAKER: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation--

JOHN BIEWEN: All 20 of Rothsay School's first graders gathered one morning in front of the flagpole outside the Rothsay school. Teacher Tammy Peterson has just taught them the Pledge of Allegiance, and a guest, the school's maintenance man, Mr. Jensen, talks to the kids about the flag.

JENSEN: You salute the flag if your military, cub scouts, boy scouts, whatever. And as far as just as students, you always put your hand over your heart, right?

SPEAKER: Yeah.

JOHN BIEWEN: It's not at all certain that when these first graders finish high school in the year 2002, they'll be graduating from Rothsay High School. Rothsay School is one of the state's smallest, 260 students, kindergarten through 12th grade.

A lot of observers say the demise of small rural schools like Rothsay is not only inevitable but desirable. Critics of such schools usually talk about a quality gap. They say small rural schools can't offer kids the range of classes and extracurricular activities that larger consolidated schools can.

Fritz Knaak, a Republican state senator from White Bear Lake, has introduced legislation so far unsuccessfully that would combine the state's 430 school districts into only 30 or 40 districts, thus closing many rural schools. Knaak says his aim is educational quality.

FRITZ KNAAK: No question about it. The real difference between the greater Minnesota system and the metropolitan systems are the differences in opportunities between the two.

JOHN BIEWEN: But Gary Zirbes, who is principal of Rothsay High School, says, at least in Rothsay's case, no such quality gap exists.

GARY ZIRBES: They talk about opportunity for students, but I think what they're masking is their bottom-line concern is dollars. What does it cost to educate a kid?

JOHN BIEWEN: People in Rothsay believe their kids are getting an education that's second to none in Minnesota. Rothsay is a shrinking town of 450 in West Central Minnesota that calls itself the state's prairie chicken capital. There's a big fiberglass prairie chicken outside of town along Interstate 94. But according to Tom Fossey, a Rothsay native and a former teacher and board member at the school, Rothsay is anything but an educational backwater.

TOM FOSSEY: Every single day in Minneapolis metropolitan area and every large community throughout the United states, parents that have the same hopes and dreams, goals and aspirations as the parents in Rothsay, Minnesota, sit down, and they write out a check to a private school to send their kids to a school that looks just like ours. It's small. It has very few students, very limited curriculum, but they have very high demands in terms of participation. They have a lot--

JOHN BIEWEN: Fossey is the driving force behind something called the Rothsay Challenge. The challenge is to the state's large school districts, those with over 4,000 children. Rothsay will give a $1,000 scholarship to any such district that can match Rothsay High School students in measures of achievement like attendance and graduation rates, extracurricular participation and academic success beyond high school. Fossey says he had hoped the Rothsay Challenge would start a dialogue about the quality of education in rural schools.

TOM FOSSEY: Real disappointing that no one even said hello, goodbye, or let's talk about it. Absolutely zero response from any other schools. The challenge is still out there. The money is in the bank. And we're willing to talk to anybody that wants to compare or measure.

JOHN BIEWEN: Rothsay's numbers are impressive, a 100% graduation rate over the past three years compared with the state average of just over 90%. 3/4 of Rothsay graduates go on to complete a college or technical degree, while statewide, only 2/3 even start post-secondary programs. A few years ago, Rothsay students finished near the top in a statewide ranking of PSAT scores.

School officials say they concentrate on the basics, math, science, reading, and writing, but Rothsay is also known for its strong music programs. And through interactive TV and other kinds of cooperation with neighboring districts, the high school offers two foreign languages and courses like theater arts and agribusiness.

GARY ZIRBES: We believe we're on the cutting edge of education over here.

JOHN BIEWEN: Principal Gary Zirbes.

GARY ZIRBES: And yeah, it costs us about $4,000 per-pupil unit to educate our kids, and other school districts can maybe educate them for $3,000. But what we're saying is for that extra $1,000, look at the quality of the kid that we're turning out. Where are we dropping the ball?

JOHN BIEWEN: Rothsay can also boast at least one innovation. While education reformers talk about giving kids hands-on experience in the business world, little Rothsay is doing it. It's probably the only high school in Minnesota that gives students a chance to run a real hardware store.

CHRISTY ANDERSON: I just take the cash slips, and separate them into the hardware, and lumber, and paint, and wholesaler's different categories, and put the prices under them, and figure out the sales tax, and total up the cash sales.

JOHN BIEWEN: Down the street from the high school, in what's left of Rothsay's deteriorating business district, senior Christy Anderson totals the sales from the previous day at the Rothsay's Storefront. It's a hardware store that the school district bought a few years ago after the store went out of business.

Students now operate the store two or three hours a day as part of a course called Storefront. The students are responsible for the store's operation, from payroll and pricing to dealing with customers. The modest profits are put back into inventory. Senior Jay Steiner is writing down prices and code numbers from small boxes of screws and bolts on the shelves. He's working on a new computerized inventory system for the store.

JAY STEINER: Well, I'd like to run a little business like this myself, so it's a good experience for me. You get some hands-on experience on running your own store and just being a part of a small business and talking with the people and helping them find what they need. And it's a good experience.

JOHN BIEWEN: It's important to point out that Rothsay School is not typical in rural Minnesota. Most schools the size of Rothsay's were long ago consolidated into larger ones. And most of those that survive are struggling. A lot of rural residents are paying extra property taxes to fund their schools and are unwilling or unable to pay more. Dozens of rural districts have substandard buildings that they can't afford to maintain much longer.

