March 16, 1983

Education Week, Vol. 02, Issue 25
Education Surplus-Food Measure Passed
The Senate Agriculture Committee has approved a measure to distribute surplus federal food, but it remains unclear how much of that food will wind up in school lunchrooms.
Tom Mirga, March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education Florida Awaits Decision in Lawsuit Against Competency Test
For six long days this month, U.S. District Judge George Carr listened as lawyers and educators argued over whether the state of Florida can legally withhold high-school diplomas from students who cannot pass a functional-literacy test designed for 8th graders.
Barry Klein, March 16, 1983
5 min read
Education Districts Seek Ways To Cut Soaring Health-Insurance Costs
School budget managers, who have struggled over the last decade to contain soaring energy costs through conservation measures and even school closings, are now grappling with another equally intractable fiscal problem--health-insurance costs.
Hope Aldrich, March 16, 1983
10 min read
Education U.S. Withdraws Rules Limiting Lobbying By Nonprofit Groups
Regulations to strictly limit lobbying by organizations that receive federal funds were proposed by the Reagan Administration last January, but--following widespread protest from affected organizations here--the Administration formally withdrew the rules last week.
Eileen White, March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education Students' Part-Time Work Troubles School Officials
Under a new policy scheduled to take effect in the Richardson, Tex., Independent School District next year, students will no longer be allowed to leave school two or three hours early to go to their part-time jobs.
Susan G. Foster, March 16, 1983
8 min read
Education Tennessee Governor Presses Master-Teacher Proposal
Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee is mounting a carefully crafted, eclectic lobbying effort to win state legislative approval for his bold plan to introduce a statewide merit-pay system for teachers.
Thomas Toch, March 16, 1983
8 min read
Education $1-Billion School Plan Accepted by Judge In West Virginia
A West Virginia trial judge has accepted the lion's share of a plan generated by the state board of education to raise the state's schools to "thorough and efficient" standards.
Mark Ward, March 16, 1983
3 min read
Education Widespread Cheating, Copying Belie Honor System
Cheating, whether by borrowing someone's homework, buying a term paper, or cribbing on a test, appears to be the rule rather than the exception among high-school students today, according to a survey conducted by Highwire magazine, the national quarterly written by and for high-school students.

The survey, which queried 433 students at public, private, and parochial high schools, found that more than three-fourths of the students admitted to having cheated on tests or on homework at some time. Most of those responding said that "cheating was common whether an honor system was used in their schools or not," according to a summary of the survey.

March 16, 1983
1 min read
Education For The Record
President Reagan, from an address on March 8 in Orlando, Fla., to the National Association of Evangelicals:

For some years now, the federal government has helped with funds to subsidize [family-planning] clinics. In providing for this, the Congress decreed that every effort would be made to maximize parental participation [when birth-control materials are prescribed for underage girls]. Nevertheless, the drugs and devices are prescribed without getting parental consent or giving notification. Girls termed "sexually active"--that has replaced the word "promiscuous"--are given this help in order to prevent illegitimate birth or abortion.

March 16, 1983
1 min read
Education Senators, Groups Press Own Match-Science Bills
Although the House of Representatives gave swift approval to an initiative to upgrade mathematics and science education, action on the measure slowed down considerably when the bill reached the Senate education subcommittee last week.
Eileen White, March 16, 1983
1 min read
Education Schools: What Works
A student caught writing a letter to a friend during class in Clarkston, Wash., is more likely to be complimented than reprimanded.

In a project that involves the entire school district, one 4th-grade class operates a postal system that delivers letters written by students of every age to their recipients in other buildings and classrooms.

March 16, 1983
3 min read
Education America's Science Hopefuls Gather for Talent-Search Finals
The marble floor of the National Academy of Science's Great Hall is littered with boxes--flat boxes, square boxes, portfolios, with labels on them: This End Up! Handle With Care! A tally of the return address labels would reveal that the owners come from 16 states and Puerto Rico. The packages are all addressed to "Science Talent Search."
Susan Walton, March 16, 1983
6 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Virginia Pioneers Radio Project for Copying Computer Software
The Virginia Department of Education was to sign a contract last week with a telecommunications company to study how to set up a system for transmitting computer software via radio airwaves.
Charlie Euchner, March 16, 1983
3 min read
Education Annual Children's Television Week Commences
By Congressional decree, this week is "National Children and Television Week." And some organizations plan to use the occasion to let the Congress know that they are unhappy with the quality of children's programming and the Federal Communications Commission's role in it.
Alex Heard, March 16, 1983
3 min read
Education News Updates
A commonwealth court judge in Philadelphia has postponed indefinitely a hearing to determine whether the city's desegregation program complies with an order handed down by the court last year.

Lawyers for the school district filed papers with the court late last month asking Judge James C. Crumlish Jr. to delay the hearing, which was scheduled to begin on March 1.

March 16, 1983
1 min read
Education State News Roundup
A committee of the Massachusetts legislature has ordered a detailed audit of the state's special-education program because the results of an earlier study showed that the state had proportionately more special-education students than any other state in the nation.

