June 10, 1992
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FRONT PAGE
The progress of RJR Nabisco's endeavor, believed to be the largest
corporate program of cash grants to individual public schools, is
drawing close scrutiny from educators and business executives alike.
Many observers regard the program as a prototype for the New American
Schools Development Corporation, the private organization set up last
year at the request of President Bush that is planning to help
underwrite "break the mold'' schools.
WINCHESTER, VA.-The tall, lanky 17-year-old burst into Julie R.
Hunt's office here at a branch of the Grafton School and began to
rock back and forth. He put his hand to his mouth and bent over. He
seemed to want to talk, but no words came out.
The drastic downsizing of the U.S. military, combined with higher
absolute standards for recruits on tests and other measures, is
curtailing job opportunities for thousands of high-school graduates who
had looked to the armed forces as an accessible route to
advancement.
The nation's children were poorer, more diverse, and
more likely to have fallen behind in school in 1990 than they were 10
years earlier, newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau
indicate.
LINCOLN CITY, ORE.--Norma S. Paulus, Oregon's feisty superintendent of public instruction, has come to this coastal community to sell an audience composed largely of senior citizens on one of the most ambitious school-reform efforts in the country.
PAGE 2
In Brockton, Mass., more than 500 area students have been learning
to express themselves through architecture.
As a result of a projected $38-million budget shortfall, officials
of the St. Louis public schools have laid off 295 employees, including
80 teachers.
Thirteen-year-old Colorado students perform as well in mathematics
and science as their peers in 19 foreign countries, the results of the
most recent international assessment of student performance in math and
science suggest.
PAGE 3
A California Superior Court judge last week refused to temporarily
ban the Channel One in-school news program from the San Jose public
schools.
Bernard R. Gifford, the former dean of the school of education at
the University of California at Berkeley who left academia to head the
education division of Apple Computer Inc., has returned to the
university.
A national gathering of mathematics educators later this month will
lay the groundwork for preparing students to use graphing calculators
on the Advanced Placement calculus test, an innovation expected to
begin in 1995.
PAGE 4
A new national survey suggests that interest in providing students
with more international perspectives in their studies is high among
state departments of education, but that funds to support such efforts
may be limited.
A nonprofit telecommunications corporation has reached
an agreement with a private firm that will allow it to begin beaming
satellite-delivered educational programs to schools by early
August.
PAGE 5
Most public-service advertising
campaigns aimed at urban African American
teenagers are completely
ineffective, according to a study by a
marketing firm conducted for the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
WASHINGTON--Teachers and counselors
who attended institutes sponsored
by the College Board this past
year came away more confident that
their minority students can do well in
mathematics and science and eventually
go to college, according to a study
released here last week.
Sexist behavior in private secondary-
school classrooms can be found
not only in coeducational environments
but in boys' and girls' schools
as well, a University of Michigan
study has found
PAGE 6
Seeking to become "change agents'' in the movement to
reform science education, the curators of more than 30 science museums
met here last month with federal and local officials to begin a
"dialogue'' about the resources their institutions can offer the the
nation's schools.
Teams led by the presidents of 35 public colleges and universities
will meet in Washington this month to develop a national agenda for
improving teacher education.
Several years ago, Doug Cooper, a 5th-grade teacher in Seattle,
hoped to sharpen his skills in science instruction when he enrolled in
an internship program at the Pacific Science Center there.
PAGE 8
The House last week approved a defense bill that would
authorize $180 million in fiscal 1993 to train laid-off military
employees to teach in the nation's public schools.
PAGE 10
RJR Nabisco Inc.'s "Next Century Schools'' initiative is widely seen
as a prototype for one of the most closely watched new undertakings in
American education: the New American Schools Development
Corporation.
PAGE 13
Despite opposition from an organization of religious conservatives,
the state curriculum commission in California has approved a new
health- and sex-education framework for the public schools.
In a significant step toward holding schools accountable for student
performance, the Florida Board of Education last week began considering
an ambitious set of standards for what students should know and be able
to do.
After many months of unremitting bad news, states may be getting
some "faint glimmers of improvement'' on the fiscal front as the
nation's economy improves.
California voters last week approved the largest school-bond issue
in state history, a $1.9-billion plan that school officials said will
begin to make a dent in the state's backlog of building projects.
PAGE 14
Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts has run into resistance in the
legislature over his plan to shift more of the state's system of
subsidized day care from contracted slots to parental vouchers.
Unable after months of private
talks with key lawmakers and the
business community to reach an
agreement on a compromise education-
reform proposal, Gov. William
F. Weld of Massachusetts last week
broke ranks and submitted his own
package to the legislature.
PAGE 17
As part of broader efforts to
strengthen their economies, a growing
number of states are joining Oregon
in moving to raise expectations
for all students and to ease the transition
from school to work for young
people not headed directly to college.
PAGE 19
Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander last week
proposed that $100 million that had been set aside for new programs be
used to aid growing school districts and inner-city schools, and to
involve defense personnel in schools.
By prematurely releasing data from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, President Bush could have
threatened the credibility of the testing program, the chairman of
NAEP's governing board warned last week.
Surrounded by an elementary-school glee club and
children's artwork, officials of three federal agencies last week
announced plans to develop "world class'' national standards for
student achievement in the arts by 1994.
PAGE 20
In television interviews
aired on successive days, Ross
Perot told one questioner
that he opposes raising federal
taxes but told the other that
he would raise them to increase
education spending.
By buying vaccines from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control, states could save millions of dollars on immunizations for
Medicaid recipients that could be used to improve
childhood-immunization programs, according to the preliminary findings
of a General Accounting Office report.
PAGE 21
WASHINGTON--Members of the
House Appropriations panel that
has jurisdiction over education and
social-service programs will have a
total of$61.6 billion to work with as
they craft a fiscal 1993 spending bill,
under an agreement reached last
week by the chairmen of the 13 Appropriations
subcommittees.
Washington--The Senate last
week approved a major increase in
authorized funding for the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, easily
beating back a challenge by critics of
the public-broadcasting system
The U.S. Supreme Court last week let stand a financial sanction
against a Texas man and his lawyer whose suit against a school district
over a student drug search was held by a lower court to be
frivolous.
PAGE 22
Promoting community programs for teenagers, especially those at
risk, will be the goal of a nationally circulated tabloid launched next
September, Youth Today.
Change is a byword of education in the 90's. The accelerating pace
of societal change has altered both the public expectations for schools
and the nature of the students who attend them. Communities are
expecting more from schools at the same time schools are being
challenged by increasing numbers of the poor and minority students who
have been traditionally underserved.
PAGE 23 - Commentary
Wayne Hogan is a freelance writer and cartoonist based in
Cookeville, Tenn.
PAGE 24
Stephen R. Blanchard, director of admissions at the Greenhill School
in Dallas, Tex., to headmaster at Augusta Preparatory School in
Augusta, Ga.
PAGE 32 - Commentary
Principals, administrators, and school leaders are usually proud to
be perceived as "white collar'' professionals. And this can become a
problem as we get ready for the year 2000 and beyond. Community and
school-board expectations historically cast the school leader in the
mold of a mythical, anachronistic 1950's corporate milksop--a paragon
of predictability and a role model of orderly conformity.
FOUNDATION SUPPORT: Coverage of specific topics in Education Week is supported in part by grants from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the CME Group Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, the Noyce Foundation, the Raikes Foundation, the Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. The newspaper retains sole editorial control over the content of the articles that are underwritten by the foundations. Additional grants in support of Editorial Projects in Education’s data journalism and video capacity come from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and the Schott Foundation for Public Education. (Updated 1/1/2017)
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