TITLE Understanding Rural Student Achievement: Identifying Instructional and Organizational Differences between Rural

National math assessment data from 3,112 eighth-grade students in 123 schools were used to determine whether location (rural versus nonrural) affects student achievement when related student and school-level factors are taken into account. Findings indicate that rural schools outperformed nonrural schools in math achievement and that the competitive edge of rural schools arose from school effects beyond the influences of school composition and individual student characteristics. Rural schools tended to have a better organizational context (teacher training, safe/orderly climate, collective support) conducive to higher performance, but suffered from poor instructional conditions (in terms of classroom resources, advanced courses, and progressive instruction), which balanced out achievement gains. Rural schools should capitalize on existing organizational and contextual strengths and also focus more effort on improving curricular and instructional weaknesses. Given that many rural students are poor an