March 20, 1985

Education Week, Vol. 04, Issue 26
Education Panel Calls Dropouts '$20-Billion Challenge to Society'
The nation's "at risk" students--the potential dropouts who without help may leave the system unprepared to lead productive lives--pose a $20-billion-a-year challenge to society that must be addressed, a group of business, labor, and education leaders concluded at a conference here this month.
J.R. Sirkin, March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education Federal File: He Stands Corrected
Speaking to his "friends and professional colleagues" at a forum on the teaching profession here last week, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett tried to "set the record straight ... on my now famous, or infamous, remark about stereo divestiture."

But in doing so, he revised the record, misquoting himself.

March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education Who Should Head Girls' Schools?
Should women run girls' schools? That is a question more and more educators are asking as the number of male heads of girls' schools increases. What follows are some responses:

'Yes'

March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education Educators Preparing To Fight Proposed Tax-Reform Plan
Although the Treasury Department tax-reform package announced last fall has yet to be endorsed by the White House and has taken a back seat to the deficit, educators facing federal budget cuts have been gearing up to fight it for months.
J.R. Sirkin, March 20, 1985
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7 min read
Education National News Roundup
The American Federation of Teachers has established a national commission on school violence to "take a close look at the extent of the problem and develop reasoned recommendations" to deal with it, according to the union's president, Albert Shanker.

The new commission will be advised by national experts on the problem, Mr. Shanker said last week, including Oliver Moles, senior research specialist on the National Institute of Education's safe schools project, and Gary Gottfredson, director of the Program on Delinquency and School Environments at the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Social Organization of Schools.

March 20, 1985
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1 min read
Education State News Roundup
The Indiana Ethics Commission is scheduled to discuss this week whether to investigate charges that the state's superintendent of public instruction solicited campaign money from employees and used campaign funds for personal use.

The Indianapolis News, after a three-month investigation of reports filed with the state elections board, has charged that Superintendent Harold H. Negley, an elected Republican official, misused campaign funds.

March 20, 1985
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4 min read
Education District News Roundup
A student's discovery of a "pattern" for answers on the Iowa Tests of Educational Development has invalidated the standardized-achievement-test scores of more than 6,000 high-school students in the Des Moines Independent Community School District.

"One sharp student" found on one of the first days the test was administered last October that the correct-answer sequence for one section of the test was the same on other sections of the test, according to James E. Bowman, assistant superintendent for public instruction.

March 20, 1985
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10 min read
Education Research and Reports
Newspaper articles on education tend to be positive rather than negative and, in contrast to what many educators say, such articles perform "an important role in informing the public," according to one educator's study.

"Press coverage of educational is-sues by newspapers has come under attack by educators, who complain not only of the scant attention newspapers give to education but also of opinionated and inaccurate articles with an accent on 'sensationalism,"'writes Nicholas P. Criscuolo, supervisor of reading for the New Haven, Conn., public schools, in the March 2 edition of Editor and Publisher, a news industry journal.

March 20, 1985
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1 min read
Education Study Panel Backs National Test forAll New Teachers
A newly formed group of educators and policymakers that includes high-level representatives of the two major teachers' unions last week endorsed a proposal for a rigorous national proficiency examination for licensing new teachers and the extension of teacher-training programs to five years.
Cindy Currence, March 20, 1985
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6 min read
Education Funding Senate Panel Votes $400-Million Reduction in School Funding
The Senate Budget Committee last week recommended cuts in federal spending for schools virtually identical to those offered by President Reagan last month, but it rejected his proposed $2.3-billion reduction in aid to postsecondary students.
James Hertling, March 20, 1985
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3 min read
Education 'Coherent Design' Missing in Curricula, Says Bennett in Call for Common Core
Secretary of Education William J. Bennett said last week that schools should consider altering their programs to emphasize the "core studies [that] constitute the nucleus of our schools' common curricula."
James Hertling, March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education 61 Cases Dropped After Grove City, Official Says
Five of the 61 civil-rights investigations temporarily suspended by the Education Department following a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision last year involve allegations of discrimination in high schools, according to department documents made public this month.
Tom Mirga, March 20, 1985
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1 min read
Education Panel Links School Reform to Economic Health
A task force of 27 corporate and university presidents last week submitted to President Reagan and members of the Congress a report asserting that if the United States is to improve its ability to compete economically with other advanced industrial nations, the Administration must take "decisive steps" to encourage educational reform, spur technological innovation, and reduce the federal deficit.
Sheppard Ranbom, March 20, 1985
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3 min read
Education 'The Case of the Disappearing Headmistress'
When the National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls was formed in 1915, all of its members were women. Today, 200 of the organization's 268 member schools are run by men.
Lynn Olson, March 20, 1985
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14 min read
Education Legislatures Wrap Up Sessions With Major Education Bills Tallied
While legislative sessions in many states are now in full swing, a few have concluded their current meetings. Following are summaries of key legislative developments in education in those states.

