The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

i INCOWATUNCsy Testing l") UNFARE i. WNmm REPEAT AFTER Attention all Walter Mittys: Next year looks like the year for travel. According to scientists, Central Australia will offer astronomers the best view of Halley's Comet when it hurtles past Earth. The comet is expected to make passes this November and next March and April. Thousands of amateur astrono­ mers are expected to converge on Australia for those two months next spring. What better excuse for that dream trip to the South Pacific. As long as you Jiave to go to Australia, you might as well schedule stops in Fiji and Tahiti. They would be on the route to Australia. There may be those who might question the reasoning behind the trip. But how could anyone argue with your intentions. After all, this would be research. Halley's Comet has not been by this planet since 1910. Think of it. This would be a once in a lifetime, historical event. How could anyone deprive you of this opportunity? Of course, if anyone were to ob­ ject to your stopping at two exotic location^ on your way to the "viewing," you could always break up the trip. Make one stop on the way to Australia, and anoth­ er on your way back home. Just make sure the only photos you take and souvenirs you bring home are comet-connected. Follow that dream! <* R S Page 6 NORTHWEST HERALO Section B Thursday, September 19,1985 Opinion NORTHWEST HERALD "When in doubt, tell the truth" Mark Twain ROBERTA. SHAW Edi tor and Publ isher LEONARD M. INGRASSIA Execut ive Edi tor STEVEN H.HUNTER Market ing Di rector KAREN A.ANDROS Saturday Edi tor MICHAEL E.MORSCH News Edi tor /Regional DENNIS M. McNAMARA Edi tor ia l Page Edi tor RONALDL.STANLEY Circula t ion Di rector Sobering report on our schools WASHINGTON - Two points: Over the past 50 years, our public school system has done a general­ ly poor job. If this bleak record of performance is to be improved, dramatic and costly changes must be made. That is the gist of a sobering report on public education just de­ livered by the Committee for Eco­ nomic Development, a blue-ribbon organization of top business lead­ ers. Financed by 16 corporate and private foundations, the million- dollar report was three years in its preparation. It contains many rec­ ommendations we have heard be­ fore -- for example, that schools should impose stricter standards of discipline, and that beginning te&clters should be better qualified." ' But much here is new, and the recommendations take on added meaning because of their source. This is corporate America speak­ ing to problems of public educa­ tion. If big business really would throw its energies wholeheartedly into this cause, a great deal could cellence, the study urges whole­ sale reforms in the training and pay of teachers, and it recom­ mends heavy new investments at the preschool and junior high school levels. Fifty years ago, the brightest young women went into teaching, mainly because teaching was one of the only professions open to them. This no longer is true. The brightest young women how have a choice of many careers, all of them paying higher salaries than James J. the teacher's average beginning salary of $15,000. The CED's study , echoes many other recommenda- be accomplished. /tions for bonuses, incentive sys- be/ tems. merit nav anri th*> lilro Plainly, a great deal needs to accomplished. The 1980 census turned up 23 million adults over the age of 18 who were functionally illiterate and another 46 million who were only marginally literate. For most practical purposes, 44 percent of blacks and 56 percent of Hispanics over the age of 18 cannot read, write or do simple numbers. Many high school graduates "are virtually unemployable, even at to­ day's minimum wage." This is "the sorry state of U.S. public education." The CED study does not iook deeply into the causes of this lail- ure. Obviously many factors have contributed. To move toward ex- tems, merit pay and the like. The business community asks for something in return for better pay: It asks for better teachers. Toward this end, it calls for great­ er emphasis on subject matter in teacher training; and for less em­ phasis on techniques of teaching. It urges that teachers be relieved of many of their clerical or house­ keeping chores. The report recom­ mends magnet schools in large communities, capable of attract­ ing bright students and imagina­ tive instructors. The report implies, but does not assert, that much of the money required for the pay of teachers could be found by reallocating ex­ isting funds. The report notes: "Between 1970 and 1980, total ex­ penditures for elementary and sec­ ondary