Every year, more rural schools decide they no longer can provide their kids a good education, and they join forces with neighboring towns. But for a variety of reasons, including the area's exceptionally fertile farmland, Rothsay has the money to keep its school strong. Principal Zirbes tells of a referendum in the early '80s when Rothsay's voters had to choose between a large property tax hike and losing their school.

GARY ZIRBES: And they set a state record. They had 92% voter turnout in the district and 96% in favor of a $10 mil referendum to keep their school. So they're not only willing to support the school with their mouths and encouraging education in their kids. They're right there with their tax dollars in their pocket books, too.

JOHN BIEWEN: Zirbes says, financially, Rothsay School can survive indefinitely if it's allowed to. Some rural schools have had their demise hastened by Minnesota's open enrollment program, as students have left to attend larger schools. But Rothsay has benefited from open enrollment, gaining 16 students this year from surrounding districts.

For the last 20 years or so, the state legislature has gently prodded rural districts into reorganizing and consolidating by increasing course requirements and giving financial incentives for cooperation. But some observers say the carrot and stick being wielded by the state could soon turn to a hammer, especially after the legislature has been reapportioned to reflect this year's census and rural areas lose some of their political clout.

GENE MAMMENGA: Well, Rothsay is doomed to extinction.

JOHN BIEWEN: Gene Mammenga is a lobbyist for the state's largest teachers union, the Minnesota Education Association. The MEA has for years advocated consolidation, arguing that larger schools give more curriculum choices to students, as well as providing better pay and working conditions for teachers.

Mammenga says it may be time for the legislature to simply mandate a minimum enrollment for all schools in the state at perhaps a hundred kids per grade. He says even many rural legislators favor state-mandated reorganization, but are afraid to say so publicly.

GENE MAMMENGA: The good thing about St. Paul mandating is that all of the local people who are under intense pressure to maintain a school system can-- and yet, no, they should do something. They can turn around and point at St. Paul and say those folks there did it to us. And there's a good deal of throwing notes over the wall saying, do it.

JOHN BIEWEN: But some experts say it's not so clear that consolidated schools are better for kids than small schools. Joe Nathan is a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and the main author of the Perpich administration's much discussed educational choice program. Nathan points to studies in Iowa and North Carolina that show college students from small rural schools do at least as well as those from larger schools.

JOE NATHAN: We know that when comparing students in various schools, the students, regardless of their income level, regardless of where the students live, whether it's inner city or rural or suburban, students in smaller schools at the secondary level, high schools, tend to be more involved in extracurricular activities. They tend to have higher achievement scores. They tend to be more enthusiastic about their teachers. They're more enthusiastic about themselves, and they're more enthusiastic about education.

JOHN BIEWEN: What are you working on today?

MARK RAW: I'm doing English. We're doing analogies.

JOHN BIEWEN: So, for example.

MARK RAW: I think macaroni is to cheese as pork is to beans.

SPEAKER: Good one, Mark.

JOHN BIEWEN: Senior Mark Raw and a dozen or so other students do their homework in an afternoon study hall at Rothsay High School. Emily Amundsen, a junior, is studying accounting, one of the seven courses she has this term. She plans to go to college and may become a chiropractor. Emily says she has no doubt she's being well prepared.

EMILY AMUNDSEN: No, I don't think so. When I look at-- compared to other schools, I'm on the long-range planning program of our school. And we just had this long, two-day retreat that we went on. And looking at all the competition that we have, I think we stand real high from our teacher-to-student ratio and everything. And our good parents support and everything that we have.

JOHN BIEWEN: Science teacher Brad Erickson, who's overseeing this study hall, believes Rothsay's students have one advantage over kids in larger schools, and that is the chance to participate.

BRAD ERICKSON: Most of the kids-- if you checked with them here, I think all of the boys are in football. All of the girls are in either cheerleading or volleyball.

SPEAKER: [INDISTINCT SPEECH]

BRAD ERICKSON: One isn't. OK, and most of them are in band. And a lot of them are three-sport participants. Huh?

SPEAKER: And they're good.

BRAD ERICKSON: And they're good. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Don't--

JOHN BIEWEN: Extracurricular participation is often cited as one of the main strengths of small schools. Kids who wouldn't make the grade athletically or musically in larger schools can take part in the smaller pond of a rural school. But the MEA's Gene Mammenga says he hears from people who've attended small schools that the flip side of opportunity is unwanted pressure to participate.

GENE MAMMENGA: If you're a male and you're reasonably physically coordinated, whether you want to play football or not, you better play football.

JOHN BIEWEN: The one girl in the Rothsay High School study hall who is neither a cheerleader nor a volleyball player is junior Paula Rossow. She says while she gets what she needs at the Rothsay School, it doesn't offer everything she'd like, such as French, home ec, and veterinary care classes.

PAULA ROSSOW: We have a lot less classes offered than bigger schools like Fergus. And I think it'd be interesting to go to a school as big as Fergus. But I like the little class size and everything like that. But I'd like to see more classes, but it's just not filled. Can't work it in to a smaller school.

JOHN BIEWEN: But one of the major thrusts of the school reform movement is a return to the basics. And by all accounts, Rothsay's kids are learning the basics. Former school board member Tom Fossey resents policymakers who judge the quality of schools by the length of their course lists instead of by how much their students learn.

TOM FOSSEY: I mean, if General Motors approached the same way, they'd never show their cars in the advertisements. They'd show their factories, wouldn't they? Look at our nice factory. We have all kinds of welders, and we have this, and we have that.

And if somebody stands around and says, but what kind of cars do you put out? I mean, what does the cars look like? They'd say, well, why do you want to talk about that? When you think of it, it's a little bit ludicrous, but that's the same way a lot of people approached education.

