August 4, 1987 Extra Edition
Students participating in the program, known as P-ACT+, will take a three-hour examination, which will include tests in four academic areas--writing, mathematics, reading, and science reasoning--a study-skills test, and a "needs assessment,'' in which students will indicate their academic and counseling needs.
Deborah Meier, director of Central Park East Secondary School in East Harlem, is the first precollegiate educator to be selected for the honor, which has come to be known popularly as the "genius'' award.
Although 60 percent of all males between the ages of 20 and 24 were able to earn enough money to lift a family of three out of poverty in 1973, the study found, only 42 percent were able to do so by 1984. During that time, the average annual earnings for that group, adjusted for inflation, dropped from $11,572 to $8,072. And, while earnings dropped for white, black, and Hispanic men alike, black men suffered the greatest loss--almost 50 percent.
"We know a lot about what works,'' said Shirley M. Malcom, director of the association's office of opportunities in science. "We have a 'technology transfer' problem.''
The Association of Supervisors and Administrators of Rochester filed suit last December seeking to dismantle the program. They contended that the district's 22 mentor teachers were performing only supervisory and administrative tasks without the proper credentials to do so.
The teen-agers participating in the study rejected anti-drug advertisements that relied on slogans or carried a "preachy'' message, the researchers found.
"I do not suggest that sex education has caused the increase in sexual activity among young people; but clearly it has not prevented it,'' Mr. Bennett writes in "Why Johnny Can't Abstain.''
Despite assurances that preliminary work on the project posed no threat, the absence rate at the 425-student Lynnewood School doubled earlier this month, according to Joseph Anderson, a district spokesman, and "the whole atmosphere was disrupted'' by parental fears.
Our concern is based on two points. The first is the decision of someone to place public and private schools in the same competition, although in Ohio, for example, the state's minimum academic standards are different for public and private schools.
Marion County Magistrate Fred J. Kreykes on June 1 found Ron and Deborah Gieseke guilty of a misdemeanor for educating their 8-year-old son, Amos, at home.