October 12, 1983

Education Week, Vol. 03, Issue 06
Education Longer Year, Higher Pay To Be Costly, Study Says
School systems would have to raise their annual budgets by an average of about 20 percent in order to respond to three of the major recommendations of the National Commission on Excellence in Education: extending the school day to seven hours, extending the school year to 200 days, and making teachers' starting salaries "market sensitive."
Thomas Toch, October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Education Study Finds Wide Variety in Curriculum Planning
The results of a project in which curriculum-evaluation groups from 17 high schools across the nation worked for three years to develop definitions of the goals of their curricula suggest that educators at the school level find varied ways to define the skills and competencies students should master during their high-school years.
Sheppard Ranbom, October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education Association Column
This year, the National Association of Laboratory Schools celebrates the silver anniversary of its establishment as an organization. As part of their commemoration, members are putting together a "Silver Anniversary Yearbook" that will look at the history, characteristics, and contributions of lab schools across the country. The manuscript is in production now and will be finished and published by July 1984, according to the editors.

October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education Senate Passes $13.5 Billion Education Measure
The Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly approved a fiscal 1984 appropriations bill for the Education Department last week after rejecting an amendment that would have added $559 million for a variety of education programs.
Tom Mirga, October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education Colorado Panels Issue Reports, Seek Reform
Colorado Springs--Gov. Richard D. Lamm told about 900 educators this month that while it is too soon to see the effects of the reform proposals in the classroom, the recent national reports on the state of education have already had a profound effect.
Elaine Yaffe, October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Education Federal News Roundup
Officials from the Reagan Administration and the Senate Judiciary Committee were still negotiating last week about the possibility of expanding the U.S. Civil Rights Commission before it is reauthorized.

The legislation that established the six-member bipartisan panel expired with the beginning of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1. But the law allows the commission to stay in business for 60 additional days before it "shall cease to exist."

October 12, 1983
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1 min read
Education Federal File: Phillips Nomination; Oliver Agriculture; Feted in Washington

Susan E. Phillips, whose brother, Howard, is president of the Conservative Caucus, was recently nominated by President Reagan to serve as director of the Institute of Museum Services.
October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education School-Prayer Issues Said More Complex 20 Years After Schempp
A group of educators, meeting here to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision outlawing organized prayer and Bible readings in public schools, concluded that the debate over religion in public schools has entered a complex stage requiring greater caution and sensitivity than ever by schools.
Charlie Euchner, October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education Cuts Made Despite Push For Education Reform
The embattled National Institute of Education was under attack again last week, as the Congress moved to cut its budget by 13 percent and to delay the onset of its competition for some $30 million in grants to sponsor research through its national laboratories and centers.
Thomas Toch, October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education Superintendents Favor Merit Pay, But Few Have Tried It, Poll Finds
Eighty percent of school superintendents endorse merit pay for teachers, according to an unpublished survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators (aasa).
Thomas Toch, October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education Task Force To Report
A Congressional task force on merit pay was scheduled this week to issue its final report, which calls for experiments with merit pay at the state and local levels.

With a few exceptions, the 13 recommendations in the final report of the 21-member Congressional panel are not significantly different from those included in an earlier draft. (See Education Week, Sept. 14, 1983.)

October 12, 1983
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1 min read
Education The Curriculum-Review Process
The summary report of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's curriculum-evaluation project advises schools undertaking a review of their curriculum to follow six basic steps. These include:

Establishing the Process. The way a curriculum-review project is initiated has much to do with its eventual success, network participants say. They recommend that schools first announce the intent of the curriculum review, stating the reasons the effort is needed and its expected results. A steering committee should be formed that includes teachers, administrators, school-board members, and students. A "needs assessment"--which offers a convenient way to involve different groups, say the participants, and useful results that may determine the direction for the entire study--should be conducted.

October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education Minnesota Legislature To Consider Two Education-Voucher Bills
Two bills providing for educational vouchers on a limited scale, including one that would restrict such benefits to the children of low-income families, are scheduled for hearings this fall in the Minnesota legislature.
Peggy Caldwell, October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Education News Update
The Philadelphia School District's decision about whether to appeal Common Pleas Judge William M. Marutani's Sept. 21 ruling that all qualified girls must be admitted to the previously all-male Central High School was scheduled to be made at the board of education's meeting this week.

Judge Marutani ordered on Sept. 8 that six girls be admitted to Central High School, which had been a single-sex school for 147 years. The judge found that the district's boys-only policy violated the state and federal constitutions. (See Education Week, Sept. 7 and Sept. 14, 1983.)