JOHN BIEWEN: In the end, though, the future of Rothsay School and other small rural schools probably depends more on money than on questions of educational opportunity. Besides the perception that rural schools cost more in per pupil funding, experts also point to aging school buildings, saying the state can save hundreds of millions of dollars by not replacing them all. The MEA's Gene Mammenga insists that even in the case of apparent success stories like Rothsay, the demise of small rural schools is not a blow to educational quality.

GENE MAMMENGA: I don't think there are pockets of excellence there in a small school with a somewhat larger school next door that's inferior. And I don't believe that the job, the superior job, the excellent job that's being done in the small school will not be done by those teachers who will be teaching in a somewhat larger school under better working conditions.

JOHN BIEWEN: Mammenga and other advocates of consolidation say rural people should support reorganization now while they still have a strong say in how it's done. He suggests the 1993 legislature, which will have more suburban lawmakers and fewer rural ones, might not be as sympathetic to rural concerns.

While the debate about educational quality continues, it's clear that Minnesota's smallest rural schools will survive only as long as they can pay their way and as long as state lawmakers allow them to do so. This is John Biewen.

GARY EICHTEN: That report edited by Kate Moos, engineered by Rick Hebzynski. It is about 17 minutes past the hour. Now, talking about rural schools in Minnesota this hour on Midday. And joining me in the studio now are Gary Alkire, who is associate professor of educational policy and administration at the University of Minnesota. He studies the merits of all types of school programs.

And Ron Hennings, who's superintendent of the Chosen Valley Public School District, which has about 870 students, kindergarten through 12 down in Southeastern Minnesota, about 20 miles or so from Rochester. Ron Hennings also has experience teaching in the suburbs of Maryland and as an administrator in Detroit. So he's been involved with schools of numerous sizes.

Gary, let me ask you, first of all, how typical do you think the Rothsay School system is we heard about in John's report there?

GARY ALKIRE: I'd say it's fairly atypical case.

JOHN BIEWEN: In what way?

GARY ALKIRE: In terms of the major commitment that the community has to that school. And it's a little atypical in that of its size itself is rather-- it's smaller than many of them out there.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. How does it compare to Chosen Valley, Ron?

RON HENNINGS: Well, we have about twice as many students as Rothsay does. But what is typical of Rothsay, I think, and is replicated around the state in many of our small schools is the level of community commitment. In the Chosen Valley Public Schools, there's a very high level of commitment to quality education and has been for over 100 years.

Small schools may be better than big schools, but the benefits of small size is what is often described as intangibles and sometimes difficult to measure. It's in the quality of the relationships, the motivation created within the students, and the involvement in common goals and common endeavor that only a community can generate and support.

GARY EICHTEN: What kind of community support do you have down there? I mean, how much tax is levied? And how much on a typical home do people have to pay in order to keep that school system operating in Chosen Valley?

RON HENNINGS: Well, about six years ago, a referendum was proposed in order to keep the high quality of education we have. And that referendum was strongly supported by the community and has been maintained ever since.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. What do you think about the quality of education in the small schools versus the big schools? You've looked at this now from a--

GARY ALKIRE: Well, it depends on how you define quality. That's an invasive issue for those of us in the educational world. If you mean the achievement test scores of students, which is a popular indicator nowadays, I would suggest that that's probably a wash, that you're going to find small rural schools doing poorly just as you find large urban schools doing poorly. And it will vary from system to system. I think on the whole, though, you will find that the higher achievement scores are in the medium-sized districts.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Do you agree with what Gene Mammenga said in there that small schools like Rothsay and maybe Chosen Valley, that size school is doomed?

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I think the-- I'm not sure they're doomed, but I think they're under a lot of pressure to provide some acceptable focus for that community. I also think the other thing that will save many of them is their location to some urban center.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you feel like you're becoming an ostrich down there? That is to say, an endangered species, I meant to say.

RON HENNINGS: We think that the Chosen Valley schools, as well as many other fine small schools in this state, are actually models, models that could be replicated elsewhere in this country and in our state. The very best of our small rural schools could very well served as models on how schools ought to be.

And this was supported by research from the Midwest Educational Laboratory published a few years ago. Some prime indicators of what small schools can do when they are well organized and well supported. 97% of our students attend school every day. That's very high. It's considerably above the state average.

96% of our students graduate. 85% of our students go on to post-secondary school education. And 50% of those complete those programs, which is a very high percentage of students completing post-secondary programs that we can challenge any school district in the state, including the urban and suburban districts in that regard.

GARY EICHTEN: But how do you become a model for an urban school district where there might be a lot of poverty? There might be drug use. There might be alcohol abuse. The kids don't-- the kids come to school without having had enough to eat. The social structure in the community might encourage kids to drop out of school. How are you a model for them?

RON HENNINGS: The challenge in an urban environment is very powerful. The urban educator, the urban teacher, the urban administrator faces a very difficult challenge. But they're being successful in many areas. And where they're being successful is where they're involving the parents, gaining community support and, in fact, whether decentralizing their larger institutions where they're creating subdistricts within districts. This is happening in Chicago, for example, where small learning environments are being created and carved out of larger environments.

GARY EICHTEN: Ron Hennings, superintendent of the Chosen Valley's Public Schools, with us today, and so is Gary Alkire from the University of Minnesota. We're talking about the future of small schools in the state of Minnesota.

And if you have a question for them, we'll open the phone lines now. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, the number is 227-6000, 227-6000 in the Twin Cities. Elsewhere, 1-800-652-9700, 1-800-652-9700 if you'd like to put a question to either of our two guests. Gary, do you agree that the small schools are serving as a model and can be a useful model for urban schools?

