January 30, 1985

Education Week, Vol. 04, Issue 19
Education Reform Has Ignored 'At Risk' Students, Inquiry by Advocacy Group Concludes
The vast majority of the nation's "at risk" children--those who are poor, nonwhite, handicapped, or female--have largely been ignored in the rush by educators to reform American schooling, says a national "board of inquiry" headed by a former U.S. Commissioner of Education and the president of the Children's Defense Fund in a report to be released here this week.
Tom Mirga, January 30, 1985
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7 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Schools Now Prime Target for Thieves Facing the Computer- Security Threat
For a while last July, it looked as though Palm Bay High School would have to delay the expansion of its computer program. In two thefts about three weeks apart, approximately $19,000 worth of computer hardware was stolen, according to James R. Parker, who was then the school's assistant principal.
Linda Chion-Kenney, January 30, 1985
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5 min read
Education Research and Reports
While some critics have charged that changing to a four-day school week may have negative effects on student achievement, researchers at Colorado State University have completed a study indicating that the switch to a four-day schedule has "no effect" on achievement as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

The study examined test scores of 104 students from five rural Colorado districts over four consecutive years--two years prior to and two years following a change to a four-day school week.

January 30, 1985
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1 min read
Education State News Roundup
Vocational-education programs in Ohio should combine academics with vocational skills and maintain close ties to business and industry, suggests a group of 28 educators who studied the state's programs.

Noting that 57 percent of Ohio's 11th- and 12th-grade students are enrolled in vocational schools, the Blue Ribbon Committee on Secondary Vocational Education reported that "as our society and workforce become more technically dependent, additional demands and, in some instances, different alternatives must be considered in preparing high-school youth for tomorrow's jobs."

January 30, 1985
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4 min read
Education People News
As the new year began, the American population totaled an estimated 237.2 million, up 2.1 million from Jan. 1, 1984, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The record for net population growth in a single year is 3.1 million, set in the baby boom year of 1956, the bureau notes. The U.S. population then was about 168 million.

January 30, 1985
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2 min read
Education District News Roundup
A 14-year-old Goddard, Kan., youth last week allegedly shot his principal and wounded three others after coming to school armed with a rifle, a pistol, and a pocketful of ammunition.

James Alan Kearbey, a student at Goddard Junior High School, has been charged with homicide in the Jan. 21 shooting death of James McGee, said Larry K. Vardaman, director of the state detention facility in Wichita where Mr. Kearbey was ordered held in a hearing last week.

January 30, 1985
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7 min read
Federal Bennett Hearings Scheduled
Secretary-designate of Education William J. Bennett was scheduled to be questioned Monday of this week at confirmation hearings before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.
James Hertling, January 30, 1985
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1 min read
Education Missouri, Kansas City Offer Court Opposing Desegregation Plans
The state of Missouri and the Kansas City school board have offered a federal district judge drastically different proposals for the desegregation of the predominantly black central-city school district.
Tom Mirga, January 30, 1985
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5 min read
Education 'Feet to Fire' Leader Shifts Foundation's Direction
"Holding their feet to the fire" is something David A. Hamburg, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, says he has been doing for much of his professional life.
Cindy Currence, January 30, 1985
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2 min read
Education Reactions of Education Community to Court's T.L.O. Decison
Following is a sampling of reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision on student searches in New Jersey v. T.L.O.

January 30, 1985
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3 min read
Education In Federal Agencies
School breakfast and lunch programs. The Office of Management and Budget published, in the Jan. 11 Federal Register, revised compliance requirements for the National School Lunch Program and the National School Breakfast Program. The amendments to the "Compliance Supplement" of OMB circular A-102, "Uniform Requirements for Grants to State and Local Governments," which were issued in Dec. 1982, were effective on Jan. 11. Contact: Palmer Marcantonio, Financial Management Division, omb, Washington, D.C. 20503; (202) 395-3993.
January 30, 1985
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3 min read
Ed-Tech Policy Securing Computers: Variety of Steps Advised
School officials throughout the country are exploring a variety of ways to protect their computer equipment from theft.

Several school officials interviewed last week offered these measures for consideration:

January 30, 1985
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3 min read
Education News Update
The mother of a 3-year-old Iowa girl with herpes has filed a lawsuit against the teachers' groups that sought a federal injunction to prevent the child from enrolling in a special-education class earlier this month. (See Education Week, Jan. 16, 1985.)

The suit, filed by the mother under a fictitious name in the Pottawattamie County District Court, named the Iowa State Education Association, the Council Bluffs teachers' association, the local association's president and lawyer, and the Council Bluffs Community School District; it seeks an unspecified sum of money for "interest, costs, and punitive damages." The mother, her lawyer said, objected to the way the family's "most private affairs became a matter of public debate."

January 30, 1985
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3 min read
Education National Competition: 'An Affair of the Arts'
After four days of intensive dancing, acting, concertizing, painting, sculpting, or otherwise demonstrating their artistic prowess during a competition week in Miami this month, 36 out of some 150 of the most talented high-school students in the nation were awarded the title of finalist and a $3,000 unrestricted cash award by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

The arts competition, begun in 1981 by a group of business leaders in Miami, annually draws several thousand high-school contestants from around the country. Those students receiving the highest rankings from judges in the "Arts Recognition and Talent Search" (arts) program are invited by the foundation to compete for top honors during an expenses-paid week in Miami.

