September 22, 1982
Starting with next year's freshmen, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, will require all students to demonstrate writing proficiency before they graduate.
John M. Opie, who has worked for the school district since 1967 and has tenure, is suing both the Denver school board and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (dcta), which represents 3,700 teachers in the district.
Terrel H. Bell has been decidedly circumspect about publicly discussing the issue of school desegregation during his tenure as Secretary of Education--until now. The Secretary, who serves in an Administration that officially opposes the mandatory busing of students, made known his personal views in favor of realigning school-district boundaries to create a better racial mix, in interviews this month with The Associated Press and, later, The Washington Post.
Twenty-one states have enacted laws that require "child restraints"--seat belts and federally approved car seats--or public-education programs on auto safety. The laws were passed, according to the cdc, in response to statistics that indicated that restrained children are 50-to-70 percent less likely to be killed or injured in an auto accident than are unrestrained children.
The New Jersey Coalition for Public Education, made up of groups representing teachers, school-board members, principals, superintendents, parents, and school business officials, will mount a grassroots, county-by-county campaign to persuade the state legislature and Gov. Thomas H. Kean to agree to a supplemental-aid bill or to increased taxes to support the state's schools.
But the Supreme Court's clerk, Alexander Stevas, refused to accept the appeal on the grounds that there were "procedural deficiencies." Mr. Stevas said that since the state had not first sought relief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, it had failed to exhaust the remedies of the lower courts.
In doing so, they have violated Pennsylvania's ethics law, and the acting superintendent, Charles A. Highsmith, has announced that any royalties earned from such illegal activity by the district's administrators must be turned over to the school system.
The National Committee for Citizens in Education, a nonprofit organization based in Columbia, Md., has selected eight states for close scrutiny and hopes to encourage similar projects in other states.
The school will operate under the auspices of the YMCA of Philadelphia and Vicinity. Its curriculum, designed by Mr. Lewis, will emphasize critical thinking and problem-solving skills as taught through such subjects as French, geometry, and philosophy.
"You can integrate schools without integrating kids," said Robert L. Wolf, director of the university's Indiana Center for Evaluation, who surveyed nearly 5,000 students and interviewed more than 400 additional students, parents, teachers, and school officials last spring.
Three math and science educators examine how teaching and childraising practices, along with other factors, undermine young girls' capacity for acquiring mathematics and science skills. The authors describe strategies and activities that teachers and parents can use to aid even very young girls in developing abstract-reasoning skills, independence, and "risk-taking" in solving math and science problems. The book suggests ways to reduce the effect of sex-role stereotyping and includes a list of other resources.
The survey was conducted in May and June of 1982 by Allan Odden and Van Dougherty, researchers with the nonprofit, Denver-based consortium. (See Databank this page.) They drew also on an earlier study of the same topic, conducted by the Rand Corporation.
Education statistics. The Education Department announced, in the Sept. 10 Federal Register, a meeting of the Advisory Council on Education Statistics on Oct. 15-16, in room 823, 1200 19th St., N.W., Washington. The council reviews general policies for the operation of the National Center for Education Statistics. The meeting is open to the public.
Instead, Judge Garrity last week ordered the Massachusetts Board of Education to monitor and supervise all aspects of the city's schools for compliance with about 400 orders that he has issued during the case. He gave the state education department until Oct. 8 to develop and submit its plan for accomplishing that task.