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I was just thinking to myself when Ron was making the statement that I guess I have to disagree with you on that last statement, Ron, in that when you take a school and try to put it the same kind of school you have into an urban environment, I would suggest to you that even at the size of your school, that that would still be a small urban school, even though there has been significant moves to decentralize schools within urban environments.

As an example, the typical elementary school in an urban environment or suburban environment would have 600 kids. That would be pretty much your K-12 enrollment or close to it. I don't-- so it's a matter of how we define size. It always reminds me of my traveling around when I've visited with boards and asked them the question, what do you think is the ideal school district size? It's exactly what we have.

And the fact of the matter is that maybe there is a critical mass of students that is necessary to provide a range of programs within reasonable financial input. And when you get below 75 per grade, I think you've gone below that number where you can put that mix of students together and reasonable financial input.

GARY EICHTEN: If you want to respond, Ron, go ahead. Then we'll take a couple listener questions, OK?

RON HENNINGS: I think it is the quality of interaction between teachers and students which ultimately determines the quality of education in the school. And it's how well the teacher knows that a youngster has followed that youngster's career in school. A quote from New York City where a youngster said in a large urban school-- he said, "No one cares whether I'm here or not. No one thinks I can succeed."

The less anonymous a child feels, the more likely they will engage in the learning process. And in small schools, children are known, and their strengths are known, and their needs are known. And we can work with them and mold them over a long period of time. It's not the production line, but it's more of a bench process where children are molded and developed and where potential is maximized.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, we have a couple of folks on the line with questions and more open lines, two. In the Twin cities, 227-6000 if you'd like to join this conversation. Outside Minneapolis- St. Paul, 1-800-652-9700. And that number is good outside the state of Minnesota as well. First to your question, please. Where are you calling from?

SPEAKER: Yes, I'm calling from Western Minnesota.

GARY EICHTEN: All right.

SPEAKER: And maybe you know about the new school we have out here in the Lac Qui Parle Valley High School, which is a combination of four districts that provides a building for 7 through 12. And then the other grades are still left in their local sites. And what it's done here is created a fantastic attitude of the kids have about the selectivity of the broader curriculum they have. And it's also easing the growing pains are the transfer pains that are associated with what we all call school consolidation.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Interesting, a creative theme there. Do you think, Gary, that this is a trend that more districts are going to adopt or--

GARY ALKIRE: Oh, I believe it is. I would ask our caller, what is the size of the enrollment of your 7-12 school now?

SPEAKER: It's at about 750 from 7 through 12.

GARY ALKIRE: I guess that reinforces my point. I think that critical mass is around 100 students per grade. And by having that cooperative high school, I'll call it, that I think you now are maybe maximizing on both of the values that we'd like to have. You can offer your children a better program and probably within a more-- a better economic return for your tax dollar.

GARY EICHTEN: In Chosen Valley, Ron, what do you think of the open enrollment plan? We heard Joe Nathan talking about that a little bit near the end of the documentary.

RON HENNINGS: The open enrollment plan has offered an opportunity for students to compare one district's offerings with another, for parents to compare one district's offerings with another. And we've had about as many people go in, leave our district as entered our district. We're probably gaining a couple more than we've lost.

There's been a shift of four or five students, and it seems like that's been true of all the districts in the Rochester area. And it's a nice, nice option for parents if, for personal reasons or some educational reasons, they'd like to make that change.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Are there some course offerings that you are trying to become specialists in at Chosen Valley so maybe you can attract some kids from other districts?

RON HENNINGS: Well, we really focus strongly on early childhood education. We have a very strong preschool. We have a very strong preschool for children with special needs. We have an all day, everyday kindergarten, only one of five in the state, which focuses a lot of energies and resources on the child at the kindergarten age.

We have our early childhood family education program, which is involved in parenting and child-rearing enhancement. We have our AOM program, assurance of mastery program, which periodically evaluates students' progress towards reading and math competencies. And we have an individual learner program now in grades K1 to assure that all children have individualized learning programs in those two grades.

GARY EICHTEN: So it's just the little kids that you're really trying to focus.

RON HENNINGS: Yes.

GARY EICHTEN: Yeah. All right, about 29 minutes past the hour. On to the telephones now and your question. Thanks for waiting. Hello.

SPEAKER: Yes. I work as a trainer and consultant in Scandinavia and in the Soviet Union. And I have noticed that too often that the discussion comes to this point that we are better in, say, Minnesota than we are-- than they are in some other state. But really, our competition is coming from abroad as well.

And I noticed that in Finland particularly, and in Sweden, they have many small schools that offer three or four foreign languages beginning at the third grade. And they're able to offer these services. And this is our competition.

GARY EICHTEN: Yeah, Gary Alkire, a comment on that.

GARY ALKIRE: Yeah, I would agree with you 100%. And I think you can take that same point and move it to the small school. The small schools are not competing with their neighbor in the next farm or their neighbor on Main Street. They're actually competing with their neighbors in the Twin Cities and with their international neighbors.

One of the probably greatest unused resource we have is our school facilities and personnel in 170-day school year. How can we continue to consider being competitive in a world market with a school year based on an agrarian concept?

GARY EICHTEN: Ron, your response to that.

RON HENNINGS: Yes, I would like to support the statement by the gentleman who called in. In Norway in 1978, for example, the Norwegian parliament declared that no high school should have an enrollment greater than 450. Their thinking was that bigger schools would no longer be educating individuals. They would merely be processing them through the institution.

GARY EICHTEN: But how are you able in Chosen Valley to give kids the kind of language, math, science and so forth that will make those kids competitive on a world stage?