October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Ed-Tech Policy New Technology Center Created at Harvard
The National Institute of Education has announced the creation of a $7.6-million research center at Harvard University for the study of the instructional uses of computers in mathematics, science, and other subjects.
Charlie Euchner, October 12, 1983
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3 min read
Education Nebraska Panel Issues Plan Calling for Merit Pay, Finance Reform
A task force studying educational improvement in Nebraska has called for a long list of reforms, including a new school-finance formula, far more state aid for schools, higher pay and longer contracts for teachers, a master-teacher program, and the establishment of statewide high-school graduation requirements.
Sheppard Ranbom, October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education Feminist Group Asks Voters To Back 'Equity' Candidates
In the coming year, the combination of increased legislative activity on education issues and a Presidential election will make it more important than ever for women's-rights advocates to back politicians who support sex equity in education, representatives of a feminist group agreed at a meeting here last month.
Anne Bridgman, October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education 'Premature Affluence' Seen as Negative Effect of Part-Time Work
High-school students who work 15 or more hours per week run the risk of attaining "premature affluence"--a state of having perhaps excessive amounts of money to spend on themselves that they will not be able to sustain later in their lives.

That is the view of researchers at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research who have been surveying high-school seniors since 1976. In addition, they contend, the the perceived benefits of working longer hours--including "real-world" experience, broadened social contacts, and lessons in punctuality, reliability, responsibility, and practical job skills--do not outweigh some of the negative effects, including diminished involvement with school, family, and peers.

October 12, 1983
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3 min read
Education N.J. Legislators Plan Education Bills To Counter Kean's Proposals
Angry at being excluded from the planning of Gov. Thomas H. Kean's education-reform program, members of two key legislative panels told New Jersey's education commissioner that they will proceed with plans for their own reform package.
Peter Marks, October 12, 1983
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3 min read
Education Time Clocks Opposed
Teachers in the Allendale County (S.C.) School District soon may have to punch time clocks each morning, but they may also strike back at the board of education members who recommended their use to counter teacher tardiness.

A union official assured teachers the time clocks are legal, but advised them to "get incensed every morning when you put that little card in the clock" and to "get fired up politically and make some changes in your school board."

October 12, 1983
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1 min read
Education Pre-College Curriculum in Public Schools Said To Equal That in Private Schools
An Ohio State University researcher, contradicting the findings of the controversial "Coleman Report" of 1981, has found evidence that the college-preparatory programs of public secondary schools are as good as those of private schools.
Peggy Caldwell, October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education Education Schools To Meet on Quality
Responding to what they perceive as growing public disillusionment with their profession, 19 deans from some of the nation's leading schools of education are meeting in Wisconsin this week to consider forming a new organization to promote higher standards in the field.
Hope Aldrich, October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education Educators Urge Passage of Educational TV Mandate
Educators and television-network officials differed sharply last week in their reactions to a bill introduced by Representative Timothy Wirth, Democrat of Colorado, that would require commercial and public television stations to broadcast at least one hour of educational programming for children during prime-time viewing hours.
Cindy Currence, October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Education Student Group Responds to Excellence Report
The first response from a national organization of students to the report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education was presented to officials from the White House and the U.S. Education Department during a ceremony here last week.
Susan G. Foster, October 12, 1983
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2 min read
Education Administration's Voc.-Ed. Plan Said Moribund
The Reagan Administration's proposal to combine vocational- and adult-education programs in the form of block grants to the states is not likely to be included in final legislation reauthorizing the Vocational Education Act, key aides to the House and Senate education committees said last week.
Susan G. Foster, October 12, 1983
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3 min read
Education States News Roundup
The wife of the governor of Wisconsin will begin this fall to work with a task force on eliminating sex discrimination in the state's public schools.

Sheila Earl, wife of Gov. Anthony Earl, chairs the Advisory Council of the Wisconsin Project on Equal Education Rights. Thirty-eight Wisconsin citizens were appointed to the council last month and will work with Ms. Earl to "inform citizens, principally parents, educators, and students, of the need for equal educational opportunity in the public schools," according to Kaye J. Exo, director of Wisconsin peer.

October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Education Research and Reports
During the last two decades, programs in the closely related areas of moral, civic, ethics, and values education have been added to the curricula of many high schools. To help school administrators assess the effectiveness of such programs, two researchers have produced Program Evaluation in Moral Education.

Hugh F. Kline and Robert A. Feldmesser, authors of this handbook for program evaluation, write that today, everything from justifying the budget request for such a program to improving it makes evaluation a necessity. But evaluation of these particular types of educational programs, the authors say, carries with it "special difficulties," (such as measuring whether students are "more moral" after they've gone through a program, and making sure all the parties involved in the evaluation agree on its goals).

October 12, 1983
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5 min read
Education National News Roundup
State and federal support of child-care programs for low-income families has dropped by 14 percent since 1981 as a result of the Reagan Administration's funding cuts for Title XX, the largest federally subsidized day-care program for poor families, according to a recent study by the Children's Defense Fund.

Helen Blank, who conducted the study, said that between 1982 and 1983 Title XX funds were reduced from $3.1 billion to $2.4 billion. She said 16 states have cut child-care services by more than the 21-percent reduction in Title XX funding.

October 12, 1983
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4 min read
Education Educators Urge That Arts Be Added to 'Basics'
Education in the arts should become an "academic basic" in the school curriculum, educators meeting here argued last week.
Tricia Furniss, October 12, 1983
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4 min read
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