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The following article undertakes a question concerning the role and position of the rural school in the processes of social structure re-composition, so much desirable in the face of changes occurring in Poland. The sources used in the article come from the Central Statistical Office and the Ministry of Education. The results of analyses conducted by the author seem to prove a thesis about differentiated levels of education in the countryside. Decentralization of education and changes caused by the reform of educational system, which has been carried out since September 1999, make the conditions of functioning of education more and more dependent on the economic situation of self-governments. In consequence, in some rural areas the situation of education is relatively very good, sometimes matching the indices characteristic of urban schools. In such cases the opportunity for the fulfillment of the reform goals appears highly probable. On the other hand, there are regions where the local economic, demographic and community preconditions make the functioning of the rural school incredibly difficult. This casts doubt on possibilities of achieving the reform goals and introducing changes to the social structures of the countryside. The co-occurrence of the regional differentiation of rural schools and of the levels of education among the rural population is particularly alarming. The co-existence of the educational and cultural impoverishment in some rural areas may constitute a serious threat to the educational aspirations of rural youth, which were awakened in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]