National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN)
National Center for Rural Education Research Networks
The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) seeks to increase opportunity for rural students through the power of actionable data and evidence. NCRERN builds the capacity of education agencies to undertake evidence-based continuous improvement in rural schools and districts and has increased the body of rigorous research and proven solutions in rural education.
The Rural Center’s network, launched in 2019 with funding from the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), includes over 100 district partners in 17 states across the country as well as their state education agencies, educational service agencies, and regional data centers.
Since its founding, NCRERN has partnered with the rural districts, state education agencies, educational service agencies, and regional data centers in its network to implement and test a variety of evidence-based innovations. Its goal was to share its learnings about what works in rural education and how to conduct rural research on an ongoing basis to bring new resources and evidence to the field of rural education.
Its initial continuous improvement network, focused in 49 districts across New York and Ohio, tested interventions related to attendance (from 2021-2022 school years), postsecondary readiness (from 2021-2024 school years), and postsecondary entry (from 2022-2024 school years).
After finding personalized messaging for attendance to be a successful intervention, NCRERN replicated it across 47 districts in sixteen states serving over 40,000 students in 2022-23 and 2023-2024.
History
Partners
NCRERN has partnered with over 100 districts in 17 states across the country through its continuous improvement network and replication network.
Empowering Our Partners with Data and Evidence
Rather than relying on anecdotal advice or popular trends, network partners have access to real data from districts with shared challenges. While network partners may test different solutions due to varying capacity and context, all partners benefit from shared insights on what works and what doesn’t, enabling them to rapidly identify solutions.
What NCRERN Does
Over the last few decades, the amount of rigorous research on effective interventions in education has grown tremendously. However, these efforts have focused almost exclusively on urban and suburban settings. There still isn’t enough evidence about what works in rural education.
Rural communities have unique challenges and assets, which is why our team and our district partners are focused on designing interventions and solutions tailored to their needs. We find out what works, test it in other settings, and share it with the field.
Rural Research
By establishing a network of rural partners working through similar challenges, NCRERN conducts rural research that overcomes sample size challenges, reduces costs, and enables partners to share and benefit from one another’s insights and experiences in order to rapidly identify solutions that work for students and families. Explore NCRERN's model and research on attendance and postsecondary readiness and entry.
The Rural Postsecondary Research Clearinghouse
The Rural Postsecondary Research Clearinghouse compiled by NCRERN synthesizes the existing evidence on policies and practices implemented in high schools to improve students’ college and career readiness and access. Our goal is to help education leaders make informed, evidence-based decisions tailored to their local context. Through this Clearinghouse, we offer practitioners evidence-based strategies they can tailor to their local context and highlight areas for future research.
Rural Collaboratives Research
The Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University and Empower Schools have launched a partnership to support research on the effectiveness of Rural Collaboratives in improving postsecondary success for underserved rural students. This work will examine the impact of formalized rural partnerships as a means to improve and expand college and career training for students, and, ultimately, improve their long-term outcomes.
In the News
The Low-Cost, Low-Lift Way These Districts Used to Reduce Student Absences
One relatively simple and low-cost intervention for rural districts has the potential to reduce student absences by nearly 5%, according to new research.
That intervention: Sending periodic, personalized messages to parents about their children’s...
Empower Schools and the Center for Education Policy Research Partner to Advance Research on the Enabling Policies and Impact of Rural Collaboratives
Empower Schools and the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University are pleased to announce a partnership to research on the effectiveness of Rural Collaboratives in improving postsecondary success for underserved rural students...
When Attendance Gets Personal
From the Bluegrass State to Boston: Bringing Home the Lessons of the Rural Summit
Exploring New Avenues for Postsecondary Success: A Spotlight on Western Local School District
NCRERN Newsletter: Spring 2024
We don't have anybody in house that has time to sit and look at it in that way and know the statistics and numbers. That is incredible, and has helped us look and look at some of our data. Some of the same data sets that I've looked at for 10 years—I would get things from NCRERN, I'm like, oh, never looked at that data point within this data set. That's making me think a little different.
So much of the research that's out there is done on city schools and practices that work. To pull something that works for Chicago public schools and try to think about will it work [here]? There's differences there. And it's not always going to be a plug and play. So [it's valuable] to have the support of a research institution that's pulling [this evidence] together.
To get a large enough data set, you've got to look at a lot of different rural districts. So [it's helpful to have] somebody that's doing that and helping to communicate to us—these are best practices, these are worth your time and energy, and these are not. Because we get these ideas, we hear what other people are doing and we're always working to try and be better. But it's hard when you waste energy on something that's not research-based and ultimately it's not showing effectiveness. We just don't have enough resources to waste.
Meet the NCRERN Team
NCRERN was led by esteemed experts in rural education: Chris Avery, Thomas J. Kane, Doug Staiger, and Elise Swanson. Its advisory board comprised of Paolo DeMaria, Dr. Karen Eppley, Robert Mahaffey, Dr. Allen Pratt, Dr. John Sipple, and Dr. Joan Wade.
Kristen Cummings
Soojin Lee
soojin_lee@gse.harvard.edu
Derik Suria
derik_suria@gse.harvard.edu
Elise Swanson
