National Education

FORTY-ONE NATIONS participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in eighth-grade science and mathematics in 1995.If eighth-graders in Maryland had participated, how would they have stacked up, based on their performance on a similar test in the United States?As usual, Maryland students would be in the middle, along with most other eighth-graders in Sweden, Iceland, Cyprus, the United States and 13 other nations.We would be ahead of Iran, Portugal and Kuwait.

SAN CARLOS, Calif. -- Setting himself on a collision course with the Republican Congress, President Clinton vowed yesterday to veto a mammoth spending bill if it contains amendments blocking his national school standards and testing plan or channeling money away from his other cherished federal education programs.The House has passed an amendment to stop the school testing program, while the Senate has voted to take money away from many federal education programs, such as bilingual education, and give it instead to school boards in block grants.

Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. said yesterday that it has agreed to purchase National Education Corp. of California for stock worth roughly $638 million, a move that more than doubles Sylvan's size and creates one of the nation's largest education services companies.The new firm will retain Sylvan's name and Baltimore headquarters, and is expected to post almost $500 million in annual revenues.Wall Street flinched at the news yesterday as Sylvan stock fell 15 percent, or $5.25, to close at $29.875.

A federal grand jury has indicted the former director of a private Baltimore vocational school, who is accused of falsifying more than 500 school records to make the school eligible for federal aid in excess of $1 million.Arthur Nelson III, 54, of Harrisburg, Pa., was fired from the Temple School in 1993. He is charged with six counts of wire fraud.Also charged were four other employees of the school, which provided vocational training in electrical repair, medicine, business, accounting and secretarial skills, until it was closed in 1994 in the wake of the irregularities.

Beaytiful, elegant and in good taste are just a few of the compliments being used to describe this year's BSO Gala at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall last Saturday night. And it was none other than this year's low-key chairs of the gala, Wendy and Ben Griswold, who set the tone for an evening that raised a record $375,000 for the orchestra.Among the thousand guests at the party were Georgia and Peter Angelos, Baltimore Orioles' owner and this year's gala sponsor; Gov. and Mrs. Parris Glendening; Mayor and Mrs. Kurt L. Schmoke; Carol and George McGowan, past BSO gala chairs; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Pisch, he's the new BSO development director, who just arrived from North Carolina; Pam and Arnold Lehman, he's director of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Linda and Stanley Panitz, she's done a great job with the BSO's new education initiative; Julie Mercer, president of the BSO's Top Brass and a VP at Doner; Pat and John Gidwitz, he's the BSO executive director; and Rosetta Stith, director of the Pacquin School, who goes every year and takes several of her girls with her.There were lots of comments about maestro David Zinman, who looked quite trim and most dapper after his eight-month hiatus.

Employers say one-fifth of American workers are not fully proficient in their jobs, and they express a lack of confidence in the ability of schools and colleges to prepare young people for the workplace, according to the first national survey ever done by the Census Bureau of hiring, training and management practices in American business.Researchers say the study, which was produced for the federal Department of Education, illustrates an alarming divide between the schools and the workplace even as national education and labor policy calls for closer cooperation, both to improve the skills of the nation's work force and to smooth the transition from school to work.

THE structure of schooling in the United States is about to undergo a change so fundamental that it amounts to a reconstitution of education. The change will begin with the nationalization of important areas of education policy and will eventually result in the creation of a national public secondary school curriculum enforced by performance tests.The last time the country experienced such a basic shift in the relationship of individuals to their government -- the adoption of the U.S. Constitution -- the protection of individual liberty was secured by the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

HAGERSTOWN -- B. Marie Byers' interest in education is as long and as varied as her tenure as a school board member.Mrs. Byers, 59, was appointed to the Washington County Board of Education in 1970. The former teacher has since been elected to the five-member board five times and is seeking a sixth (and she says her last) elected term.During her 24 years on the school board, Mrs. Byers has achieved a number of firsts, including serving as that board's first woman president. It's a post she has held eight times.

THE Clinton administration's "Goals 2000" education legislation has reached the Senate, and though the national standards to be promoted are said to be "voluntary," President ++ Clinton in his State of the Union address emphasized that there must be "one" standard for education in the U.S.In addition, the administration wants the codification of the already declared six national goals, the first of which is that by the year 2000, "all children in America will...

