may 22, 1985
Education Week, Vol. 04, Issue 35
Education
Growth in Corporate Education Prompts Meeting
Some 30 educators from the corporate and academic worlds gathered here early this month to discuss how their separate but related efforts overlap.
Education
Moratorium on Pay Plan Is Demanded in Florida
The "imbalanced" results of teacher evaluations administered recently under Florida's Master Teacher Program have prompted educators and lawmakers in that state to call for a moratorium on the entire merit-pay plan.
Education
Race, Sex Balance Ordered for Academic Teams
The coach of a Los Angeles high school's "academic decathlon" team threatened last week to sue her superiors over a controversial directive that squads in the competition reflect the sexual and ethnic composition of their schools.
Education
Iowa Enacts School-Reform Measure; Education Aid Increased in Vermont
Following are summaries of how education measures fared in states that have concluded their current legislative sessions.
Education
N.H. Senate Approves Aid Formula
The New Hampshire Senate approved a new school foundation-aid formula last week but has yet to act on a House-approved increase in state aid.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the school-finance suit Jesseman v. New Hampshire have indicated that the seven districts suing the state, and the 21 others supporting them, might drop the action if the state approves a sufficient increase in aid to go along with the formula change. (See Education Week, May 1, 1985.)
Education
Bennett Modifies Research Missions
Secretary of Education William J. Bennett last week announced changes in the missions of the 11 research and development centers to be sponsored by the National Institute of Education at a cost of $65 million over the next five years.
Education
Advocacy Group's Broadside Rebukes Bennett
Secretary of Education William J. Bennett's first 100 days in office have been marked by "an emphasis on right-wing ideology and an abandonment of any federal role in education except policing the curricula in local schools," charges a report released last week by People for the American Way, the civil-liberties organization founded by the television producer Norman Lear.
Education
Federal News Roundup
The outspoken chairman of the National Council for Educational Research, the policymaking arm of the National Institute of Education, announced his resignation last week.
In his May 7 letter of resignation to President Reagan, George Roche, president of Hillsdale (Mich.) Col-lege, called nie a "malevolent entity" and said he believed that the research agency and the whole Education Department should be abolished.
Education
District News Roundup
A Bethel (Wash.) High School production of a play based on the book Working by the Pulitzer-prize winning author Studs Terkel went on as scheduled this month, despite complaints by a group of local citizens that parts of the play were obscene and unsuitable for a high-school audience.
Opponents of the play, led by the Rev. Kenneth J. Doolin, pastor of a local Baptist church, said it contained obscene language and showed prostitution in a positive light.
Education
Politics Make Strange Bedfellooooooooooows
Unfazed by the specter of mixing politics and education, a teacher and three 12-year-old girls from the gifted program of the Warner Elementary School in northern Delaware recently pursued specters of a different sort as the overnight guests of Delaware's Governor Michael Castle.
Unfazed by the specter of mixing politics and education, a teacher and three 12-year-old girls from the gifted program of the Warner Elementary School in northern Delaware recently pursued specters of a different sort as the overnight guests of Delaware's Governor Michael Castle.
Education
Alabama Ladder Survives Donnybrook in Legislature
Following a filibuster and a near-brawl on the Senate floor, Alabama lawmakers this month approved a career-ladder plan that will raise teachers' salaries and provide them with performance-based pay incentives.
Education
Fla. Fails To Spend Chapter 1 Funds
More than $20 million of Florida's $123 million in federal compensatory-education money was unspent or misspent in the 1983-84 school year, according to a compilation of state records by the Miami News.
Education
States Urged To Assume Civil-Rights Leadership
A former chief of civil rights for the Education Department last week told state education officials that states must take more responsibility for providing equal opportunities for students in light of a diminishing federal role and more sharply defined state interests in civil rights.
Ed-Tech Policy
Computers Column
The Institute for the Transfer of Technology to Education, a program of the National School Boards Association, will soon ask the National Science Foundation for $15 million to underwrite the cost of developing a science laboratory that uses interactive video technology.
