Home visiting programs have been prevalent as an early education program approach in rural communities for parents of young children at risk due to poverty, as a way to reach families living in remote areas, where geographic distances present logistical challenges to group-care (Whittaker, Kellom, Matone & Cronholm, 2019). Moreover, early childhood risk factors appear to be exacerbated by rurality (Grace et al., 2006). Furthermore, rurality also introduces challenges to home visiting implementation (Barlow et al., 2018; Jones Harden, Chazan-Cohen, Roggman & Knocke, 2019) and evaluation (Raikes, 2016). These challenges justify a within-rural study of home visiting with parents and children from birth to age three. While building on a robust home visiting literature, the current study investigates a language-based home visiting program, Save the Children's Early Steps to School Success, designed to address challenges of within-rurality program implementation for parents and young children at risk due to poverty. It also incorporates a propensity matching evaluation feature to address program evaluation challenges introduced by rurality. (author abstract)