January 12, 1982
Education Week, Vol. 01, Issue 16
Education
Minneapolis Officials Prepare for Massive School Closings
Public-school officials here are expected to announce this week the closing of as many as a third of the city's schools this spring.
Education
Pennsylvania Tax Plan Likely To Be Amended
A controversial Pennsylvania tax-reform bill that would allow school boards in the state to finance education through a local income tax instead of property taxes will probably be killed or radically amended when the state's House finance committee votes on the measure this week, according to the committee's chairman.
Education
In the ~'Olympics of the Mind' The Race is to the Quick-Witted
In 1980, a team of high-school students from Briarcliff, N.J., using five-eighths of an ounce of balsa wood and glue, designed and built a structure that stood up under 768 pounds of weight. A team of elementary-school students, also limited to glue and a bit of balsa, constructed an edifice that withstood 509 pounds of weight. Both groups surpassed, by a substantial amount, the previous record set by college students: 465 pounds.
Education
Seniors Favor Women's Equality, But Want Traditional Marriages
Although a majority of American high-school seniors say that women should have the right to adopt non-traditional family or occupational roles, few agree that they or their spouse would take on such roles when they marry.
Education
California School Chief Calls U.S. Funding Outlook Dismal
If the Reagan Administration dismantles the Education Department, federal education programs should be transferred to the Defense Department, said Wilson Riles, California's state superintendent of public instruction, at a press conference here last week.
Education
In Federal Agencies
Department of Defense Dependents' Schools. The Department of Defense (dod) published, in the Dec. 23 Federal Register, the final wording of the new Part 57 of 32 cfr (Code of Federal Regulations), Chapter I. These regulations establish the policy and procedures to be used when handicapped children receive educational instruction from the dod Dependents' Schools. These procedures implement the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 and the Defense Dependents' Education Act of 1978. This notice also announced the creation of the Overseas Dependents School National Advisory Panel on the Education of Handicapped Dependents and the Department of Defense Coordinating Committee on Special Education and Related Services. Contact: Dr. Diane L. Goltz, Department of Defense Dependents Schools, 2461 Eisenhower Ave., Alexandria, Va. 22331; (202) 325-7810.
Education
Curriculum, Methods Held Responsible for Math 'Crisis'
All fifty states faced a shortage of mathematics teachers last year, and the problem will get worse before it gets better, according to a group of mathematicians and educators who met here last week.
Education
Creationism: The Judge Decided the Case, Not the Debate
On Jan. 5, Judge William R. Overton of the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas overturned the state's law requiring "balanced'' classroom treatment for the theories of evolution and "creation-science," on the grounds that the latter was "simply and purely an effort to introduce the biblical version of creation into the public-school curricula."
Education
Dependence on Property Taxes Continued To Diminish in 1979-80
Continuing a financial trend that began in the early 1970's, American public schools depended less on local property taxes in 1979-80 than in the previous fiscal year, according to a report issued last month by the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Education
Creationism Controversies Brewing in Other States
On the day Arkansas's creation-science law was declared unconstitutional, the Mississippi Senate passed by a vote of 48 to 4 a creation-science bill of its own, despite legislators' knowledge of the unfavorable Arkansas decision.
The bill must still pass the House and be signed by the Governor.
Education
Scientists Urged To Continue Their Efforts Against Creationism Despite Arkansas Ruling
Last week, on the eve of U.S. District Judge William R. Overton's ruling that Arkansas's creation-science law is unconstitutional, the largest general science association in the country demonstrated that it does not think the creationism-evolution conflict is over.
Education
Today's Students Like Music, But Are Less Tolerant of Art
Most American students today have positive feelings about music, but many teenagers consider art less important than did their counterparts five years ago, and students overall are far less tolerant of "unusual" art, according to two recently released reports from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (naep).
Education
Vietnam-Era Journalists Testify in Maine's Book-Banning Trial
Witnesses, including four prominent authors, spent part of Christmas week in U.S. District Court here debating when four-letter words should be allowed in a school's library.
Education
Faced With Deficit, South Bend School Board
South Bend, Ind--Last fall, when inflation and a rollback in state aid made a generous three-year teacher contract unaffordable midway through its second year, the South Bend Community School Board set out to save some $2.67 million by reducing the size and the salaries of the teaching staff.
Education
Texas Curriculum To Undergo Complete Revision for 1984
This month the Texas Education Agency (tea) began revising the state's basic public-school curriculum, a project that will keep educators throughout the state busy for at least the next year.
Education
Reagan's Address to Nation To Bring News of 1983 Education Budget Cuts
New budget cuts--which would bring reductions in federal education spending since 1981 to 35 percent--the elimination of school-lunch subsidies for middle-income children, and a plan to turn the Education Department (ed) into a foundation are among the proposals President Ronald Reagan is reportedly considering for inclusion in the fiscal 1983 federal budget.
Education
National Assessments Called Ineffectual in Study
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (naep), the only source of ongoing nationwide measurement of the academic achievement of elementary- and secondary-school students, has failed to make itself useful to state and local education policymakers. It must play a much more active role in setting national educational goals in order to justify its continuation, according to a major independent study of the assessment program to be published at the end of this month.
Education
City News Roundup
The Chicago Board of Education has proposed an extensive system of voluntary "magnet schools," rather than mandatory busing, as a means of desegregating the 443,000-student system.
In its plan, submitted late last month to U.S. District Judge Milton I. Shadur, the board proposes to establish 70 special schools that theoretically would attract students of all races--including whites who live in suburban school districts.
Education
N.E.A. Steps Up Anti-Reagan Lobbying Effort
The National Education Association (nea), which has seen its political fortunes suffer during the first year of the Reagan Administration, is once again on the offensive: The union's leaders are mobilizing some of the nearly 1.7 million members for a year-long lobbying effort to combat the decline of the federal role in education and to influence the 1982 Congressional elections.
Education
People News
Jean Sullivan McKeigue is following a family tradition as she begins a one-year term as president of the Boston school committee.
The new president's older sister, Kathleen Sullivan Alioto, was a member of the school committee from 1975 through 1979 and president in 1977.
Education
National News Roundup
The Head Start program, which provides free preschool instruction and nutrition for children from low-income families, will be preserved as a separate program in next year's federal budget.
The $912-million program had been scheduled by the Office of Management and Budget to be included in a new package of block grants to states. That move, which would have permitted states to decide whether to continue the program, was opposed by Richard S. Schweicker, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the program.
Education
Private Schools
A survey of independent high schools suggests that they are spending a slightly larger proportion of their income on student financial aid than they did five years ago. The schools also appear to be relying more on endowments and voluntary giving, and less on student tuition, to supply their annual income.
Conducted by the National Association of Independent Schools, the survey of the financial operations of 50 secon-dary day schools found that in 1979-80, the schools spent an average of $263 per student on financial aid (or 7 percent of their annual income), as opposed to $154 per student (or 6.6 per cent) in 1974-75.
Education
Western Schools Called Unsuited to Third World
After years of well-meaning but largely unsuccessful attempts by international organizations to promote literacy in developing nations, it may be time to abandon modern Western educational methods in these areas, and use "culturally appropriate systems," according to Daniel Wagner of the University of Pennsylvania.
Research in several Moslem countries has shown that more children and adults become literate in Islamic schools than in modern public schools, said Mr. Wagner, an associate professor of education. He presented his analysis at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas) held last week in Washington.
Education
California Law Loosens State's Hold on Districts
Pioneering legislation went into effect in California last week with the aim of giving schools and school districts what they have long wanted--more freedom from state regulations.
Education
State News Roundup
Educators seeking their first job in California's public schools are expected to receive a reprieve from having to pass a series of tests before school districts can hire them.
Under a bill signed into law last fall by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., the California Commission for Teacher Preparation and Licensing cannot issue credentials to candidates for teaching and administrative positions after March 1, 1982, if they have not passed basic-skills tests in reading, writing, and computation.
Education
New Colorado Plan Serves More Pupils
Colorado's new English Language Proficiency Act, approved by the state legislature last spring amidst heated political debate, appears to be serving more non-English-speaking children than the bilingual program it replaced.
Education
Agency Will Not Notify Students of Cuts in Aid
A deliberate decision by the Social Security Administration not to warn the children of widows, widowers, retirees, and disabled persons that they probably will not be eligible for education benefits after this spring could substantially upset the college plans of as many as 300,000 high-school seniors.