January 26, 1983
Education Week, Vol. 02, Issue 18
Education
Auditioning for Fame and Fortune: 'You Have To Think You'll Be One of Those Who Make It'
The young man steps to the center of the stage. "My number is five," he says. "I will be doing the character of Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, and Bernard in Jules Pfeiffer's Pfeiffer's People."
Education
Associations Column
The Idaho Association of School Administrators has voted to urge the state legislature to raise the state's minimum driving age from 14 to 17. Citing statistics indicating that drivers under the age of 20 are involved in far more auto accidents than the rest of the population and that cars and adolescent misbehavior are linked, the group says a change in the current law would improve the situation in both areas.
The average minimum age for driving in the 50 states is 16, according to an official of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A number of states, the official says, are moving either to tighten the restrictions on new drivers--such as requiring them to have passed a driver-education course, making their licenses "provisional," and requiring a parent to be in the car--or to raise the minimum age at which a young person may qualify for a license.
Education
Tighter Graduation Standards Set
North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia have joined the growing number of states engaged in tightening academic standards and graduation requirements for high-school students to encourage them to take more advanced courses in English, mathematics, science, and foreign languages.
Education
Urban League Cites Schooling Gains, Economic Losses for Blacks in 1982
According to the National Urban League, "1982 was not a good year to be black and poor in America."
Education
California Joins States Screening Teachers With Skills Test
California State Superintendent of Public Instruction William Honig has announced that prospective teachers taking the state's new basic-skills test will need scores of 70 percent in reading, 65 percent in mathematics, and 67 percent in writing to qualify for state certification.
Education
Mich. To Appeal Ruling on Teacher Certification
Michigan's attorney general has decided to appeal a recent state-court ruling that struck down parts of a 1921 law giving the state the right to require, among other things, that private schools employ teachers certified by the state.
Education
High Court Declines To Hear N.Y. SuitOn School Financing
The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal last week to hear Levittown v. Nyquist, one of the nation's best-known school-finance cases, reaffirms that the issues surrounding state and local financing of public schools must be decided by the states under state constitutions, experts said last week.
Education
Neb. Panel Issues Ed. Guidelines
The Nebraska Education Policy Commission, appointed by Gov. Charles Thone in September, has recommended guidelines on "student competencies" for voluntary use by the state's schools.
The report says Nebraska schools should work to ensure competence in communication, computation, reasoning, responsibility (by teaching of economics and civics), arts and humanities, physical and mental health, and "learning to learn" as a lifelong process.
Education
Education Finance, Standards Rank High on Governors' Agenda
Gov. James J. Blanchard has frozen more than $216 million in state aid to schools in a bid to help solve the state's severe financial crisis.
Education
Ala. School-Prayer Law Upheld
A federal district court judge in Alabama, saying that the U.S. Supreme Court "erred in its reading of history" when it struck down prayer in public schools 21 years ago, has ruled that the state's school-prayer laws are legal.
Education
Colleges Column
A group of 45 college freshman at the University of California at Berkeley will meet this month with their former high-school teachers to discuss how their education might have been improved.
The first-time exchange between high-school graduates and their principals and teachers is part of a program designed to help improve the quality of education at the college. All the students are from "feeder" high schools in the Berkeley area.
Ed-Tech Policy
Panel Will Investigate Use Of Computers in Schools
The Education Department (ed) has appointed a committee to develop a working definition of "computer literacy" for a 1984 national survey of the use of computers in elementary and secondary education.
Education
Teacher Transfers On Racial BasisBarred by Court
A federal district judge in Philadelphia barred the School District of Philadelphia last week from continuing to use a racial-quota system to maintain a desegregated teaching staff.
Education
Federal File
The Education Department's office for civil rights and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission have reached an agreement designed to increase information sharing between the agencies and to decrease the duplication of their activities.
Harry M. Singleton, the assistant secretary for civil rights, was to announce the agreement at a press conference in Philadelphia on Jan. 24, according to ocr and state officials.
Education
Wis. District Did Not 'Abuse' Indian Students, State Finds
Madison--Allegations of racial bias in Wisconsin's Bayfield school district are unfounded, according to a report released last week by the state department of public instruction.
Education
New Tax, Tenure, Budget Plans Seen Necessary
In the early weeks of the new legislative season, the principal topic in statehouses around the nation continued to be finances. (See related story on page 6.) Among the developments:
Colorado
Education
Science Agency To Fund Teacher-Training Plan
The $15 million that Congress appropriated for precollegiate science and mathematics education next year is likely to be divided between two programs: a $1-million project to recognize excellence in teaching and a $14-million program to increase secondary-school teachers' knowledge of and interest in the two fields.
Education
'Concentration' in Voc. Ed. Could Help Retain Potential Dropouts, Study Finds
Analysts at the National Center for Research in Vocational Education (ncrve), attempting for the first time to assess the relationship between vocational programs and student retention, have found that students who "concentrate" in such studies are somewhat more likely to stay in school than students who take only scattered vocational courses.
Education
President Weighs Tax-Deferral Plan For College Costs
The Reagan Administration is considering a proposal to permit parents to set up tax-deferred savings accounts to pay for their children's college education, Administration sources said last week.
Education
Colo. 'Morality Code' Blasted
Colorado's largest teachers' organization is unhappy about an unexpected change in the "morality clause" of state rules governing the revocation of teaching certificates.
Education
Ill. Inquiry Finds District's Discipline Policy Unfair
Minority students in the Peoria school district are paddled more frequently than their white classmates, according to a report to the Illinois State Board of Education.
Education
Wyoming Legislature Considers Revision of Ed. Aid Formula
The Wyoming legislature last week began work on the final step, and Tennessee took the first, toward addressing financial inequities between school districts.
Education
Baby Boom Busts Utah
Hope Aldrich, Martha Matzke, and Sheppard Ranbom contributed to this report. 
Education
Supreme Court Refuses To Consider Appeal of Texas School-Prayer Case
The U.S. Supreme Court last week declined to hear a case involving the right of the school system in Lubbock, Tex., to allow religious groups to hold voluntary prayer meetings in school facilities before or after school hours.