October 20, 1993

Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts and top state education officials have endorsed the idea of having the private Edison Project run some of the state's public schools.

Children with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities are more likely to be abused than nondisabled children, according to a study by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect.

Responding to an increase in recent years in weapons-related violations occurring on or near school campuses, the Los Angeles school board this month decided to require that school-police officers wear full police uniforms during their regular campus patrols.

About 600 of Denver's 4,000 public school teachers called in sick last week to protest the district's failure to include a 3.5 percent pay raise for teachers in its 1993-94 budget.

Michigan lawmakers, who moved with breakneck speed this summer to put their state into its current school-finance crisis, are now relying on quick action to find a solution.

Kentucky policymakers and education advocates have a long way to go in convincing the public, especially teachers and students, of the central premise that all children can learn, according to opinions expressed in focus groups brought together by a state reform group.

Warning of a "crisis in character'' among the nation's youths, an alliance of 27 education and community groups has launched a campaign aimed at strengthening such core values as trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship among young people.

The public school system in Montgomery County, Md., an affluent Washington suburb, enjoys a national reputation for academic excellence. Last year, 41 of its students were National Merit Scholars and three won the Westinghouse Science Talent Search competition.

The following are summaries of final action by legislatures on education-related matters.

Massachusetts' highest court is weighing whether the state owes school districts millions of dollars because of unfunded mandates it has placed on them since 1981.

Public school teachers nationwide are earning an average of $35,104 this year, according to a survey by the American Federation of Teachers.

In Baltimore, where nine public schools are now managed by an alliance of private companies, principals can track purchase orders at computers on their desks. The nine schools are hooked into KPMG Peat Marwick's financial-accounting system in Montvale, N.J. The system also allows the schools to examine their budgets, compare their actual expenditures with their budgets, manage their accounts, and compute salary information. Information on warehousing, maintenance, and food service is stored on another data base managed by Johnson Controls World Services, which maintains the school buildings. While contracting out the management of public schools to private companies continues to generate opposition, Mr. Herman of Peat Marwick said more and more school boards are expressing interest in the use of automation and methods of controlling expenditures common in the business world. "School boards today want to know how to control their money. They say, 'Tell us what is being spent and find ways of saving money,''' Mr. Herman said. "Governments have tended to emphasize controls and preventing you from doing wrong. Today people are saying, lo and behold, let's talk about providing services and meeting kids' needs.'' Companies Lend Expertise It is a sign of the times that business leaders, who have long been concerned about the academic quality of schools, are increasingly volunteering to help districts update their administrative services as well. In Providence, a committee of top district officials and representatives of large corporations is now working to create a human-resources system using up-to-date business practices. The effort addresses complaints that the district does not recruit the best-qualified teachers and fails to regularly evaluate its employees. An assessment of the district by the Providence Public Education Fund also found that it has a "woefully inadequate data-collection system.'' The district, the report says, could not provide such information as the average teacher salary or teacher-attendance rate at each school. The group also is pressing for the district to develop much more detailed information on student achievement, including whether graduates go on to college, information about the impact of numerous suspensions on students, and breakdowns of test scores and grades by ethnic group and race. Central administrators, especially, "do not know enough about their schools,'' the report says. "For a system to be effective,'' said Daniel D. Challener, the director of the study, "it has to make data-driven decisions, not decisions based on anecdotal information.'' Providence businesses also have been lending their expertise on data management and public relations to the district. The involvement of businesses should make it easier for the superintendent and school board to persuade the city to pay for a new information system, Mr. Challener said. 'Prepared To Testify' In Montgomery County, the businesses that were involved in the Corporate Partnership on Managerial Excellence included large national corporations such as Bechtel, Martin Marietta, and Marriott. The local telephone and power companies also participated. "Business wants to roll up its sleeves and participate and feel that they're doing something,'' said Lawrence A. Shulman, a former member of the Maryland Board of Education who organized the partnership's nine-month study. Because they have gained firsthand knowledge of the system's needs, Mr. Shulman said, the companies are "prepared to testify'' before other political bodies to help see that the administrative improvements are made. Mr. Vance, the district's superintendent, said some of the partnership's recommendations are being adopted immediately, including adding a candidate-tracking system in personnel, computerizing the transportation system, and allowing employees to have online access to the payroll. No More Privileged Information In another Washington suburb, meanwhile, school administators in Fairfax County, Va., are realizing that "administration and instruction are more and more, at the school level, overlapping,'' Dolores Bohen, the assistant superintendent for communications, said. The district plans to hire a consulting firm to help with "systems planning'' to make sure that people in the organization have access to the data they need, whether it relates to personnel and budgets, demographics, or instructional technology. Connecting such data and giving people easier access to it are the major issues the district hopes to tackle,

In a case with as much potential impact for schools as for other employers, the U.S. Supreme Court last week tackled the issue of what constitutes illegal sexual harassment in the workplace.

A symbol (

• ) marks events that have not appeared in a previous issue of Education Week.

Some people might call Paul Cummins crazy. =para Like many a private school official, Mr. Cummins, the president of the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences here, has devoted untold hours to fund-raising. And he is good at it. His efforts on a recent campaign paid off to the tune of nearly $1 million.

Advocates last week urged that the Clinton Administration's proposed "school-to-work opportunities act'' be amended to insure that girls, as well as students with special needs, can participate in high-skill training programs.

General Motors Corporation has announced the recall of about 700 school buses with potentially faulty brakes.

WASHINGTON--Sixteen Head Start programs have been awarded grants to help them develop strategies for serving homeless preschool children and families.

State education officials in California have dispatched a new publication to more than 8,000 schools in an effort to defend and clarify the state's literature-based approach to teaching reading.

A new national organization formed to promote school choice says it will focus on legislation and ballot initiatives at the state level.

Capital Update tracks the movement of legislation, the introduction of notable bills, and routine regulatory announcements.

Since leaving the Presidency, Jimmy Carter, who brokered the peace between Egypt and Israel, has continued a commitment to conflict resolution and community building. Programs and activities he takes part in--from home-construction for the needy, to international conflict mediation through the Carter Center--reflect this commitment. Talking Peace, his latest book, calls on America's young people to take up the cause of community building. Below, he relates a school visit that showed him how necessary such a task may be for many in the next generation:

Two new television shows examine the impact on children of violence--on the street and on screen.

Residents of Wausau, Wis., have filed petitions to recall five school board members who passed a busing plan designed to integrate Asian-American students from low-income families with their wealthier white peers.

Deputy Secretary of Education Madeleine M. Kunin gave the cause of community service a boost last week by speaking at a reception launching Who Cares, a new community-service magazine.

In the Schools
Elizabeth R. Bruenderman, director of communications, Louisville (Ky.) Bar Association, to director of communications, Louisville Collegiate School.

Public-health and school officials in Baltimore announced last week that they will begin offering Norplant, the surgically implanted contraceptive, in two more high school health clinics next month and in three others next spring.

While interest in exploring the contributions of African-Americans to United States history has grown in recent years, less attention has been paid to similar contributions by the nation's second-largest minority group, Hispanic Americans

A miniature "rain forest'' is taking shape in a plastic enclosure wedged between the chalkboard and the sink in Ellen Vaughn's classroom here at Memminger Elementary School.