March 13, 1985
The move will take Mr. Spillane--who has held superintendencies in New York and New Jersey and served as deputy commissioner of education for New York state before moving to Boston in 1982--to the 10th largest school district in the country, with some 120,000 students.
Proposed rules appearing in the Feb. 26 Federal Register would require institutions to follow existing guidelines on collection and also to use "any additional collection measures" normally used for securing repayment of other amounts owed the institution, such as parking fees, book bills, and overdue tuition accounts.
Prior to the regents' action, the use of corporal punishment was up to individual school districts. About one-third of New York's districts and boards of cooperative educational services currently prohibit the use of corporal punishment, according to state officials.
Public-Private Ventures, a nonprofit corporation that designs, manages, and analyzes programs to help disadvantaged youths enter the job market, will undertake both studies in an effort to address the problems created by the high rate of youth unemployment, said Natalie Jaffe, a spokesman for the firm.
Although nearly half of the 11-and-12-year-olds surveyed in an 18-month study said they fear that a nuclear war or other manmade catastrophe will destroy the world, 86 percent said there is a good chance to reverse the trend and build a world "very different from and far better from the one we know now."
Mr. Scamman, who almost derailed the selection process again when he made known that he hoped to be paid a salary of $100,000, has signed a three-year contract for $75,000 annually--$5,000 more than his predecessor, Joseph Brzeinski, who resigned last spring.
According to Charles A. Marshall, executive director of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, Texas has enacted--and other states are considering--proposals that limit student absences from class, including those for the purpose of visiting college counselors.
FLORIDA
"Today we deal with a new kind of child," writes Emily Feistritzer, director of the National Center for Education Information, a private publishing organization, "from a different background, with a different set of values, hopes, and dreams." To be effective, she argues in "Cheating Our Children: Why We Need School Reform," changes proposed for the schools must take these changes into account.
Thomas Hobart, president of the New York State United Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, issued a statement calling the plan "a shameless scheme to put public tax money into the hands of the wealthy and deal a crippling blow to New York's public-school system."
Bill McCord, assistant superintendent for student services for the DeSoto (Miss.) County Board of Education, said lawyers for the student and the school board reached an agreement last week.
The bill was based largely on the recommendations of Gov. Joe Frank Harris's Education Review Commission. A spokesman for Governor Harris said that the Governor got "103 percent" of what he expected and was very pleased with the bill in its final form.
In his research, Mr. Manski examined the career choices of a sample of high-school graduates from 1972 who completed college in 1976 or 1977. His data confirmed that people who chose teaching as a career tended to have lower Scholastic Aptitude Test scores than average college graduates and that their earnings also tended to be much lower.
Schools have been closed in the past to save money in periods of low enrollment and fiscal constraint. But "limited research on closures provides little evidence and little sense that school closings are always in the best interests of school officials, teachers, parents, and students," suggests Richard R. Valencia in a study released by Stanford's Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance.