September 8, 1982
Education Week, Vol. 02, Issue 01
Education
Opinion
Voices: Unlovable
"The problem with 9th grader Phillip Johnson," writes David Ruenzel, was that "we teachers decided in the seclusion of the faculty lounge, was that he was absolutely unlovable: In him there was no charm, no grace, no buoyancy."
Education
Opinion
Get Teachers Out Of The Classroom
"At first, I was stunned by the similarities between my middle-aged and my middle-school students," writes Dolores Montalbano Vion. "All struggled to make their writing clear, to make it flow, to escape writer's block, and to find the time to write."
Education
Opinion
'What If No One Shows?'
During the months before the Gailer School opened, Harry Chaucer kept a journal, recording his innermost thoughts. Following are some of his entries.
Education
Opinion
Taking Aim At The Canon
There is a strong impulse in American education—curious in a country with such an ornery streak of antitraditionalism—to define achievement and excellence in terms of the acquisition of a historically validated body of knowledge, an authoritative list of books and allusions, a canon.
Education
Opinion
Good English And Bad
English is often commended by outsiders for its lack of a stultifying authority. Otto Jesperson as long ago as 1905 was praising English for its lack of rigidity, its happy air of casualness.
Education
Opinion
School Was The Only Haven
The first time Isabel Field heard Dooney's name was in the teachers' room. A colleague was talking about a well-behaved and well-cared-for little boy in her kindergarten class who had recently become unkempt and very unhappy. The next fall, Dooney appeared in Field's class.
Education
Phil Runkel's One-Man Crusade To Salvage Michigan's Schools
The threats against Phillip E. Runkel began a few days before he visited the financially distressed Alpena school district last fall.
Education
More Schools Expected To File Suits To Recover Cost of Asbestos Removal
At least one school district's lawsuit was among the "overwhelming" number of legal actions that led the Manville Corporation, a leading producer of asbestos, to file for bankruptcy last week.
Education
Val-Addictorians' Speech Is Booed to Max
The type of teenage lingo-ist recently parodied in a song about "Valley Girls" by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa could, like, carry inadequate communications skills into adulthood, says Lillian Glass, a speech pathologist and communications professor at the University of Southern California.
Ms. Glass says the problem with such speech is not so much the lingo itself ("fer sure" [absolutely], "grody to the max" [infinitely disgusting], etc.), but the speech patterns that accompany it.
Education
Chicago Budget Veto Creates New Uncertainties
The opening of school in Chicago, the nation's third-largest school district with more than 430,000 students, was thrown into doubt last Thursday when the Chicago School Finance Authority unexpectedly vetoed the district's budget.
Education
Agency File
Tracing Lost Children
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has registered strong reservations about a pair of bills awaiting action on both the House and Senate floors that would help parents locate their missing children by means of a federal computerized information network.
Education
Idaho Task Force Calls For Tougher Standards in Education
Tougher standards for students, teachers, and administrators are recommended in the recently released final report of the Idaho Commission on Excellence in Education.
Education
Groups Square Off Over Plan To Screen E.D. Grant Applicants
On the one side are several ideologically conservative government officials who claim they are trying to ensure that federal education funds are spent solely for educational purposes.
Education
Survey Finds as Few as 6,500 Teacher Layoffs
An independent survey has found that far fewer teachers across the country have actually been laid off for the new school year than the two major teachers' organizations had estimated.
Education
Pac-Man and Friend Expelled From Kentucky High School
Pac-Man, that bigmouthed, yellow-faced video monster, joined the lunchtime crowd at Lexington's Tates Creek High School for a short while this fall.
Education
A School For Leaders
It wasn't much different from most classrooms. The desks showed their age by the random carvings of generations of bored students.
Education
Studies Dispute Coleman's Finding on Blacks in Private Schools
Several researchers have developed evidence that they say refutes the findings of sociologist James S. Coleman that minority students perform better academically in private schools than they do in public schools.
Education
A Writer's Education: From Spanish to English, From Private to Public Life
Richard Rodriguez began first grade in Sacramento, Calif., able to speak only a few dozen, scattered words of English. Afraid of the language of los gringos, the classroom's only Spanish-speaking child resisted his teacher's persistent demands to stand up and speak out.
Education
Federal Notes
Class Portrait, Nader Style
Profiles of 100 of the Reagan Administration's top officials, viewed from the government-watchdog perspective of Ralph Nader, have been collected in a new book that Mr. Nader unveiled at a news conference last week.
Education
Japanese Loan Agreement Secures School-Aid Payments
Michigan schools have received some financial help from an unexpected source--Japan.
Education
Jobs and Cars Linked to Delinquency In a Study Prepared for Justice Dept.
Teen-agers who hold down part- or full-time jobs and have ready access to cars are more likely to get into trouble with the law than their counterparts without jobs and cars, according to a study of juvenile delinquency sponsored by the Justice Department and released last week.
Education
Collective Bargaining Roundup
After a bitter and complex contract dispute that lasted more than two years, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has voted overwhelmingly to accept a three-year agreement with the School District of Philadelphia.
The agreement was reached after officials from the union, the school district, and the state spent long hours in a closed session with Commonwealth Court Judge James C. Crumlish, resolving several issues over which there remained disagreement.
Education
Mass. State Board Alarmed by Acts Of Hate Groups
Alarmed by the increasing frequency of acts of bigotry in the public schools, the Massachusetts State Board of Education has asked school officials statewide to enforce strict disciplinary measures against students found committing acts that are motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice.
Education
New Mexico Denies Request To Partition A Navajo District
y Santa Fe, N.M.--The New Mexico State Board of Education has denied a request by a group of citizens, most of them white, to withdraw from a large Navajo-controlled school district in a northern section of the state.
Education
Nevada Schools May Lose State Bet on Sales Tax
A less drastic version of the property-tax revolt that occurred next door in California has combined with an increased reliance on sales taxes as sources of school revenue--at a time when the gambling and tourism industries are significantly depressed--to produce an estimated $14.3-million shortage in Nevada's Distributive School Fund.
Education
3 Phila. Girls Seek Admission to Elite School for Boys
As part of a national effort to use state equal-rights amendments to further equity for women in education, the Women's Law Project has challenged the boys-only admissions policy of an elite public high school in Philadelphia.
The nonprofit women's law group has already won one victory, in another case. Last week, Girard College, founded in Philadelphia in the 19th century as an elementary and secondary school for "poor white male orphans," was ordered by a Pennsylvania court to admit girls as soon as facilities and programs for them could be provided.
Education
Pennsylvania's Early-Retirement Offer Draws Few Takers
The deadline for teachers and other Pennsylvania school employees to take advantage of a special one-time early-retirement offer passed last week, with the plan apparently falling far short of its potential.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Letters To The Editor
I enjoyed reading "Brownbagging It Means Paying More for Fewer Nutrients" (Aug. 25, 1982). Particularly, I was amused by something I read in the second paragraph: "... a turkey sandwich on a role."
I'll admit I've known some people who have reminded me of turkeys in their roles of student, teacher, administrator, or education critic. What I didn't realize is that you can make sandwiches out of them!