October 19, 1983

Education Week, Vol. 03, Issue 07
Education The Week
Major Study of

Compensatory

October 19, 1983
25 min read
Education TV Shows Are Full-Length Ads, Group Alleges
Action for Children's Television, a Boston-based advocacy group, last week filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission charging that "program-length commercials" which "masquerade" as children's TV programming violate commission regulations.
Cindy Currence, October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education Illinois Chief Stresses 'Basics' in Plan
All Illinois students would have to spend more hours in school each day with more attention to the "basics," and potential dropouts would have to spend more years in school with expanded program options, under proposals advanced by State Superintendent Donald G. Gill.
Don Sevener, October 19, 1983
4 min read
Education President Urges 'Partnerships' With Schools
In an effort to "break down the walls around schools and open them up to the public's attention and involvement," President Reagan last Thursday urged businesses, government agencies, and communities to form "partnerships" with every school and community college in the country by the end of the school year.
Thomas Toch, October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education Panel Turns Back Philadelphia's Voluntary Desegregation Plan
Superintendent of Schools Constance E. Clayton suffered a setback last week in her efforts to desegregate the city's public schools without forced busing, when the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission rejected her voluntary plan.
Patricia Ford, October 19, 1983
3 min read
Education Bell Schedules E.D.'s Summit; Congress Considers Another
Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell has decided to convene his proposed "national forum" on education in Indianapolis in early December, the Education Department announced last week.
Tom Mirga, October 19, 1983
3 min read
Education Salary Hike, Career Track Needed for Teachers, Wisconsin Panel Says
A Wisconsin panel studying ways to improve the teaching profession released an ambitious preliminary report last week calling for substantial salary increases, merit pay, a career ladder, and other measures to attract, train, and retain able teachers.
Sheppard Ranbom, October 19, 1983
4 min read
Education National News Roundup
U.S. Appeals Court

Bars Government's

October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education People News Roundup
Gov. William Winter of Mississippi has been appointed chairman of a new task force of the Southern Regional Education Board that will promote and monitor education-improvement efforts in the 14 Southern states that participate in the regional consortium.

Governor Winter was chairman of the board of the sreb in 1982-83; Gov. Lamar Hunt of Tennessee now holds that post.

October 19, 1983
1 min read
Education District News Roundup
West Haven Schools

To Offer Students

October 19, 1983
5 min read
Education Math Skills Tested
The department of mathematics at Colorado State University will administer and analyze a test this year to determine the mathematics proficiency of the state's high-school juniors.

The voluntary testing program is sponsored by the state department of education and is designed to serve as a "diagnostic tool" for students, counselors, and curriculum planners, according to Duane Clow, professor of mathematics at the university and the director of the testing program.

October 19, 1983
1 min read
Education Books: New in Print
Computer Literacy for School Administrators and Supervisors, by Stephen Radin and Harold M. Greenberg (Lexington Books, D.C. Heath and Company, 125 Spring St., Lexington, Mass. 02173; 279 pages, $27.95).

October 19, 1983
3 min read
Education California's 2-Year Colleges Face 8-Percent Cuts
California's community colleges, caught in a tuition deadlock between the Republican governor, George Deukmejian, and Democrats in the lower chamber of the state legislature, are preparing to make deep cuts in their budgets to meet a nearly 8-percent drop in funding.
Michael Fallon, October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education E.T.S. Revises National Assessments To Make Them 'More Useful'
Over the next two months, some 30,000 13-year-old students from across the nation will be evaluated on their proficiency in reading and writing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Sheppard Ranbom, October 19, 1983
5 min read
Education Missing-Children Phenomenon Fuels School-Fingerprinting Programs
In recent months, the parents of thousands of schoolchildren nationwide have agreed to permit them to be fingerprinted so that the identifying prints could be used in the event the children disappear.
Anne Bridgman, October 19, 1983
7 min read
Education Project Raising Pupils' Sights Called Success
An experimental project that encouraged minority students in a Texas county to move into advanced courses--and prepared district teachers to teach such courses--has been so successful that one of its sponsors, the College Board, would like to provide assistance to other groups interested in developing similar programs.
Cindy Currence, October 19, 1983
3 min read
Education Appointments and Deaths
APPOINTMENTS

October 19, 1983
5 min read
Education Utah Reform Panel Urges Career Ladder for Teachers
In Utah, which has the fastest-growing school-age population in the United States, a task force studying educational reform has found "an education system locked into a network of operating procedures by a multitude of traditions, decisions, practices, and attitudes which have evolved slowly over the years," and has recommended 27 steps "to dislodge or alter some of the procedures."
Sheppard Ranbom, October 19, 1983
5 min read
Education Update News Roundup

The Philadelphia Board of Education voted 5-to-3 last week not to appeal a court order that opened Central High School, the nation's second-oldest public high school, to female students for the first time in its 147-year history. Judge William M. Marutani of Pennsylvania's Common Pleas Court had ruled in August that single-sex public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Amendment.