RON HENNINGS: Interestingly, we have a strong focus at the secondary level on science and math education. We offer biology, advanced biology 1, advanced biology 2, chemistry and physics, all by very well-qualified and very fine teachers.

In the math area, we offer math, everything from basic business math, applied math skills all the way up to trigonometry and calculus. And we've added a second foreign language. In the last two years, we went from 17% of our students taking a foreign language to 42%. So we feel like we are competitive.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you have trouble recruiting and keeping teachers?

RON HENNINGS: We have outstanding people apply, and we always have our pick.

GARY EICHTEN: And your salaries are strong enough so that they don't-- they're not anxious to get up to the city--

RON HENNINGS: It's the salaries and the working conditions. We have a very good environment for our students to learn in and a very fine environment for teachers to teach in.

GARY EICHTEN: Back to the telephones now. You're on the air with our two guests. Hello there.

SPEAKER: Hello there. I'm from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. My husband and I have moved all over the Western United States. One of the things I'd like to comment on is the size. I believe that the size relates to accountability, both administratively and with the parents. And I'd also like you to comment on this.

I grew up in a small school district. And the parents were really held accountable by the administrators and the teachers and so on. You couldn't get lost. And I found that as we move into bigger school districts, as a parent, you not only can get lost, but sometimes you're encouraged to get lost.

The other thing I'd like to comment on is science, and math, and things like that. I happen to have a degree in sciences. And the thing that caught my mind, or actually, I should say the people who caught my mind were from small schools which I grew up in. And they took a hold of us.

And they took us out into the country or wherever to help develop us. I don't know what it is, if it's whether because you're in a smaller environment, and it's less stressful, or whatever that you respond better. But all I have to say is I don't think that bigger is better.

GARY EICHTEN: Thanks for your comment in Sioux Falls. Ron Hennings.

RON HENNINGS: I think that in small schools, we are, as educators, directly accountable to the community. We're consumer driven. We do graduate follow-up surveys every, after a student graduates, one year following their graduation and then five years. We ask students open-ended questions. What did we do for you? What could we have done better for you? What programs should we be offering that we're not currently offering? What are the strengths and weaknesses of our system?

And we modify our curriculum directly based upon those responses that we get. And we get over 80% response from these graduation groups that have gone out into the community and out into the real world. Therefore, we're flexible to their suggestions and we're responsive. And I think in small schools, it's very easy for us to be innovative because we don't have to deal with levels of bureaucracy.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary Alkire, do you think that small schools are more accountable?

GARY ALKIRE: Yes, I guess probably they are, simply because there are fewer constituents to be accountable to the actual decision-making board. However, that does not mean that medium-sized schools and large schools are not accountable. And in fact, I think the innovative schools, both in the suburban and medium-sized area, are doing an excellent job in working on decentralizing, decision-making involving parents, providing for the needs of the youngsters within their jurisdiction.

And I think that's the model we're going to be following in the future to make sure that schools become more consumer oriented, if you want to use that word, but constituent oriented. And we, in the public system, have probably strayed far from that in the last few years and gladly-- or hopefully, we're coming back to that.

GARY EICHTEN: Ron.

RON HENNINGS: It wouldn't be impossible to have a good large school, but it would certainly be more difficult. And this is the thinking of John Goodlad in some of his publications. There are some-- there are some inherent advantages systemically and structurally in a small school.

The larger schools have a more difficult time being personalized, reducing anonymity, and having a feeling of being needed. There's a thought that a school should be sufficiently small so that all of its students are needed for its enterprises. A school should be small enough that students are not redundant.

GARY EICHTEN: Back to the telephones again. And your question for our two guests. Hello.

SPEAKER: Hi. My husband is a secondary social studies teacher. And we're hoping that he will eventually be able to get a job in a small rural school district. Our only concern is that looking for the education of our son, who is an infant now, we'd really like to get him into one of these language immersion programs in the elementary school. What's the possibility of something like that being started in a small rural school district?

GARY EICHTEN: Ron.

RON HENNINGS: We have foreign language exposure in grades 5 and 6 in our school district. We think that's very important. Ultimately, we'd like to start foreign language experiences with the kindergarteners. For example, we have a K-12 computer education program. We have three computer labs in our school district. We think it's very important to have children become not only computer literate, but foreign language literate as well early on.

GARY EICHTEN: That's not exactly language immersion, though, is it, Gary?

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I don't believe it is. But I think, again, the point is that if you live in an area where you have more choices available, you can pick from those choices. While if you live in an area that is relatively geographically isolated, the odds are that you have to pick what's there. And if you live in the metropolitan area, as an example, you could find the kind of program you're looking for while you may or may not be able to find it in some other isolated area.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary Alkire, who's a professor of education policy and administration at the University of Minnesota, and Ron Hennings, superintendent of the Chosen Valley Public Schools in Southeastern Minnesota, are with us today as we talk about the future of rural schools in Minnesota. And I'll mention the phone lines again, 227-6000 in the Twin Cities, 1-800-652-9700 for those of you outside Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Gentlemen, some people say that one of the problems with rural schools is that they don't expose kids to people from different kinds of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. So how do you teach tolerance in a small town setting like that? Ron.

RON HENNINGS: Well, tolerance-- or we try to go beyond tolerance. We try to go into the next step, which is to value cultural differences, to value ethnic differences and religious differences and to be understanding and empathetic of various social class statuses of our students. We find a great deal of mixing going on in our schools.

