20 YEARS AGO ... May 4, 1983
With two months to go before their deadline, 70 percent of school districts nationwide have completed asbestos inspections of their buildings, an official of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official tells a House subcommittee. Testimony from others, though, suggests wide variation in compliance.
- A District of Columbia jury awards $1.5 million to a partially paralyzed former high school football player, increasing the anxiety about the liability of school officials for injuries sustained by students in interscholastic sports. The award is one of the largest of its kind to date.
- A debate in libraries, publishing houses, and journals is sparked when librarians in Chicago, San Francisco, and Milwaukee decide not to purchase Margot Zemach’s Jake and Honeybunch Go to Heaven, taking issue with what they see was the book’s racial stereotyping.
- Most students have high ambitions for postsecondary study and careers, but lack the guidance needed to reach those goals, a study of 5,000 Indiana public school students, parents, and school counselors finds. Overall, it suggests, students and their parents tended to have little understanding of college-entrance requirements, job opportunities, and other crucial factors.
- The U.S. Department of Education’s research centers and regional laboratories have produced some high-quality research, but a significant portion of their output “could be substantially improved,” according to a report by University of Michigan history professor Maris A. Vinovskis, who contends many center studies are marred by design and methodological problems.
- Special educators seek to clarify their role in the school reform movement during a three-day national conference in Washington. Questions dominating the sessions conference included: How can students with disabilities be fully included in classrooms? Where does special education fit into the national movement to set high academic standards? And, do those two goals conflict?
