The goal toward which rural education appears to be moving at the close of the biennial period 1927-28 is that of equalization of educational opportunity within each of the several states. The most significant and generally accepted means of achieving it is apparently through increasing emphasis on the promotion of centralizing and coordination tendencies. These tendencies are affecting education in all of its important phases. Efforts to secure progressive legislation affecting rural education the several central agencies, state departments of education, state teachers' associations, or both in cooperation, the state institutions of higher learning have assumed active and aggressive leadership in a number of states. The added prestige accompanying such coordinated leadership, the facilities thereby made available for studies and investigations of educational administrative situations within and without the state, the opportunities thus furnished for wider and more intelligent dissemination of information to the public concerning the programs proposed--all have proved stimulating to public interest and effective in securing results. These centralized and usually cooperative efforts have generally superseded the spasmodic efforts on the part of individuals and small localized groups upon which dependence has been placed in the past. Centralizing tendencies particularly significant to rural schools are: (1) The assumption of increased responsibility of the state unit for the support of local school systems; (2) The correlative and often parallel practice of setting up increasingly higher standards which all schools, or those participating in the distribution of state funds, are expected to meet; and (3) the rapidly growing movement to establish or increase state equalizing funds. (Contains 6 footnotes.) [Best copy available has been provided.]