January 30, 1985
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1 min read
Education Educators Call On Textbook Publishers To Consider Reform Effort's Omissions
Port Chester, NY--The school-reform movement has helped give a dramatic boost to the textbook industry, 1983 sales figures released at a meeting here last week indicate.
Anne Bridgman, January 30, 1985
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6 min read
Education G.O.P. Senators Are Pondering $300-Million Cuts in Education
As Republican Senators' self-imposed Feb. 1 deadline to complete an alternative fiscal 1986 budget approached, gop legislators were considering $300 million in spending cuts for precollegiate education, including the elimination of five education-related programs, according to documents prepared by the Senate Budget Committee.
James Hertling, January 30, 1985
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2 min read
Education Carnegie Creates Forum To Help Shape U.S. Education Policies
In an effort to "keep the nation's attention focused on educational improvement," the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York this week announced the creation of a multi-million-dollar initiative designed to help chart U.S. education policy during the next 10 years.
Cindy Currence, January 30, 1985
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5 min read
Education Connecticut Aid Formula Upheld, But Trial on Funding Is Ordered
The Connecticut Supreme Court has declared constitutional the state's school-finance system, which is designed to reduce educational disparities between wealthy and poor districts.
Karen A. Schneider , January 30, 1985
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2 min read
Education The Challenge of 'Corporate Classrooms'
The schooling enterprise built by America's businesses to train workers--complete with campuses, faculties, and courses from the basic-skills to the doctoral level--has quietly become a powerful rival of its more traditional counterparts in scope and sophistication, contends a new report on the so-called "shadow" education system.
J.R. Sirkin, January 30, 1985
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6 min read
Education Federal File
Thomas G. Tancredo, the Secretary of Education's regional representative in Denver, has come under fire for mailing a 12-page memo throughout six states lamenting the "Godlessness" of public education in "this Christian nation."

In a Jan. 21 letter to Postmaster General Paul N. Carlin, Representative Patricia Schroeder, Democrat of Colorado, requested an investigation to determine whether Mr. Tancredo's letters qualified as official mail entitled to government-paid postage.

January 30, 1985
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2 min read
Education No Wind Chill, But No Sounding Brass Either
All but four high-school bands were spectators at Mr. Reagan's indoor inaugural.

January 30, 1985
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3 min read
Education No School Employee May Serve On Hearing Panels, Court Rules
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has ruled that neither state nor local public-education employees may be used as hearing officers in a special-education due-process hearing.
Alina Tugend, January 30, 1985
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4 min read
Education South Dakota Governor Offers School-Reform Plan
Gov. William J. Janklow of South Dakota, making his first address to the state legislature on the subject of education, this month called for a limited voucher program for public-school students and a three-tiered teacher-certification plan.
Pamela Winston, January 30, 1985
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16 min read
Education Federal News Update
A $180-million measure to improve the teaching of the humanities was introduced in the Senate last week by Senator Dale Bumpers, Democrat of Arkansas, and three other Democrats.

The measure, S 204, would establish summer institutes for elementary- and secondary-school humanities teachers modeled after the summer seminars initiated by the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose chairman, William J. Bennett, was nominated by President Reagan this month as secretary of education.

January 30, 1985
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1 min read
Education Fast-Food Foes' Fight Fails
Students in Vicki Krupa's health class at the Hilltonia Middle School in Columbus, Ohio, have changed their eating habits, even if most other students in the school district won't.

The students--who have been studying about the four food groups and the dangers of a diet with too much sugar, salt, and cholesterol--decided to review the school-lunch menu and propose an alternative that would give students fewer opportunities to eat junk foods.

January 30, 1985
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2 min read
Education Letter to the Editor Letters to the Editor
I want to commend Roland S. Barth for his efforts to bring schools and universities closer together in his recent commentary ("Can We Make a Match of Schools and Universities?" Education Week, Nov. 28, 1984). However, there appears to be an underlying assumption that the fault with American education lies with the public schools and not with the universities.

Mr. Barth, as a former elementary-school principal, should know that this is an erroneous assumption. Considering the myriad problems confronting public education today, those of us in the trenches believe we do a first-rate job! Hence, part of the problem with public education has to rest with the universities, especially those that are responsible for training teachers.

January 30, 1985
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7 min read
Education Opinion Cautionary Admonitions From Our Educational Past
To a remarkable degree, practice in schools in the 1980's still owes much of its source to the rhetoric of progressivism in education first popularized in the first half of the 20th century. No one today would be likely to describe a comprehensive high school with its variegated curriculum, its moveable classroom desks, and its acceptance of the limited authority of the teachers as a school following the canons of progressive education.
Patricia Albjerg Graham, January 30, 1985
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11 min read
Education Opinion Commentary
Although "local control" remains perhaps the most revered concept in American education, recent economic and political developments indicate that it is an antiquated doctrine in need of replacement, according to an analysis in the fall 1984 edition of The Public Interest.

However, the system that now appears to be emerging as its successor--one of strong regulation by state government--is equally flawed and should be replaced by statewide systems of public-education vouchers, argue Denis P. Doyle, director of educational policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Chester E. Finn Jr., professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University.

January 30, 1985
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7 min read