Since then, students and alumni of both Central and its counterpart for females, Girls High School, had lobbied strongly for an appeal. Just before last week's vote, Common Pleas Judge Lisa A. Richette, a Girls High graduate, told the board it had a "moral obligation" to appeal the decision of her colleague. Judge Richette said Judge Marutani's decision was based on "wrong law" and an intrepretation of the Pennsylvania era that was never intended.

October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education Vermont District Drops Master-Teacher Plan
A Vermont school district has dropped plans for a master-teacher system that would have offered $2,000 bonuses to top teachers and ranked them in three categories based on their competence.

When the superintendent of the Town of Hartford School District discussed the plan with the district's 140-member teaching staff, he found "quite a bit of negative reaction" and decided to abandon the plan, said Carl Mock, a district spokesman."There was a skepticism about the unknown," he added.

October 19, 1983
1 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Computers Column
Teachers of computer courses have long suspected that computers encourage students to work together rather than separately. Researchers say they now have evidence to confirm that suspicion.

Marion Perlmutter, professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, says an experiment involving preschool children revealed that children work together more when they use computers than when they work on other projects.

October 19, 1983
4 min read
Education Boston Union, District Break Off Negotiations; Strike Threatened
After seven months of negotiations, the Boston School Committee and the Boston Teachers Union this month broke off contract talks amid union leaders' allegations that the school department was pushing the teachers toward a strike.
Susan G. Foster, October 19, 1983
4 min read
Education Fiscal Health of Urban Districts Tied to Costs of Teaching Poor
The ability of urban school districts to identify and address the higher costs incurred in educating poor children may be the major determinant of their fiscal health in the coming years, according to a draft report of a new study by the U.S. Education Department's School Finance Project.
Peggy Caldwell, October 19, 1983
5 min read
Education Teacher-Improvement Projects Funded
The U.S. Education Department's fund for the improvement of postsecondary education has awarded grants to several higher-education institutions for projects to improve teaching in the nation's schools.

Many of the awards were made in June, but because of staff cutbacks at the fund, some of the institutions were not notified until this month, a spokesman said.

October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education Kansas City-Area Schools Ask Court To Halt St. Louis Busing Plan
Eleven school districts in suburbs of Kansas City, Mo., have asked a federal appeals court to halt the St. Louis area's voluntary cross-district desegregation plan, contending that it could imperil their own desegregation case.
Tom Mirga, October 19, 1983
3 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Two Companies To Offer Computers Specifically for Schools
As the American microcomputer market was experiencing what experts called the early stages of a "shakeout," two companies were launching the first U.S. efforts to develop and market computers designed specifically for education.
Charlie Euchner, October 19, 1983
5 min read
Education Media Column
"The question that needs to be asked in the television-violence debate is, 'Why on earth does anybody watch that stuff?"' said U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop at an Oct. 6 meeting of the National Coalition on Television Violence.

Rather than "pounding away at the broadcaster," he told coalition members, "our job is to research further into the motivations of the audience." The fact is, he said, that millions of people voluntarily watch violent programs.

October 19, 1983
2 min read
Education Court Upholds Interdistrict Busing Plan
The U.S. Supreme Court last week let stand lower-court rulings requiring the predominantly white Coloma, Mich., public schools to participate in an interdistrict desegregation plan with predominantly black schools in nearby Benton Harbor.
Tom Mirga, October 19, 1983
3 min read
Education Federal Laws, Volunteer Groups Aid Parents in Their Search
Under the Missing Children Act, signed into law last October by President Reagan, parents can place information about their children--including fingerprints--into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's national crime-information computer.

The computer, which contains a national compilation of information on missing children, alerts police in jurisdictions across the country to missing-child cases and also lists more than 5,000 unidentified bodies found each year.

October 19, 1983
4 min read