May 11, 1983

Education Week, Vol. 02, Issue 33
Education Associations Column
Warning school-board members to join "the vanguard" of the education-reform movement so they won't be bypassed by more determined leaders, officials of the National School Boards Association urged delegates to the group's recent annual meeting in San Francisco to adopt policies in line with those recommended by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.

Resolutions approved by the group's delegate assembly included those supporting strengthened high-school graduation requirements, additional instructional time, and improved training and salary programs for teachers.

May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education New In Print
Asking Questions: A Practical Guide to Questionnaire Design, by Seymour Sudman and Norman M. Bradburn (Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, P.O. Box 62425, San Francisco, Calif. 94162; 415 pages, $18.95).

May 11, 1983
6 min read
Education People News
Thomas K. Minter, who was passed over in the New York City Board of Education's controversial search for a new chancellor, last week resigned as deputy chancellor for instruction.

Mr. Minter did not indicate what he would do next.

May 11, 1983
1 min read
Education District News Roundup
Barry L. Steim, superintendent of the 6,800-student Coeur d'Alene school system in northwestern Idaho, has been criticized in that community recently for attending law school and teaching college courses in addition to carrying out the responsibilities of his $42,500 job as superintendent of schools.

Some are particularly displeased that he mentioned his own willingness to forego a pay raise for this school year in a successful effort to persuade teachers to moderate their salary demands, since it was revealed that the local school board has for the past two years, in lieu of a salary increase, given him an expense account for his law-school tuition and a car to travel to law school in.

May 11, 1983
2 min read
Education News Update
Last week in Chicago, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops completed its "pastoral letter" on nuclear weapons and war.

The letter--"The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response''--is expected to become an important topic of discussion in Catholic schools' "peace education" curricula.

May 11, 1983
2 min read
Education U.S., St. Louis Criticize Aspects Of 24-District Desegregation Plan

The Justice Department and the city of St. Louis told a federal district judge recently that they can not support a proposal to increase the city's property tax in order to help pay for the desegregation of schools in the city and its suburbs.
May 11, 1983
1 min read
Education Florida's Minimum-Competency Test Ruled Constitutional
The state of Florida can legally withhold high-school diplomas from students who cannot pass a functional-literacy test, a federal district judge ruled last week in a decision that is expected to have national impact.
Barry Klein, May 11, 1983
7 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Computer Column
Computer specialists at a Pittsburgh technical school say making sophisticated microcomputers could require as little as one-tenth the money that a typical manufacturer charges. But they have also found that obtaining adequate computer programs is a bigger problem.

Steven K. Huth and Gary Wisniewski of the School of Computer Technology said that in the last year they have built homemade computers that would normally cost from $5,000 to $10,000. Not counting their own labor costs, the 60 machines they plan to build will cost $1,000 apiece.

May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education For The Record
The following are excerpts from reactions to the report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The report, released on April 26, warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" in American education.

May 11, 1983
3 min read
Education Washington Judge Orders Cuts Restored in State Funding Case
A Washington State trial judge has reaffirmed the constitutionally protected status of education in that state and has given the legislature until the summer of 1984 to restore cuts and to correct other deficiencies in its school-aid system.
Peggy Caldwell, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education Calif. Finance System Is Fulfilling Equity Obligation, Judge Finds
Correspondent Robert Rudy in Palo Alto contributed to this report.
Peggy Caldwell, May 11, 1983
5 min read
Education Schools: What Works
Any illusions that Lakeland High School seniors in a course called "Leadership" may have had about the ease of becoming a respected student leader are certain to be dispelled by the class's rigorous requirements.

To show them that genuine leaders are more than figureheads, the program requires the 35 students of this popular year-long course at the Shrub Oak, N.Y., high school to give their talent and time to benefit the school and the community.

May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education EXCERPTS FROM The Report of the Task Force on Federal Elementary and Secondary
Education Policy
Robert Wood, Chairman. Director of urban studies, University of Massachusetts
May 11, 1983
16 min read
Education States News Roundup
In response to the criticism of public education made by the National Commission on Excellence in Education in its recently released report, Wyoming will establish a blue-ribbon panel of its own to assess the quality and goals of education in its schools.

Lynn Simons, Wyoming superintendent of public instruction, last week said she will appoint a panel of educators, bankers, businessmen, and high-school students to assess what the state expects of education in the future, what schools are doing, and what schools want to accomplish.

May 11, 1983
5 min read
Education Federal Leadership Must 'Inspire, Guide' Improvement Effort
If the "threatened disaster" to the national welfare posed by a school system whose performance "falls far short of expectations" is to be averted, the federal government must assume a role of strong leadership that guides and inspires states and communities without impeding local control of education, according to the report of an independent task force on federal education policy.
Alex Heard, May 11, 1983
6 min read
Education Federal News Roundup
A House education subcommittee gave its approval last week to a bill that would provide school districts with up to $117.9 million in school-desegregation aid next year.

