• The Rural Challenge 
• Isolation and Diversity
• Economic and Environmental Issues
• Bioregional Framework
• Achievements
• What We Have Learned
• Ongoing Support
• A Successful Catalyst

In the mid-1990s, Annenberg Rural Challenge was offering grant funds to networks of rural school districts for project-based educational efforts that strengthened their communities. Four rural school districts in Mendocino County, Northern California: Anderson Valley, Laytonville, Mendocino Unified School Districts, and Point Arena Joint Elementary and High School Districts, decided to apply. Our four districts, neighbors of similar size and with similar issues, shared a vision of what we could achieve: a web of projects, ideas, people and relationships linked through computer networks, video conferences and visits to one another’s communities that would encourage and support a new way of learning together.

Planning began in June 1996 with the generous support of a planning grant from the Walter S. Johnson Foundation. That grant enabled us to bring teams of teachers, administrators, parents, and students from our four districts together to discuss the many exciting benefits of an expanded collaborative community.

With a three-year grant from Annenberg Rural Challenge, the North Coast Rural Challenge Network (NCRCN) got underway in 1997. The Johnson Foundation and CalServe also provided significant funding over the next five years. Many other partners, both national and local, have helped with both network-wide and specific project funding and support. No longer a funding organization, Annenberg Rural Challenge evolved into The Rural School & Community Trust, which provides a national voice for disseminating information about project-based and place-based education.

Our schools are geographically isolated. The nearest four year college is more than two hours away. The closest major airport is nearly four hours away. Our districts range in size from 500-980 kindergarten through twelfth grade students, a total of about 3,000 students in 16 schools. Each district also serves adult students in a variety of ways from retraining programs to family support services.

Our population is diverse. When we started planning in 1996 the demographics of our schools were as follows (rounded):

With our lumber and fishing industries in decline, the communities served by our districts face a deteriorating economic base and declining enrollment in the schools because of low population growth. We had to implement changes in our schools more quickly than we had before, and with more thoughtfulness as well. We saw that educational changes must be intricately tied to economic revitalization and environmental sustainability.

During the previous ten years, the school districts included in our network made many systemic changes that measurably improved the learning for all students. Building on these changes, NCRCN developed community-based projects that dissolved classroom walls and brought our students and teachers into extraordinary relationships with an ever expanding learning community.

We believe school reform can become a catalyst to revitalize our rural economies. The challenge is to sustain our rural quality of life and at the same time develop a viable economy that will assure healthy communities for the 21st Century.

Our planning meetings allowed us to learn more about the reform efforts of each district, innovative projects or programs at each school, the areas in which we have been unknowingly overlapping, and quickly evolved into discussions of the importance of formalizing a process through which we could learn from and support one another on an ongoing basis. We chose the theme of "Our Bioregion" as a framework for developing our ideas about collaboration. A bioregion is an area's natural history, human history, and human impact on geographical location over time.

We saw that the principles of ecology and community articulated by Fritjof Capra of the Center for Ecoliteracy might guide the development of project-based learning in each of our locations, linking diverse initiatives into a more coherent whole. Project-based learning helps students develop a sense of history and a sense of place that are the foundation for ecoliteracy. This way of thinking spoke to a concern for the natural environment as well as our reliance on strong personal relationships and telecommunication connections to manage the challenges life brings to people living in this rural region.

By the end of its fourth year, the NCRCN project could report that it has been extremely successful in accomplishing the goals and objectives described in the initial proposal. The following excerpt from an introduction to a major NCRCN publication, Exploring Ecoliteracy, describes the impact the NCRCN projects have had on their districts. As educators, parents, students, and community members, we know when powerful learning is happening. We see it in the eyes of the learner, we feel it in the words of the parents, we see it in the quality of the products, and we hear it in praises from the community.

An editorial in the Mendocino Beacon said: At its best, life is a perpetual education. These days, students in Mendocino Unified School District benefit from a pool of teachers and administrators who are aptly tuned into what’s going on in the community and the world at large. The district’s philosophy … is dedicated to making sure students will not only survive economically but become good global citizens. The NCRCN schools have developed projects that help our students improve the community. We have found that when you immerse students in the lives and issues of their community there is a good chance they will learn tolerance, compassion, and a sense of place.

The projects our students have completed take up much more space in our local newspapers than the results of our standardized test scores. Our communities understand and appreciate the educational opportunities we are creating for our children. The state standardized test scores by the way have improved in all the NCRCN districts since our project began.

An evaluation report by the NCRCN outside evaluator stated that: Over 1,785 students and 82 teachers are involved in 77 different NCRCN projects. 75% of the projects were judged to have a significant impact on the Districts and Communities.

In almost every measure we have succeeded, but the most important measure, of course, is student learning. The evaluation report together with our observations leads us to the conclusion that student learning and their attitude about learning has improved dramatically when they are involved in NCRCN projects.

•    The power of collaboration for solving problems and planning events.

•    The importance of having a full time coordinator in each district to facilitate the development of projected based programs.

•    The willingness and readiness of the community to work with and for us.

•    The number and quality of the resources and people in each district.

•    The importance of having a process that people perceive as fair and inclusive for distributing money and approving projects.

•    Assessing student learning is the hardest part to evaluate.

•    Projects which actually have an effect on the community have the most powerful impact on students and the community.

•    Once teachers have experienced the power of project and place based learning, they make it an integral part of their curriculum.

•    The importance of having local and national partnerships with a wide range of organizations to enhance our work.

The individual projects developed during the life of NCRCN will sustain themselves. It has taken very little additional money to begin the project based units. The teachers and administration understand the power and importance of continuing the projects, which are being successfully integrated into the regular curriculum and are part of the agreed-to district curriculum.

The work of the coordinators in each district has been crucial to the success of NCRCN. The school districts in NCRCN have shown their commitment to the coordinators by finding the funds to supplement the partial salary funding from external sources and will do whatever is necessary to continue the coordinator positions. NCRCN will continue to seek other funding sources for these positions as well as to redefine our staffing to ensure the work of the coordinators will continue.

NCRCN serves as an exemplar of how school reform can contribute to, and even act as a catalyst for, economic revitalization and stewardship of the environment while simultaneously keeping the unique needs of each student as the driving force for all activity. In the network model we are implementing, students and schools become the heart of healthy, evolving, adaptable communities. The experience of each of the members of our network has led us to a shared conviction of vital importance: we know that there is no one way to restructure education. The successes we have each experienced are testament to that belief. Therefore NCRCN implements many approaches to change simultaneously, and is prepared to adapt all approaches as the needs of our children and community change. What will be a constant is the collaborative and trusting professional community we are creating to nurture and sustain the educational reform process.