February 29, 1984

Education Week, Vol. 03, Issue 23
Education Teacher Column
If administrators are not completely satisfied with the education-school graduates they hire from Doane College in Crete, Neb., they can call on the equivalent of a one-year warranty.

Under a policy started in the fall of 1982, the private 650-student college is guaranteeing elementary- and secondary-school principals that the graduates of its teacher-preparation program will perform well in the classroom. If the new teachers do not, the college will provide free inservice training. Also part of the deal is the use of Doane faculty members to help supervise the teachers' first year. Doane faculty members also serve as substitute teachers so that a full-time teacher can help as a "master teacher" in the early part of the school year; that teacher, a Doane official says, acts as a "support system" to new teachers.

February 29, 1984
2 min read
Education QUIZMASTER

Representative Carl D. Perkins, Democrat of Kentucky, has been chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee for the past 17 years. Who was his predecessor? (The answer will be included with next week's quiz.)
February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education States News Roundup
An omnibus bill that would provide California schools with about $600 million more than Gov. George Deukmejian has proposed and would launch new programs in student writing and teacher training has received its first hearing in the legislature.

The Assembly Education Committee deferred for one week a vote on the 69-page bill by Senator Gary K. Hart, a Democrat from Santa Barbara who offered a school-finance reform measure that is more sweeping than that enacted last year.

February 29, 1984
7 min read
Education Vt. Board Seeks Training for Non-Education Majors
The Vermont Board of Education moved last week to develop a state program for training college graduates with liberal-arts degrees to become teachers in elementary and secondary schools.
Charlie Euchner, February 29, 1984
3 min read
Education Tennessee Legislature Passes Master-Teacher Bill
The Tennessee General Assembly last week approved a bill establishing the nation's most ambitious statewide teacher career-ladder and incentive-pay program and sent it to Gov. Lamar Alexander for signing.
Jim O'Hara, February 29, 1984
4 min read
Education People News
The superintendent of Seattle public schools, Donald Steele, announced this month that he will resign at the end of the school year.

Mr. Steele, dubbed the "singing superintendent" after he cut a record with the country singer Tammy Wynette to provide funds for the school district's college-scholarship fund, has joined the staff of the Seattle-based Pacific Institute, a firm that specializes in international corporate education.

February 29, 1984
4 min read
Education News Update
New Jersey students who ran up a $90 phone bill making calls to pornographic tape recordings in New York City have been ordered by school officials to pay for the calls.

The students placed more than 80 calls to the Hustler magazine hot line, which featured recordings of graphic accounts of imaginary sex-ual exploits, from the Brick Township High School's student-operated radio station.

February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education District News Roundup

The Cleveland school system has sued 28 manufacturers and vendors of asbestos-containing building materials. The suit, filed this month in a state common pleas court, asks $20 million to pay for removal and containment of the hazardous substance and $20 million in punitive damages.
February 29, 1984
6 min read
Education Vermont Judge Blocks Play Rehearsals; Teacher Denied Use of Film in Missouri
A federal district judge has denied a request by six Vermont students and their lawyer for a preliminary injunction that would have allowed rehearsals of Elizabeth Swados's play, "Runaways," to continue in an East Montpelier high school despite school-board opposition.
Anne Bridgman, February 29, 1984
2 min read
Education Chapter 2 Officials Seek Support Through National Evaluation
State administrators of the Chapter 2 education block-grants program, during their first national meeting here, took steps last week to bolster support for their programs in the Congress and among the general public.
Tom Mirga, February 29, 1984
4 min read
Education Colleges Column
To attract outstanding students to the teaching profession, Trinity University in San Antonio has launched a forgivable-loan program that subsidizes both the education costs and the starting salaries of young teachers.

The university's education department, with the support of a $290,000 grant from the George W. Brackenridge Foundation, will provide up to $26,000 in college loans to selected San Antonio high-school students. The students must be in the top 10 percent of their graduating class.

February 29, 1984
2 min read
Education Cincinnati Settles 10-Year-Old Desegregation Case
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Cincinnati Public Schools, and the State of Ohio this month apparently ended a 10-year-old desegregation case with a tentative settlement that allows the local school district to choose its own methods of desegregating its schools.
Carol Ellison, February 29, 1984
6 min read
Education High Court Upholds Minnesota Law On Campus Role of Union Members
The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld a Minnesota labor law that allows college unions that have been selected as exclusive bargaining agents to bar non-union faculty members from a formal role in policymaking on campus.
Thomas Toch, February 29, 1984
5 min read
Education Magnet Schools: The New Hope for Voluntary Desegregation
For much of the past few years, reflecting general concerns about the quality of public schooling, discussions of magnet schools have centered on their potential for providing intensive instruction in such subjects as science and mathematics, serving as models of effectiveness, and increasing family choice within the public system.
Peggy Caldwell, February 29, 1984
16 min read
Education Wyoming Budget
Gov. Ed Herschler of Wyoming in his opening address to the legislature has asked lawmakers not to subject the state department of education to cuts over the next biennium any deeper than the 6-percent reduction he recommended in his budget. He termed "arbitrary and partisan" a proposal by the Republican-controlled Joint Appropriations Committee to cut the agency's budget by another 3 to 4 percent.

