Tracey Leon Bailey, a science teacher at Satellite High School in Satellite Beach, Fla., last week was honored as the 1993 National Teacher of the Year at a White House ceremony attended by President Clinton and Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley.
Although Mr. Bailey has taught for only seven years, he has won national recognition for classroom instruction in molecular biology and DNA “fingerprinting.’' The 29-year-old teacher was also the primary author of the Florida Department of Education’s curriculum for instructional technology.
At a presentation in the Rose Garden attended by several of Florida’s top education officials, President Clinton awarded Mr. Bailey a crystal apple from the Council of Chief State School Officers, which sponsors the program with Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The success of the education system “all comes down to what happens between the teachers and the students in the classroom,’' said Mr. Clinton, who lauded Mr. Bailey’s “highly advanced and innovative classroom techniques.’'
Mr. Bailey called the award “a great honor and a tremendous responsibility.’'
The Alliance for Curriculum Reform has named Gordon Cawelti its first executive director.
The alliance, a new group of 25 national subject-area organizations, has also set up a headquarters in Arlington, Va., in the offices of the Educational Research Service.
Mr. Cawelti, a former superintendent of schools in Tulsa, Okla., was the executive director of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development for 19 years.
The National Association of State Directors of Special Education has named Martha Fields its new executive director.
Ms. Fields, the president of the association in 1985, is the assistant deputy state superintendent for school improvement in Maryland. She has also served as that state’s special-education director.
Ms. Fields succeeds William Schipper, who resigned in November. She will assume her new duties in May.
The headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., has announced that he will leave that post in June 1994.
Donald W. McNemar, 49, who has headed the prominent independent school since 1981, said in an address to teachers and students that “individuals and institutions have seasons and needs for change,’' adding: “I have concluded that now is the best time for transition.’'
Beverly Henderson, a school spokeswoman, said Mr. McNemar and his wife, Britta Schein McNemar, the school’s international-student coordinator, would like to pursue other opportunities, perhaps at the university level or abroad.
The McNemars were deans at Dartmouth College before they went to Andover, as the 1,200-student school is also known.
A search for a new head is to begin later this spring.