Education
Phoenix To Use Soccer To Desegregate Schools
The Justice Department and the Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona agreed last week on a desegregation plan that would use the novel lure of interscholastic soccer to promote racial balance in two new magnet schools.
Education
Federal File: Forgive, Forget; Cogito, Ergo; Last Word
Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, who has crisscrossed the country for speaking engagements this month, was scheduled this week to make several appearances in Baton Rouge, La.--a city that another Education Department official found most unfriendly earlier this year.
Education
Illinois School Chief Seeks Reorganization of Districts
Illinois's superintendent of education, Ted Sanders, citing a new state study linking student achievement to high-school size, has called for a thorough reorganization of school districts.
Education
Committee Told of Need for Legal Fees in Special-Education Suits
Parents and lawyers involved in some of the decade's most important special-education court battles traveled here last week to testify before a Senate panel on behalf of legislation that would allow the awarding of legal fees in such cases.
Education
Staff Cuts Plague Job-Training Program, Study Finds
Reductions in the federal staff administering the government's major job-training program have "shattered" the morale of the remaining employees, sacrificed expertise, and caused inefficiency and delays, the General Accounting Office has charged.
Education
Kentucky Districts Plan To Sue State To Achieve Equal Funding
A coalition of school districts in Kentucky has announced plans to file suit against the state within three weeks, in what it calls the "last chance" to achieve equal funding among school systems in that state.
Education
Missouri Legislature Approves Statewide Career Ladder
The Missouri House and Senate approved by a wide margin last week a school-reform bill that will establish a statewide career-ladder program.
The state will require districts to fund the program on a sliding scale that takes into consideration a district's wealth. (See Education Week, May 8, 1985.)
Education
E.P.A. Grant, Regulatory Activities Underway
On June 6, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will announce the first recipients of aid in a seven-year, $600-million federal program to support school asbestos-abatement projects.
Ed-Tech Policy
E.T.S. Readying Computer-Based 'Test of the Future'
Researchers at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., say they are only a year away from completing a prototype "test of the future"--a computer-based diagnostic test that can offer teachers precise information on the kinds of remedial help an individual student needs.
Education
National News Roundup
The American Association of School Administrators, through a $40,000 Ford Foundation grant to the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, is offering eight regional workshops for educators on establishing child-care programs.
The first seminar, held earlier this month in Albany, N.Y., attracted superintendents, school-board members, kindergarten teachers, and state education officials, according to Nancy Miller, manager for external resources for the aasa
Education
State News Roundup
The Oregon House of Representatives has passed legislation requiring the state department of education to design a comprehensive "nuclear-age curriculum," but leaving the decision on whether or not to teach it up to local districts.
Education
'School Vote' To Ask Delaware Valley Citizens To Learn About Schools, Then Give Opinions
Residents of the populous Delaware Valley--the Philadelphia area, southern New Jersey, and Delaware--are being asked this month to render a "public judgment" on issues surrounding schooling in their communities.
Residents of the populous Delaware Valley--the Philadelphia area, southern New Jersey, and Delaware--are being asked this month to render a "public judgment" on issues surrounding schooling in their communities.
Education
Research And Reports
The research of a University of North Carolina psychology professor suggests, he says, that discrepancies between the traditionally high mathematics test scores of white males and those of blacks and of white females could be reduced or eliminated if teachers and parents encouraged the latter groups to study math longer.
Education
Ohio District Entangled in Superfund Suit
A school district that tried to "do the right thing" in 1974 by removing 30 pounds of outdated chemicals from school laboratories has found itself implicated in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by the federal government to clean up the site where the chemicals were dumped.
Education
Drive To Rid Schools of Asbestos Jeopardized by Insurance Woes
Millions of dollars worth of asbestos-abatement work in schools across the country is in jeopardy because insurance companies are refusing to underwrite the activities of those involved in the work, according to government and industry officials.