State aid to school districts is expected to remain at about $175 million, although the education department is seeking some refinements in the way the money is distributed. (See Education Week, Feb. 22, 1984.)

February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education
Copyright YYYY, Editorial
February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education Advocates Ask School-Prayer Debate
The White House and its supporters in the Congress reportedly have launched an offensive aimed at beginning debate in the Senate as early as this week on a constitutional amendment allowing voluntary prayer in public schools.
Tom Mirga, February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education Bell Proposes Rules for States Seeking Bonds To Back Loans
Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell has proposed new rules to govern requests from states seeking federal approval to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance student loans.
Sheppard Ranbom, February 29, 1984
2 min read
Education Spillane Issues Plan To End Court Involvement in Boston Schools
Superintendent of Schools Robert R. Spillane of Boston has proposed a comprehensive long-range plan designed to improve the quality of the city's schools and facilitate the complete withdrawal of U.S. District Judge Arthur W. Garrity Jr. from the administrative affairs of the school system.
Susan G. Foster, February 29, 1984
3 min read
Education Federal News Roundup
The National Science Foundation has announced the establishment of an advisory committee on science and engineering education. There will be up to 20 members on the committee, including experts in various fields of science and engineering and and representatives of industry and nonprofit organizations.

The mission of the committee, which will be appointed this spring, will be to assess and evaluate the condition of science education, to make policy and planning recommendations, to evaluate program performance, and to establish a mechanism by which the foundation can communicate with schools and other agencies. The members will be appointed by Laura P. Bautz, acting assistant director for science and engineering education.

February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education Prevention Said Better Than Penalties in Discouraging Drug Abuse
School-based initiatives similar to programs that have kept 7th graders from taking up cigarette smoking offer a more promising means of countering adolescent drug use than do tougher drug-enforcement laws, according to a new report on drug-abuse prevention.
Cindy Currence, February 29, 1984
7 min read
Special Education Special Education Column
New York University, in cooperation with the New York City Board of Education, has launched a new program designed to prepare physically disabled high-school students for college.

The three-year project, which began this month, is reportedly the nation's first "upward-bound program" for the handicapped. It is being funded by the U.S. Education Department and will be administered by the university's Metropolitan Center for Educational Research, Development, and Training.

February 29, 1984
2 min read
Education Proposed Changes in Louisville Desegregation Plan Spark Furor
Threats of a new legal battle over desegregation have erupted here as a result of Superintendent of Schools Donald W. Ingwerson's recently proposed revisions in the busing plan that Jefferson County schools have used since 1975.
Saundra Keyes, February 29, 1984
6 min read
Education House Approves $50-Million Language Bill
The House last week approved a measure that would provide up to $50 million annually over the next three years to high schools and community colleges for the improvement of foreign-language instruction.
Tom Mirga, February 29, 1984
1 min read
Education Case Studies of Magnet Schools: When Do They Work Best?
Case studies of magnet schools support recent research findings suggesting that the smaller and more compact a school district is, the greater the promise of purely voluntary desegregation. As Mark A. Smylie of Vanderbilt University puts it, "If you've got one or two schools out of whack, you can put magnets there and solve your districtwide problem. It gets more difficult the more minority students you have and the more schools you have."

And the presence of a numerical goal--enforceable through mandatory means if voluntary methods fail--also appears to be a powerful influence on the relative success of magnets.

February 29, 1984
4 min read
Education Fla. Board Approves Merit-Pay Plan As Critics Urge Further Deliberation
Florida's Board of Education put the final touch this week on plans to distribute merit pay to superior teachers next fall, despite warnings from a variety of sources that those plans may be doomed to failure.
Patti Breckenridge, February 29, 1984
4 min read
Education Influenza Outbreak Closes Schools
An outbreak of influenza that began in early January is continuing to close schools around the United States, the Centers for Disease Control reported last week.

As of mid-February, outbreaks of influenza had occurred in 33 states and in the District of Columbia, according to cdc, the Atlanta-based federal agency that monitors outbreaks of communicable diseases.

February 29, 1984
1 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Student 'Hackers' Caught Invading School Computers
As more students become skilled with microcomputers that can link up with school computers, the challenge of gaining access to school records and tampering with them increasingly tempts the expert--and so does the desire to possess better equipment, recent events suggest.

This month, school officials in Little Rock and San Diego caught up with students who had tampered with school records, and a judge in Grants Pass, Ore., sentenced four of seven students caught in connection with a theft of $100,000 worth of computer equipment.

February 29, 1984
2 min read
Education Fla. Leaders Urge Multi-State Effort To Improve Texts
Political leaders in Florida, including Gov. Robert Graham, are moving to carry out an unusual mandate contained in a major state education bill that calls for the creation of an interstate consortium "to enhance the quality of instructional materials."
Anne Bridgman, February 29, 1984
2 min read