MIAMI -- Blasting federal and state leaders for ignoring the physical needs of children, the head of the nation's largest teachers union called yesterday for the U.S. government to embrace a "Bill of Rights" for youngsters.The five-point plan advocated by National Education Association President Keith Geiger is designed to ensure that youngsters are given food, medical care and shelter so they are healthy enough to learn."The United States is at a crossroads," Mr. Geiger told 8,000 delegates at the NEA's annual meeting.

The movement to adopt national education standards is hurtling down the tracks to acceptance, even as many of the decision-makers behind it are laying eyes on the draft for the first time. While "voluntary" is the word that proponents routinely use to describe the proposed standards, that label is seriously misleading. The idea is that states are coming together of their own volition to support the drafting of these guidelines for teaching reading and math, and they will be free to accept or reject the final product.

National group honors Grasmick Maryland State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick received a national education award yesterday for her "outstanding contributions to American education." The James Bryant Conant Award is given by the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based nonprofit that monitors education trends and policies for state governors and legislators. The Education Commission of the States praised Grasmick's focus on student achievement, parental involvement and early childhood education.

President Jimmy Carter signed the U.S. Department of Education into existence on Oct. 17, 1979, over the intense opposition of Republican lawmakers who saw the new federal agency as a power grab by teachers unions and an attack on states' rights. But since then, one Republican administration after another has steadily increased the department's influence - and in the process set in motion fundamental changes in the nation's education system. President Carter had lobbied Congress to give education Cabinet status largely at the behest of the National Education Association, the increasingly powerful teachers union that had helped propel the Georgia Democrat into the White House in 1976 and wanted more federal funding for education.

WASHINGTON - My wife is sitting on a gold mine, I tell her. She's a part-time creative writing teacher in a District of Columbia public high school. She comes home with stories more shocking, poignant, bizarre, scandalous and hilarious than I have ever seen on Boston Public and other TV dramas about the traumas of high school. I was particularly touched by what she heard one day from a 16-year-old girl from "Southeast," which is how Washingtonians refer to the poorest section of town. "Ms. Page, you come to every class, don't you?"

Maryland took a giant step forward yesterday toward creating a statewide curriculum specifically spelling out what's to be taught in every public school classroom. That would represent a marked shift for education policy in Maryland, where teachers, parents, principals and superintendents have spent decades clinging to their local authority over classroom instruction. A state panel examining Maryland's decade of education changes and a national education reform group made preliminary recommendations to the state superintendent yesterday calling a statewide curriculum critical for schools to improve.

If you asked most television critics to name the most intelligent and culturally important television series of the last 10 years, they would probably pick HBO's "The Sopranos." But, as terrific as "The Sopranos" is, there's another series just as smart in its own right that's seen each week by a larger audience - a series with the potential to have an even greater effect on our national culture. This one, too, features a family living in an East Coast city. Instead of a crime family in New Jersey, though, this one has a family of lions living in a library full of books that come to life and colorful characters that zoom in and out of the books.

MARYLAND has a nationally acclaimed school accountability program. But it's a one-way street. The state board of education and department of education hold local school systems accountable through rigorous state performance tests (MSPAP). However, virtually no attention has been paid to holding state education officials responsible for their overall record in improving student achievement. That record has been far below satisfactory and warrants closer scrutiny than it has received. The statewide drop in MSPAP scores last year is only the tip of the iceberg of unfulfilled expectations.

FORTY-ONE NATIONS participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in eighth-grade science and mathematics in 1995.If eighth-graders in Maryland had participated, how would they have stacked up, based on their performance on a similar test in the United States?As usual, Maryland students would be in the middle, along with most other eighth-graders in Sweden, Iceland, Cyprus, the United States and 13 other nations.We would be ahead of Iran, Portugal and Kuwait.

SAN CARLOS, Calif. -- Setting himself on a collision course with the Republican Congress, President Clinton vowed yesterday to veto a mammoth spending bill if it contains amendments blocking his national school standards and testing plan or channeling money away from his other cherished federal education programs.The House has passed an amendment to stop the school testing program, while the Senate has voted to take money away from many federal education programs, such as bilingual education, and give it instead to school boards in block grants.

Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. said yesterday that it has agreed to purchase National Education Corp. of California for stock worth roughly $638 million, a move that more than doubles Sylvan's size and creates one of the nation's largest education services companies.The new firm will retain Sylvan's name and Baltimore headquarters, and is expected to post almost $500 million in annual revenues.Wall Street flinched at the news yesterday as Sylvan stock fell 15 percent, or $5.25, to close at $29.875.