This paper analyzes rural school resistance to a federally funded intervention program aimed at increasing college attendance and success among students from historically marginalized groups. One such program ("Start Up") is currently being implemented in a geographically isolated South Carolina school district with high minority (African American and Latino) enrollment. The program takes place through a school-university partnership and provides an academic enrichment curriculum for low-income and minority middle-school students, designed to get them interested in and ready for college. University staff involved in program implementation have encountered uncooperative behaviors and other forms of resistance from local educators. The key challenge for rural school-urban university partnerships is to preserve the advantages of rural schools (small scale and close community ties) while enabling them to prepare students for higher-skill jobs. Understanding the patterns and types of resistance from this rural school community and the relationship of this resistance to the power and influences of urban higher education institutions and government agencies is critical to improving and sustaining the partnership. Analysis focuses on power relations and resistance to power, which Foucault claims are ever-present and intertwined, including historical patterns of power and social control in the South and in rural areas in general, and outsider efforts (such as Start Up) to "fix" and "normalize" rural schools and children to be more like their urban and suburban counterparts. (Contains 27 references) (SV)