UTAH

March 20, 1985
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4 min read
Education Tax-Reform Proposal Called Threat to Private Schools
When the board of the Council for American Private Education gathers here for its spring meeting this week, the directors will discuss a topic that has become of paramount concern to private education: the U.S. Treasury Department's tax-reform plan.
Blake Rodman, March 20, 1985
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4 min read
Education For Women at the Top: Less Money, Fewer Perquisites
Women who head independent schools make less money and receive far fewer perquisites and other benefits than their male counterparts, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Independent Schools.
Blake Rodman, March 20, 1985
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3 min read
Education U.S. Leads Developed Nations in Rate of Teen-Age Pregnancy
The United States leads most developed nations in rates of teen-age pregnancy, abortion, and childbearing and is the only developed country where the rate of teen-age pregnancy has been increasing, according to a new international study.

The U.S. rate of teen-age abortion alone, the study found, is as high or higher than the combined teen-age abortion and birth rates in each of five other of the world's most advanced nations.

March 20, 1985
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3 min read
Education Teachers Column
On the basis of their own school's experience, officials of the college of education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suggest that the shortage of mathematics and science teachers will not be alleviated in the near future.

Last year, for example, the university's college of education graduated only one physics teacher--its first in three years.

March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education Repeal of Teacher-Testing Law Thwarted in Arkansas Senate
The Arkansas Senate this month defeated, 20 to 14, a bill that would have repealed the state's controversial teacher-testing law.

The bill, which would have replaced the testing requirements with a more elaborate evaluation scheme, had been approved by the House, 67 to 31.

March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education Bills Back Legal Fees Under P.L. 94-142
Parents of handicapped children told a House subcommittee last week that if the Congress fails to pass a bill allowing awards of legal fees in special-education lawsuits, the federal law protecting handicapped students "will become an empty promise."
Alina Tugend, March 20, 1985
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6 min read
Education Mississippi Union Seeks Full Strike
The Mississippi Association of Educators, the state's largest teachers' union, last week urged all of the state's teachers--union and non-union teachers alike--to strike beginning March 18.

In a related action, eight teachers filed suit in U.S. District Court to force the state to increase teachers' salaries and to block further state action to obstruct the strike, according to George Brown, a spokesman for the mae

March 20, 1985
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1 min read
Education Midwestern Universities Lead Race for N.I.E.
Several Midwestern universities apparently have moved to the front of the pack in the competition to land a total of $65 million in grants over the next five years to operate the National Institute of Education's 11 research and development centers.
Tom Mirga, March 20, 1985
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6 min read
Education In Federal Agencies
Information-collection requests. The Education Department published, in the March 8 Federal Register, an information-collection request that has been proposed by the Office of Secondary and Elementary Education and Office of Vocational and Adult Education. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 requires that the Office of Management and Budget give the public and interested federal agencies advance notice of and the opportunity to comment on proposed surveys and other requests for information that will be used by the Education Department. Comments must be received by April 8. Contact: Margaret Webster, ed, Room 4074, Switzer Building, Washington, D.C. 20202; (202) 426-7304.
March 20, 1985
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2 min read
Education Controversial 'Family-Life' Regulation Gets 5-Year Extension in New Jersey
The New Jersey Board of Education has voted unanimously to extend for five years its controversial regulation mandating a statewide "family-life" curriculum that includes sex-education courses.
Anne Bridgman, March 20, 1985
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4 min read
Education Tennessee Governor Reiterates Interest In Policies To Promote Parent 'Choice'
Tennessee's Gov. Lamar Alexander has urged local policymakers and school officials to consider ways to promote greater parental choice in public education.
Sheppard Ranbom, March 20, 1985
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3 min read
Education People News
Ralph Turlington, Florida's commissioner of education for the past 11 years, has ended the guessing game about his future plans with a surprise announcement that he will not run for re-election in 1987, but plans instead to start a private lobbying effort for a state lottery.

Mr. Turlington, 64, says he will set up a group called move--Margin of Victory for Excellence--to spearhead a petition drive to put the lottery idea before Florida voters in November of 1986. Although the3state's "one-question" rule may prevent the ballot initiative from asking whether voters want lottery funds to be spent specifically for education, said a spokesman for the commissioner, the campaign will "psychologically earmark" them for that purpose.

March 20, 1985
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1 min read
Education Music From Muleskins--and Just About Everything Else
Marc S. Diamond, a former wood-shop teacher and now a music educator in Bethany, Conn., has come up with 168 ways to switch his elementary-school classes on to music.

With wood, plastic, scrap metal, macrame rope, plastic tablecloths, muleskins, large oak soy-sauce barrels from Chinatown, bright green utility buckets from McDonald's and Burger King, and assorted nuts and bolts, Mr. Diamond has made his students 48 glockenspiels, 30 keyboards, 30 guitars, 30 conga drums, and 30 tenor drums.

March 20, 1985
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1 min read
Education News Update
A lawyer for the Charlotte (Mich.) Board of Education has filed a motion asking the Michigan Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling that the state's public schools must open "nonessential" courses to local The court ruled in Snyder v. Charlotte Public School District that the state school code mandates such shared-time programs. Thomas J. Nordberg said he asked for the rehearing because the court made its decision based on facts that neither party argued or presented for the record in the case. He said he wants an opportunity to address the issue of whether the school code mandates shared time in nonessential public-school courses.
March 20, 1985
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1 min read
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