education rose over 10 per­ cent. However, the entire increase was channeled to non-instructional purposes." In 1970 school boards were spending 48 percent of their budgets on teacher salaries; by 1980 this had dropped to 38.5 per­ cent. Despite raises in absolute terms, the purchasing power of the average teacher's salary has de­ clined 15 percent since 1973. No wonder the teaching profession suffers! Surprisingly, the CED study de­ votes little attention to problems of the high school. It turns instead to the substantial return on invest­ ment/ tjtfit jtsees iii preschool classes w" disadvantaged chil­ dren. Another area for concentra­ tion lies in grades 7,8 and 9. In the authors' view, these are the criti­ cal years when a teen-ager moves toward dropping out or going on. The CED study regrettably is flawed by the educationese in which much of it is written. When readers have to stay awake through the ongoing, in-depth and meaningful implementation of in­ sightful feedback mechanisms, in­ tended to maximize articulated goals and objectives and to enrich professionalism, in the expectation that optimum interpersonal rela­ tionships will be ensured -- the reader is in trouble. But if a reader has the patience to dig the raisins of sound stuff out of this bread dough prose, the CED study will reward him. The recommenda­ tions are sound, and they merit vigorous support from taxpayers concerned about the education of our youngsters for the century that lies ahead. / Tale has a happy ending, of sorts Some weeks ago, I wrote of the despair of 15-year-old Maria, beaten by her father and sexually abused by two older brothers. A third suicide at­ tempt had put her in a hospital and under the protective custody of New Mexico's Department of Human Ser­ vices. I wrote of the frustration of social workers and doctors trying to find a place for her. Going home was out of the question; foster homes for suicidal teens are hard to come by. Private psychiatric hospitals wouldn't take her because her family couldn't pay. The state mental hospital is full, and 14 is the cutoff age for adolescent psychiatric care at the state-funded university facili­ ty. Maria sat alone in her hospital room, haunted by a bizarre past bereft of family and classmates, without hope for the future. She was un-enticed bv life. To me, Maria personified two disturbing trends; the questioning of public funds spent for social services and the mounting disclosure of fami­ ly violence. Are these symptoms of a society that tolerates throwaway children? Maria's plight touched the hearts of many readers. An outpouring of letters and phone calls came from around the country and Canada. Peo­ ple offered their homes and a place in their lives, or suggested various Rusty Brown church-and-state supported shelters. One young woman, likewise abus­ ed as a child, called, asking to take in Maria: "I want to do something for someone else facing the nightmare I know so well." An Albuquerque widow with counseling experience of­ fered to share her home with Maria. A retired couple in Alpena, Ark., promised love and care, "respecting Maria as a person." They wrote of their country home with five dogs (all former strays), one cat and 14 chickens, each with individual names. A 30-year-old single mother in Halifax, Nova Scotia, wanted to at least write to Maria. She had been abused and beaten in her former marriage. "It is a terrible ex­ perience to live with, and I think I know how she feels," she remarked. A Crystal Lake, 111., woman wrote: "My heart is wretched in me as I read and continue to ponder and pray about your story." Everyone who responded asked me to keep them informed on Maria, and so I shall. Within days after the column ap­ peared, a space opened up in a uni­ que group home that serves as a state-funded residential treatment center for youths with behavorial, emotional or physical problems. ' Maria is now living in this rambl­ ing adobe house with nine other teens, 13 to 17. It is on a dusty country road amid long-limbed cottonwood trees and surrounding farms. HorseS and dairy cows graze in nearby fields. The kids have planted a vegetable garden of lettuce, squash and cucumbers. They share in meat preparation, the upkeep of the large house, and they do their own laundry. A public-school teacher conducts classes on site and group and in­ dividual therapy is handled by a trained staff. Each teen is regarded as someone of value with something to con­ tribute. That's a new world for Maria, used and abused for half her young life. She is responding like a seed in the garden she helped plant -- greening and growing in the sun. Yet we must remember that Maria is