Many problems are encountered by school districts regardless of size. State and federal involvement in education provides certain financial resources, but also makes demands for accountability. This creates conflicts between local program development and the requirements of state and federal regulations, and particularly complicates the measurement of student progress. Recent developments in measurement using the procedures developed by George Rasch provide great advantages in the flexible and comprehensive measurement of student achievement. These procedures provide a means to equate local measurement to the results of nationally distributed commercially published tests. Among other advantages of the Rasch item bank system are: (1) small schools may develop a curriculum and design tests to measure student achievement in that curriculum; (2) teachers and community members can write their own items and calibrate them locally; and (3) using a criterion referenced approach, selection of items may be made relevant to community goals. Among the disadvantages are: (1) measurement of specific goals is limited to comprehensiveness of available item banks; and (2) calibrated item banks occur only in certain areas of the curriculum (mostly basic skills). Since the use of calibrated item banks offers more flexibility for the measurement of student achievement, it is appropriate to rural school systems, such as the Hopi Reservation School System in Arizona. (JAZ)