Westover School, an all-girls college-preparatory high school in Middlebury, Conn., is set to announce this week a partnership with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., in which the university will guarantee admission to Westover students who successfully complete a joint advanced-mathematics and -science curriculum of the school and R.P.I.
The program, which apparently is the only such partnership between an independent school and a university, will require Westover students to complete the advanced coursework mainly on Saturdays, in addition to Westover’s regular course of study.
The project, which currently enrolls 11 girls who could matriculate at Rensselaer as early as 1994, “lays the foundation for increasing the numbers of women in engineering and other scientific careers where they are significantly underrepresented,’' Joseph L. Molder, Westover’s headmaster, said in a statement.
Westover students entering the 9th or 10th grade who have demonstrated aptitude for mathematics and science will be eligible for enrollment in WISE, the Women in Science and Engineering program.
By the end of 10th grade, the girls will have completed a college-level computer-science course. In their junior and senior years, Westover students will attend a series of science seminars and lectures conducted by faculty members from Westover and Rensselaer.
The Council for American Private Education last month presented its first CAPE Education Leadership Award to Theodore R. Sizer, the founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools.
Mr. Sizer--a professor of education at Brown University, a former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a former headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.--is the author of Horace’s Compromise and its sequel, Horace’s School.
Joyce G. McCray, the executive director of the council, said in a statement that Mr. Sizer “has worked tirelessly on behalf of all the nation’s children.’'
A study of 53 adults who were taught at home by their parents suggests that home-schooling does not impair children socially, a University of Michigan researcher has concluded.
The study by J. Gary Knowles, an assistant professor of education, found that a typical number of the home-schooled adults had married, and none was unemployed or receiving welfare assistance.
More than 40 percent of those studied had attended college and 15 percent had completed a graduate degree.--M.L.
