October 13, 1982
In a program begun last year at Moscow High School, the students are spending two hours every schoolday for nine months building a house.
In the late 1970's, many states lowered the legal drinking age. Surveys conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that the change was followed by an increase in the number of fatal alcohol-related crashes in the age groups affected.
A case that some observers predicted would be "the biggest reverse-discrimination suit since Bakke" was stopped in its tracks last week when the Supreme Court declined to review two lower-court rulings.
On Oct. 4, a federal district judge in San Diego sentenced Benjamin H. Sasway, a 21-year-old former college student, to two and a half years in prison. Mr. Sasway was convicted on Aug. 26 of failure to register for the draft.
In two related cases, Goldsboro Christian Schools, Inc. v. United States and Bob Jones University v. United States, the two educational institutions have challenged the authority of the Internal Revenue Service to withhold tax-exempt status from schools that discriminate on the basis of race. The Goldsboro Schools, in North Carolina, do not admit blacks; Bob Jones University, in South Carolina, admits blacks but forbids interracial dating and marriage.
The many problems of the district--which encompasses 25 municipalities and 710 square miles and which enrolls about 543,000 students--are not directly attributable to its size and management structure, according to the study by the Evaluation and Training Institute, a Los Angeles research firm. The study was commissioned after legislators expressed concern over the "unmanageability" of the district.
The Committee weighed the pros and cons of that issue and a number of others in an attempt to formulate a consistent organizational policy on matters affecting Indian education.
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert G. Ward say that the weight restriction applied to their daughter, Peggy, who is a student at Ringgold High School in Monongahela, Pa., is discriminatory because there are no similar restrictions for boys and because her weight is medically "normal." They have asked that the policy be abolished.
The data on minority students were released last week by the organization in its report on the test results and characteristics of students who took the sat in 1980-81. The report, Profiles, College-Bound Seniors, 1981, shows that black students scored far lower than their white classmates on the tests. In a preface to the report, George H. Hanford, the College Board's president, said the decision to change policy and publish the data was made because "we concluded that in such circumstances the College Board, as a matter of principle, should not impose restraints on access to generalized program data because of our own concept of public interest."
In addition, Gov. Forrest H. (Fob) James has ordered across-the-board cuts in state government, including the state's education trust fund. Beginning on Oct. 1, allocations for school boards and other education functions were 10 percent less than the legislature had appropriated.
Last week, the city's board of education selected Constance E. Clayton, who has been the district's associate superintendent for early-childhood education since 1978.
Federal education officials have estimated that as much as $60 million, allegedly misspent by 27 states, is at stake.
Mr. Robinson's description of science as an interwoven whole is uncommonly perceptive for an engineer, and I was most pleased and proud to see a fellow engineer express himself so well in a public forum. Moreover, he is right about scientists being far too reluctant about getting into the fray. In my view, some have taken this to the point of professional irresponsibility.