In a report released this month, the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight of the state legislature noted that the number of students receiving special-education services under Chapter 766, the state special-education law, is more than twice the national average.

March 16, 1983
6 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Computers Column
Wayne State University last month signed a $181,000 contract with University Camps of America to develop a computer camp that gives children more of the skills that they may eventually need to qualify for computer jobs.

The project--directed, appropriately enough, by an assistant professor of education named John Camp--will result this summer in five boarding-camp sessions in Lapeer, Mich. The cost of the two-week program is $795.

March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education Basic-Skills Emphasis Said Harmful to Students
A nationwide "revolution" in public schools to revise high-school curricula could focus attention on basic skills at the expense of higher learning and the arts, a number of educators meeting here said last week.
Dianna Hunt, March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education Education Funds Are Included in Federal Jobs Bill
The Senate was expected by the end of last week to complete action on a $3.7-billion jobs-creation measure that would increase federal spending for education and for summer youth employment by a total of $350 million in the current fiscal year.
Tom Mirga, March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education School Desegregation Order in Texas District Upheld
A federal appeals court in New Orleans, saying that three times is enough to hear arguments in one case, has rejected a Beaumont, Tex., school district's challenge to a 1981 school-desegregation order.
Tom Mirga, March 16, 1983
3 min read
Education District News Roundup
An atheist's group in Colorado has succeeded in getting some books used in the Jefferson County public schools labeled as "biased toward Christianity."

The books, a world history text and a guide to marriage and family living, won't be banned. Instead, teachers in the district will be notified in writing of the pro-religious portions of the books.

March 16, 1983
3 min read
Education Weicker Assails Education Budget
Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell, who has been defending the Reagan Administration's education budget on Capitol Hill for the past several weeks, was given a hostile reception by the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on education.
Eileen White, March 16, 1983
1 min read
Education Million-Dollar Carnegie Grant To Aid Hispanics' Education
A small, Denver-based organization that specializes in the educational needs of Hispanic children and their parents, has received a $1-million grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York--part of which will be used to launch a new national center for Hispanic-education leadership.

The nonprofit organization, called Western Services Systems, was founded 10 years ago for the purpose of working on a grass-roots level to involve Colorado's Hispanic parents more fully in the public-school system, said the organization's president, William Rosser. About 15 percent of Colorado's students are Hispanic, and in the Denver public schools, Hispanics and blacks outnumber whites, he said.

March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education Court Bars Federal Draft Law
A federal district judge in Minnesota last week barred the federal government from enforcing a law that prohibits the granting of federal college aid to young men who fail to register for the draft.

U.S. District Judge Donald Alsop granted a preliminary injunction on March 10 preventing the government from enforcing the law, which was passed by the Congress as an amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill and signed by President Reagan last September. The amendment was offered by Representative Gerald B. Solomon, Republican of New York.

March 16, 1983
1 min read
Education Associations Column
The Association of Wisconsin School Administrators has joined the ranks of those groups that are setting up charitable foundations for the purposes of decreasing costs and expanding their capacity to raise funds for their activities.

By creating the Wisconsin Foundation for Educational Administration, says Thomas R. Grogan, legal counsel to the group, the administrators gain the money-saving advantage of nonprofit mailing status and the ability to raise tax-deductible support from private sources and to seek government grants. The association, which will continue its separate membership and lobbying activities, is classified as a trade association under the federal tax code.

March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education Colleges Column
New York University, which in 1890 established the nation's first graduate school of education, plans to support its efforts to train able teacher candidates by establishing a $100,000 scholarship fund.

Noting the "special responsibility" of colleges and universities to help strengthen secondary and elementary schools, John Brademas, nyu's president, said the new fund would provide up to 50 scholarships of $2,000 each and would be supplemented by additional financial aid based on students' need.

March 16, 1983
4 min read
Education National News Roundup
President Reagan, declaring that "freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God acknowledged," sent to the Congress last week a proposed constitutional amendment to permit prayer in public schools.

The President unveiled the new measure during a meeting of evangelical Christians in Orlando, Fla. A similar initiative that he supported last year failed to win the support of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

March 16, 1983
16 min read
Education Federal File: Drafting Legislation; Savoring the Victory
College students staged a Capitol Hill protest against Reagan Administration policies again this year, but the more than 3,000 of them who visited Congressional offices last week had more than proposed federal student-aid reductions on their minds.

Spokesmen for the dissenting students said they were most concerned with repealing the so-called Solomon amendment, a measure passed by the Congress that would prohibit the granting of federal aid to male students who refuse to register for the draft.

March 16, 1983
2 min read
Education E.D. Secretary's Intervention Ends Research Agency Dispute
The Secretary of Education stepped in last week to settle a bureaucratic power struggle that has pitted the former deputy director of the National Institute of Education, Robert W. Sweet Jr., against its new director.
Eileen White, March 16, 1983
4 min read