76% of our students participate in extracurricular activities. 60% of them participate in two or more extracurricular activities, and about 40% of them participate in three or four extracurricular activities. And so there's a great deal of mixing both during the day for curricular activities and in extracurricular. So the students do get exposed to other students from all walks of life.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary, do you think there's much intracultural mixing down in the--

GARY ALKIRE: Well, it's pretty hard to have intercultural mixing when you don't have any extra or different cultures. You can talk about it theoretically in a textbook, but it's not like being immersed in it. And I'll give you one of a personal experience of myself. I graduated from a small school. But the first Afro-American I saw was when I joined the Army. And it took many, many years to get the experience of working in a multicultural, multinational organization.

GARY EICHTEN: How serious a problem is that, do you think? Is it OK that kids come out of a background like that and don't have any experience with people of other backgrounds? Or is it a serious problem?

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I think it's a serious problem. Again, I'm not an expert in this area, but I just feel that if we're going to live in a multinational world and certainly multicultural, that we have to have a day-to-day rubbing shoulders with as many individuals of ethnic background as we can in order to become one nation.

GARY EICHTEN: Right.

RON HENNINGS: We have an active multicultural gender for education curriculum committee working now. On my background, when I was overseas with Department of Defense for six years, I was a specialist in multicultural and multiethnic education. And I think you develop tolerance and valuing of differences at whatever opportunity exists.

And as our children go out-- and there are opportunities now for them to mix with people from other ethnic and racial backgrounds. But as they go out into the larger world, they will have a level of understanding and a valuing of differences that will transcend those new challenges.

GARY EICHTEN: Lots of people on the phone lines now. Many questions here for our two guests. And let's get back to the calls. You're next. Hello there.

SPEAKER: Hello there. I live in the urban area, and my children attend parochial schools, both elementary and high school. And I was just wondering how they compare as far as morals and as far as education to both the rural and the urban schools and success as far as graduating.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

GARY ALKIRE: There was a recent study done by, I believe, Andrew Greeley on that subject-- or excuse me, Coleman. And if I recall the data correctly, I believe that they-- parochial schools, on the average, have done a little better than the public schools. And they seem to also do reflect the value system of that particular school system. Again, remember that I think we're talking about the question of size, at least in this discussion. And size is, not-- I don't think particularly related to what you're talking about.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, shall we move on to our next questioner? Go ahead, please. You're on the air.

SPEAKER: Hi. Yeah, I wonder how much effect the fact that in the city, students and teachers don't tend to live in the same areas. They don't live in the same cultures, where out in the rural areas, they all live in the same town or something like that. In the cities, the teachers may live out in the suburbs where the students maybe live intercity.

GARY EICHTEN: Ron Hennings.

RON HENNINGS: In the rural small school, the school is the cultural center of the community. There's a triad, a triangle, if you will, of family to the left, community to the right, and the student at the peak of the triangle. And we build our educational program around traditional family values, traditional small community values, values of loyalty, commitment, responsibility, cooperation, interdependence, and a strong work ethic.

GARY EICHTEN: You've worked in the big city schools. You're now superintendent of a small school. Compare the experience.

RON HENNINGS: My experience in large urban systems was in the Washington, DC area, as a teacher and then as a curriculum and instructional specialist in at Wayne State University working with the Detroit City schools. I have great respect for the urban school and for the urban school educator, a tremendous challenge under extremely difficult conditions and an amazingly effective work that is being done there.

GARY ALKIRE: But--

RON HENNINGS: However, as a matter of choice--

GARY ALKIRE: I heard a big but there, and I just wanted you to keep on.

RON HENNINGS: As a matter of choice-- and this is true for me and my family and many other families-- we've chosen to come to small town America, an atmosphere that we think is conducive to strong educational programming. There's a consensus of what is important in the world. There's a consensus about what is important in child-rearing. We get the support from our church and from our fellow citizens. And it really helps us do a better job as educators. We can't do it alone.

GARY EICHTEN: It's about 15 minutes before the hour here. And we have more folks with questions. Thanks for waiting. You're on the air now.

SPEAKER: I'm interested in the subject of evaluating teacher performance. I hear so much about evaluating students, but nothing about the folks that do the teaching.

GARY EICHTEN: All right, Gary Alkire, we'll start with you.

GARY ALKIRE: Yes, this has certainly been a major question on the minds of both educators and communities. In my experience, particularly in the metro area, I don't know a school district that does not have a fairly extensive teacher evaluation system. And I'm sure Ron would agree with me that that's true probably throughout the state of Minnesota.

The question always is with evaluation of teachers is, what is going to be, again, your output measure? In other words, what are you going to measure them against? And we have many, many systems. I don't know of a district that's not doing it. And I think that these evaluation systems have helped to improve teachers' response-- or teachers' teaching.

GARY EICHTEN: Ron, isn't it tough to evaluate a teacher in a system like yours where you're probably-- you know the person really well? They might be a good friend. You see them at church, and so on and so forth.

RON HENNINGS: We have a supportive professional growth process, which oftentimes we have to be painfully honest with our neighbor. And I think we can be. Our professional growth process tends to be supportive of proving the professional performance of the teacher. We have professional performance criteria, which is identified. Our professional growth process was put together by a team of teachers and administrators.

We know what are effective teaching behaviors. And our professional growth process propagates these behaviors, supports teachers in their growth. We have a mentoring process, by which a master teacher in our school district, who is an outstanding educator, works with teachers one-on-one to improve their performance.

GARY EICHTEN: You have about 870 students down there in Chosen Valley. How many teachers are there?

RON HENNINGS: We have 57 instructional staff.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. And how many buildings?

RON HENNINGS: In two.

GARY EICHTEN: Two buildings.

