Riding Fences

Beginning of article

Rural schools and agencies and the colleges and universities that support them continue to grapple with the twin issues of recruiting and retaining qualified personnel to meet the needs of children with special needs and their families. Data collected by state and federal governments as well as through independent studies have repeatedly found a critical shortage of personnel, producing a supply-demand imbalance that is at its most serious in inner city and rural areas. Despite large expenditures of dollars via personnel preparation and state improvement grants, there still seems to be little or no improvement in this situation. Perhaps this problem is explained at least in part by the …