lucky. She was directed into an ex­ cellent but small program. The truth is, there are many Marias who may not be as fortunate and whose stories may never be told. The ultimate answer is not warm­ hearted people saying, "Send Maria to me." Rather, the solution has to start in the family environment that creates throwaway children -- and in , a society that is unwilling to rescue its guiltless victims. (Rusty Brown is a columnist for N e w s p a p e r E n t e r p r i s e Association) The NIE needs axing WASHINGTON - Despite the National Institute of Education's tattered history, administration plans are underway to restructure, yet essentially preserve, *lhat waste-ridden arm of the Depart­ ment of Education. Only in the "Alice in Wonder­ land" world of Washington could one witness such a spectacle: Bud­ get-conscious conservatives fight­ ing to save a program that is so wasteful that even a big-spending liberal Democrat wanted to give it the ax long ago. In an earlier column I detailed some of the wasteful grants being issued by NIE. Additional exam­ ples include $57,736 for a study on the social history of reading; $122,588 to study the "illusion of knowing"; $78,759 tor a study of "ethnic pluralism" in the United States; and $99,000 for a two-year study of students' ability to make and read maps. Here's the rest of the story: Earlier this summer, Education Secretary William Bennett initiat­ ed plans to divide NIE's functions into five separate offices, all under the control of former Vanderbilt University professor Chester Finn, now the assistant secretary for educat ional research and ^^^^fz&{oif¥siin sold by Benftettas & "streamlining and consolidation" of the department's research activities, but one ques­ tion remains: Is it worth it to make any attempt to preserve any part of the $52-million-a-year NIE? Critics within the department say Bennett's reorganization is merely cosmetic and will do little to improve the research functions of the department or solve the problems that have plagued NIE since its creation in 1972 -- includ­ ing a cozy "old boy" network that has rewarded academic allies with big research grants. In its 13-year history, NIE has wasted millions of hard-earned tax dollars on marginal and esoteric research that has done little to improve the qual i ty of U.S . education. As far back as 1975, three years after NIE was created, it became obvious just how ineffective the agency was as national test and achievement scores continued their long decline. Its studies were considered so wasteful in the mid- Donald Lambro 1970s that the Senate Appropria­ tions Committee, chaired by then- Sen. Warren Magnuson, D-Wash, tried to zero out NIE's funding, but the House refused to go along. The Heritage Foundation's 1980 "Mandate for Leadership," a man­ agement blueprint for the incom­ ing Reagan administration, round­ ly criticized NIE research for being "spotty and inconclusive" and urged NIE's elimination. Ed Curran, a professional educa­ tor chosen by President Reagan to run the agency in 1981, found it so wasteful and harmful to U.S. edu­ cation that he wrote Reagan a let­ ter advising that NIE be abolished. The letter enraged then-Education Secretary Terrel Bell, long an NIE apologist; he promptly fired Cur­ ran, with the White House's support. Perhaps most ironic participant in the NIE saga is Chester Finn himself. He had worked hard to establish NIE in 1972, only to turn bitterly against it in later years. Ill 1983, Finn delivered a scorch­ ing indictment of the agency in the Phi Delta Kappan magazine for educators, in which he said it was lUical i intellectual and organize- • tional ailmentstfrom which it has suffered since its inception a de­ cade ago are incurable," he wrote. Now Finn has the task of re­ structuring and saving what he once pronounced as "not correct­ able." Why the change of heart? Finn told my associate, Tracy Fletcher, that it was Bennett who "persuaded me to set right some of the wrongs I had criticized." Yet Finn is not excessively opti­ mistic that he'll succeed. He calls NIE's reorganization "our last, best shot" and says the chances are "60-40 that it can be" success­ fully reformed. The bottom line is that after spending more than $800 million on a calliginous collection of research junk, no one in the education com­ munity convincingly argues that NIE has improved education one iota. Ironically, with a waste-con­ scious administration at the helm, the scandal is that this bureaucrat­ ic turkey continues to survive. (Donald Lambro is a columnist for United Feature Syndicate) U(M GOTTA GO ALL THE WW TO WASHINGTON JUST TQTBJL CONGRESS OURSWFETV STANDARDS ARE UP TO SNUFF..