Under the terms of the settlement, John Katzman, president of the coaching concern, has admitted that Princeton Review included 17 slightly altered sat questions in its course materials. The company will pay ets $52,000 and grant it the right to inspect coaching materials over the next four years.
Princeton Review, which Mr. Katzman described as the largest sat-preparation service in the country, last year coached 18,000 students in 35 cities on how to improve their scores on the test.
Industry, government, and university officials say in a new survey that improvements in precollegiate education--particularly in mathematics and science--will be the key factor in upgrading the nation’s economic competitiveness.
The survey, conducted by the National Governors’ Association and the Conference Board with support from the National Science Foundation, found agreement among the respondents on the education system’s general soundness, but showed that most felt that maintaining technological leadership would require improvements.
The leaders surveyed said state governments, businesses, and universities could improve precollegiate science and math education by offering scholarships to prospective teachers, altering certification requirements to allow retired mathematicians and scientists to become teachers, and recruiting minority students into the fields as early as possible.
Copies of a report on the survey and a series of regional forums, “The Role of Science and Technology in Economic Competitiveness,” may be obtained from the Forms and Publications Office, National Science Foundation, Room 232, Washington, D.C. 20550; telephone: (202) 357-7861.
The grand prize in a national contest being sponsored by a St. Paul, Minn., computer manufacturer should accomplish the competition’s goal: spurring interest in supercomputers among high-school students.
Carl S. Ledbetter, president of eta Systems Inc., says the winning entry in his company’s SuperQuest contest will be a $1-million supercomputer for the contestants’ school.
Teams of three students and one teacher from each school entering the contest will have to propose, by Feb. 26, a scientific problem and an explanation of how a supercomputer could be used to find a solution to it that is new, more correct, or more extensive than those now available.
A supercomputer can handle 375 million mathematical equations a second, a rate thousands of times faster than that of a regular personal computer.
The four teams selected as semifinalists will be invited to an all-expenses-paid training program next summer to work on a supercomputer at the company’s headquarters. The winner will be selected at the end of the session in August.
Further information is available by phone through a toll-free number, 1-800-553-2214, extension 563.
