The Detroit board of education has named David L. Snead, a veteran district administrator, as the interim replacement for its outgoing superintendent, Deborah M. McGriff.
The board late last month voted 6 to 5 to name Mr. Snead, 50, as interim superintendent.
Ms. McGriff earlier had announced that she would step down from her post to join the Edison Project, an educational venture launched by the media entrepreneur Christopher Whittle. (See Education Week, Oct. 20, 1993.)
In a separate action, the board voted, over the objections of some parents, to award Ms. McGriff a $30,000 bonus tied to her performance during the last school year.
Mr. Snead, who had been serving as the district’s interim assistant superintendent for parent and adult education, has spent his entire career in the Detroit system.
The developers of an innovative program for teaching the basic concepts of physics to students have received a $50,000 Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Education.
Priscilla W. Laws, a professor of physics at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and Ronald K. Thornton, a professor of physics at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and the director of the university’s Center for Science and Mathematics Teaching, were honored by the Charles A. Dana Foundation for their “Workshop Physics’’ program.
Created for college and university students but now being expanded into high school classrooms, the program uses hands-on experimentation to help students understand the fundamentals of physics.