The bill, HR 2207, seeks the reauthorization of the Emergency School Aid Act, which was folded into the education block-grants program by the Congress in 1981. An identical bill has been introduced in the Senate by Daniel P. Moynihan, Democrat of New York, but no hearings had been scheduled on the measure as of last week.

May 11, 1983
15 min read
Education Business Group Plans Gifted-Children Program
A consortium of business leaders last week announced the beginning of a drive to develop one of the nation's "most important but often neglected" resources--gifted and talented students.
Tom Mirga, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education District Out of Cash Seeks State Support
The Emeryville Unified School District, once one of the wealthiest school systems in California, now finds it has overspent its budget and must issue iou's instead of paychecks to school employees.

The district--through the county superintendent's office--issued registered warrants on April 29 to about 70 teachers, administrators, and nonteaching personnel.

May 11, 1983
1 min read
Education Schools, Businesses Should Be 'Partners' In Economic Push
Research Triangle Park, NC--America's public schools are failing to adequately prepare students for the demands of a competitive, technology-based economy, a task force of 41 elected officials, corporate and labor leaders, and educators concluded in a report released last week.
Ann Green, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education Senate Measure May Shift Liability For Sports Injuries to Schools
A Senate subcommittee last month completed its hearings on a bill that experts say could shift some of the responsibility for serious injuries in interscholastic competition from manufacturers of athletic products to school officials.
Charlie Euchner, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education Parents, Educators Ponder Burdens On Black Students in White Schools
Newton, Mass--"Most people assume that when black families move to the suburbs, they have it made," but many of the problems of the black middle class have simply been "camouflaged" and are only now being acknowledged, according to Charles F. Smith Jr, associate professor of education at Boston College.
Susan G. Foster, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education Witnesses Disagree Over Implications of Prayer Amendment
Witnesses offered varying opinions on the necessity for and probable effects of the Reagan Administration's proposed constitutional amendment permitting prayer in public schools during Senate subcommittee hearings ending last week.
Alex Heard, May 11, 1983
5 min read
Education Attendance, Study-Skills Efforts Hike Achievement, Officials Say
Policies that increase daily attendance, improve student study skills, and increase the number of required core courses provide the most effective means to improve the academic performance of students, according to administrators polled in a nationwide survey.
Sheppard Ranbom, May 11, 1983
3 min read
Education Alabama Officials Clash Over State's Asbestos-Removal Program
Officials in Alabama are wrangling over the implementation of a state plan to remove friable, or crumbling, asbestos from public-school buildings. Alabama is one of the first states to coordinate activities to remove asbestos from all of its public schools.
Sheppard Ranbom, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education Supreme Court Upholds Texas Rule Permitting Tuition for Nonresidents
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that a Texas school district may charge tuition for students who do not live with their parents or a guardian and whose presence in the district is for the primary purpose of attending school.
Tom Mirga, May 11, 1983
4 min read
Education Schools Give Up 'a Significant Payoff' by Cutting Arts Programs
Boston--When school districts cut back programs during periods of fiscal retrenchment, more often than not the first choices for elimination are offerings in the arts, according to several speakers at a recent conference here.
Susan G. Foster, May 11, 1983
3 min read
Education Cities News Roundup
Schools in Youngstown, Ohio, have begun offering an after-school program for children from families affected by unemployment.

The program, sponsored by members of the American Federation of Teachers, will provide counseling, games, and group discussions for children in grades one through eight who seem troubled by their home situations, said a spokesman.

May 11, 1983
3 min read
Education A Good Shaw May Not Be All Joy, Researche Says
The television cameras at the ballpark often capture streams of brown liquid arching lazily out of the players' dugouts or focus on the bulging cheek of the manager as he trecks out to the mound to make a pitching change.

Now, says Ronald A. Baughman, a pathologist and professor of oral medicine at the University of Florida's College of Dentistry, increasing numbers of teen-agers are joining baseball players in the habit of chewing tobacco or "dipping" snuff. And that is unfortunate, he says, because smokeless tobacco can cause lesions in the mouth that if left untreated may lead to oral cancer.

May 11, 1983
1 min read
Education Letter to the Editor Letters To The Editor
On the face of it, the ideas in Laurence T. Mayher's Commentary, "Judging Teachers by Students' Achievement" (Education Week, April 20, 1983), seem logical and desirable. Good teachers do make a difference in student learning, and it seems reasonable to include measures of achievement as an important criterion for evaluating teacher effectiveness.

But the major problem, still unsolved, is our general inability to measure student learning reliably and validly for most of the higher-level competencies schools ought to be developing. What we can, and do, test are low-level skills of recall, computation, and the like. The proliferation of basic or minimal competency-testing requirements in many states has already had the effect of making the achievement floor into a ceiling in many schools.

May 11, 1983
3 min read