RON HENNINGS: Two buildings.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. And how many administrators are there besides yourself?

RON HENNINGS: Three administrators.

GARY EICHTEN: OK.

RON HENNINGS: Myself and two principals. And then we have an assistant principal.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Yes, Gary.

GARY ALKIRE: Just to a follow up on that, I think that is one of the problems that you do find in many schools is the few number of administrators to actually implement the supervision program. I believe that many districts have overdone their supervision problem and may-- or program. And maybe we ought to be a little more in tune to some management by objective or job target kind of supervision program that is more positive in its approach rather than negative.

I get a little concerned with supervision programs that ask me to evaluate the dress of a teacher because I'm not sure what that ought to be or what their personality ought to be. I'd rather get into a more positive program that asks that teacher to tell me what they want to do. How can I help them? And tell me when you got there.

RON HENNINGS: Our professional growth process is very targeted to the individual needs and challenges of that teacher's role in our school district. We also have a very strong curriculum development process and staff development process where we work in large groups with teachers on special projects. But each one of our teachers has a hand-tailored professional growth plan that is mutually agreed upon by the supervising principal and that teacher.

GARY EICHTEN: All right, back to the phones again and some more questions from our callers. You're on the air with special guests. Hello.

SPEAKER: Hello. I have one comment I'd like to make before I ask a question. One of your panelists said that in an urban setting, you always have more choices like a language immersion program. Yes, the choices are here. You may not always get your choice, of course, so I'm not sure exactly how different it is from a rural setting where it wouldn't be a choice to begin with.

But I wanted to ask them-- you were speaking about multicultural education. I recall vividly about 35 years ago when I was in grade school, the first kid that I was aware of had come into contact with multicultural factors. And he knew they were different, and he didn't like them. They were the ones that you fought against. And they were all lousy.

How do we handle this? How do we help kids and interact, finding that people, yes, can be different? And maybe some aren't what you like, but that doesn't mean they're all like that, and that you look at a person and then judge them by what they look like.

GARY EICHTEN: All right. Let's see. Ron, why don't we start with you on that?

RON HENNINGS: I think educators-- one of our main responsibilities is to prepare children to live in our pluralistic society. Many of our children will not remain in Chatfield. They'll go on to Rochester, or St. Paul, Minneapolis, or to other big cities in the country and be in multicultural, pluralistic environments. And so we have to help them come to the realization that each person should be treated as an individual and approached as such.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary Alkire.

GARY ALKIRE: Well, my own personal belief on that is that you accomplish that by being with people of multicultural backgrounds, that you have to-- you have to live with them in order to understand them.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Back to the telephones again. And you're on the air. What's your question?

SPEAKER: Hi. I was a student of PSU when it first started. A question I have is it's a-- sorry, it's a program by which high school students can go to college or vo-tech while in their junior or senior year.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, thank you. Post-secondary education option, I guess, right? Yeah. Don't get that education jargon too good. What's your-- now. OK, now we understand what you're talking about.

SPEAKERS: The ones I had was the counselors. And that I've noticed with people like my younger brother who is about to graduate is that none of the counselors or the administrators even mentioned that this program exists. And I'm wondering, couldn't small schools benefit by sending the juniors or seniors who want to go into one or two extra programs that their schools don't offer? Couldn't they just benefit by going to the local vo-tech or college if they drive to it because they'll have their license by then? That's my question.

RON HENNINGS: We really see this as a marvelous opportunity for students. We encourage our students to pursue programs at the local vocational technical college and at their local community college and Winona State as well. We're all within driving distance. And we do have about 10 students a year who take-- to take advantage of these opportunities, and we encourage them to do so.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, Gary?

GARY ALKIRE: I think it's a marvelous program. And this state, I think, has done a fantastic job in offering parents and students a full range of choices to accommodate as many of their individual needs as they see them. And those kind of programs can only improve local school districts.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you think that-- Gary, that rural schools have fewer problems with drugs and teenage pregnancy and some of these things than the big metro districts?

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I can only give you a personal opinion. And I think on the average, they're probably about the same.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you find that to be your case down there at Chosen Valley?

RON HENNINGS: We know from national studies, the National Institute of Education in 1978, the Institute for Educational Leadership in 1986, both studies concluded that rates of vandalism and violence in small schools were lower than in larger schools. There's a sense of ownership. There's a sense of caring. There's a sense of commitment.

We know that, for example, there's a lower level of chemical abuse in our schools and in some of the larger schools in the state. The rate of adolescent pregnancy is also lower. We do have at-risk students but marginals. But small schools have been shown through studies and through my experience that marginal students and students who are at risk are better served in the small school environment.

GARY EICHTEN: Do you have much of a drug problem in Chosen Valley specifically?

RON HENNINGS: We have experimentation.

GARY EICHTEN: You do?

RON HENNINGS: We have programs to work with these children.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. Gary?

GARY ALKIRE: I believe there was a recent study done of adolescents that suggested that the percentage of teenage pregnancies was as high or higher in the rural areas than it was in the urban area. Again, I'm not an expert in that area, but I don't really think there's a different-- in certain of those problem areas that you mentioned, I don't think there's a major difference in those areas.

GARY EICHTEN: Mm-hmm. OK, let's move on to this next question now. Where are you calling from today?

SPEAKER: I'm calling from Southeast Minnesota, where we can use maybe a little more consolidation. But one of the problems I see is that there's a limit to just how long kids can spend on a bus. Like if you have a kindergartener that's going 15 miles, that's not very long. But if they have to stop at every farm along the way, that's-- and busing is dangerous sometimes because kids can get pretty wild over having to spend so much time that crammed together and all lively as they can be.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, let's have comments from both of you on that.

