Idaho lawmakers have created a panel charged with assessing the qualifications of the 116 administrators who run the state’s school districts.
State Representative Ed Brown, a co-chairman of the panel, said the committee would examine the academic credentials, salaries, and job requirements of district superintendents, and would evaluate programs in education management offered by state colleges and universities.
“We may find that all is well and that we won’t need to make any new recommendations, only commendations,” he said.
The six-member joint committee of the House and Senate is expected to release its report in January.
For the fourth straight year, Gov. George Deukmejian of California has vetoed a bill that would provide financial incentives to school districts that reduce class sizes in core high-school subjects.
In his veto message, the Governor said the state could not afford the bill’s $75-million price tag. Mr. Deukmejian added that districts “should be given the discretion to fund such a program within existing resources.”
The California Board of Education, meanwhile, has approved a revised version of a controversial human-rights curriculum intended for voluntary use by public schools. An earlier version had drawn fire from ethnic groups, which charged that significant examples of genocidal behavior had been omitted. (See Education Week, Sept. 16, 1987.)
Despite pressure from Turkish-American groups, the board did not revise a section detailing the persecution of Armenians under the Ottoman empire, according to a spokesman for the board. The version adopted did, however, include a new section on the oppression of Poles by the Nazi government and a listing of suggested readings on the persecution of American Indian tribes in the state.