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I would agree with you 100%. I think there is a limit on the range that you can transport children. And if we-- to deal with sparse areas, such as we have in certain parts of the state, I suspect that we will always have fairly small concentrations of youngsters. And I don't think there is a solution to that as long as people choose to live in sparsely located areas.

GARY EICHTEN: What's the situation in your area? Ron, how long a bus ride would a kid have maximum?

RON HENNINGS: Well, we are setting up programs to utilize the strengths of our neighboring districts. For example, we send students over to our neighboring district for an excellent vocational agricultural experience. And they enjoy that. And it makes a lot of sense. We're looking to have other districts come into our school and utilize our programs, which are especially strong, like our business education program and some of our other programming.

GARY EICHTEN: What do you think the maximum tolerable bus trip would be?

RON HENNINGS: That depends on the age of the student. I certainly wouldn't want to see early elementary students riding a bus more than a half an hour to 45 minutes in order to access a program in another district. However, senior high students could certainly tolerate a ride of that length.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, we've got about five minutes left. We'll get some more questioners on. Thanks for waiting. You're on. You're on next. Hi.

SPEAKER: Thank you. Hi. I have just a couple of comments that I hope you can comment on. The first one is that I graduated in a large school district, Bloomington-Kennedy as a matter of fact. And we had over 700 students in my graduating class. And I happen to be one of those people who got lost.

And had I not gotten a lot of support from my parents, my grades probably would have hurt. As it is, I'm successful. But you had talked earlier about intercultural mixing. In that particular school of the 2,400 students in it, we had one Black and no Hispanics that I know of. So there wasn't a lot of intercultural mixing there either.

The other side of this is that I have moved with my family to a small town in Central Minnesota. What we are finding here is that my kids are picked on because they have not-- we have not lived in this town for the last 40 years. And that's difficult to deal with. So I'm not sure which way to go on large versus small schools.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary?

GARY ALKIRE: Well, I sympathize with your dilemma. And I guess I'd like to make it clear to the audience that I'm not a proponent of large schools either, large single building schools. The school that you went to, that graduating class-- that was probably too large. But again, I'm not a proponent of very small school buildings either. And so I think we need to strike a medium on this. And I sympathize with your problem. There's an old saying for us rangers that if you weren't born there, you'll never be one.

GARY EICHTEN: Ron, a couple of reactions.

RON HENNINGS: Yeah, we-- in the small school environment, we're very participatory oriented. Our students are doers. They are not observers. They get involved. They develop leadership skills and followership skills. We're success oriented. We're intergenerational success oriented.

We've had successful students, and we expect to have successful students in the future. Students look up as they go up and down the hallway, and they see aunts and uncles that who graduated. They did it. I can do it. Maybe I can do it one step better.

GARY EICHTEN: OK, another question from a listener. Go ahead, please. You're next.

SPEAKER: Hi. This is Rose. I'm from the Twin Cities and a former graduate. It was not the Chosen Valley High school. When I graduated, it was Chatfield. And I've lived in the Twin Cities. And I taught school in California. And I mixed with other cultures, but I was not prepared at all to meet that experience.

And while I think that sports are very important, I feel that instead of spending all the money on sports, perhaps you could require physical education, which I believe the schools in Iowa do from kindergarten through their senior year, to spend that money on a trip to the Twin Cities to see August Wilson's play Fences, which was an excellent play performed by the Black-- it's a wonderful play-- Or Shirley Witherspoon performing Billie Holiday's life.

And I think we're a visual society that our students today are interested in high technology. And I'm not so sure that when they graduate from high school, they really know how to use a computer or backup--

GARY EICHTEN: OK, we're running a little short on time here. There's a lot of-- a lot of things to comment on. Ron?

RON HENNINGS: Well, I think as the changing needs of our students and the changing needs of our society, I think our schools have to readjust their priorities. And if there's a school that's placed an undue emphasis on extracurricular competition, they need to take those resources and put them into programming, which is more appropriate for today's students.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary?

GARY ALKIRE: I think you see a full range of emphasis in small schools and large schools throughout the state. You'll find small schools that have a very, very high emphasis on athletics, while we have a district like Rothsay that seems to put an emphasis on academics.

We have the same thing true here in the metro area. It's the desire of the community and maybe of the administration that is directing the school. And hopefully, we'll have more schools put the emphasis where it ought to be, which is in learning.

GARY EICHTEN: We have just about a minute left. A final comment I'd like to get from each of you, and that deals with the requirements that the state of Minnesota makes on all school districts, large and small. Do you think that there are too many of those requirements? And which of them would you like to see dropped? Let's start with you, Ron.

RON HENNINGS: I think each school district should be able to determine its own graduation requirements, establish its own programming to meet those requirements and meet the expectations of its community and of its students without undue interference or regulatory guidelines from the state. Local control and public education-- Minnesota is a longtime success story.

GARY EICHTEN: All right. Very briefly, Gary.

GARY ALKIRE: Very briefly, the state constitution says we will provide a uniform school system. And it is a state function to make sure that that goal is obtained. And therefore, I think the state has a responsibility to make sure that kids get the kind of education that the state sees necessary for the future.

GARY EICHTEN: Whether big schools, small, north, or south. Gentlemen, thank you both very much for coming in. It's been very interesting. Gary Alkire, who is associate professor of educational policy and administration at the University of Minnesota, and Ron Hennings, who's superintendent of the Chosen Valley Public Schools down in the Rochester, Minnesota area.

Good afternoon. This is Gary Eichten. It may get lost amidst all the charge--