New Standards

It's crunch time for 17-year-old Becky Bieneman.She and thousands of other Maryland teen-agers are making a frantic dash to driving schools and Motor Vehicle Administration offices to get learner's permits before Thursday, when the state's tough new standards for teen drivers take effect. In recent days, MVA waiting lines have reached record lengths as teens scramble to avoid the new rules.The law is unquestionably a good idea, they agree. For somebody else."There's a lot of young, inexperienced drivers, and it's really dangerous out there," said Bieneman, fresh from her class at a North Baltimore driving school last week.

Environmental Elements Corp. said yesterday that it is preparing a plan to meet new standards for being listed on the New York Stock Exchange.The Baltimore provider of air-pollution-control systems is one of many companies that could be dropped from the Big Board unless they meet standards that became effective July 27.The NYSE would not disclose the number of companies affected by the new standards, which include:Market capitalization and stockholders equity...

A proposal to require narrow, curved roads in new Howard County housing developments has angered some community activists, but it won solid support in the County Council last night.Administration officials have pushed the road standards as a way to slow speeding motorists and preserve natural features such as hills, trees and rocks.The proposal has angered some community activists, who contend that the new roads will be more dangerous, not less.In a work session last night, the County Council disagreed.

I SPENT THE FIRST 12 years of my working life teaching fifth grade in the Baltimore City schools. I have seen about as much educational breakdown as anyone needs to see in one lifetime.You would think, then, that I would be mightily cheered by President Clinton's new focus on "higher educational standards" - and, yes, I have been and remain an avid Clinton supporter, who cheered his re-election last fall.But in my view, the president's State of the Union address on educational standards was an empty, worthless ball of fluff.

CHICAGO -- To judge from the furious reactions of lobbying groups in Washington, much of American industry is overwhelmingly opposed to the new clean air rules announced last week by the Clinton administration.Automakers, truckers, the petrochemical industry, utilities and other powerful industry organizations are gearing up to campaign in Congress and the courts to delay, limit or kill the proposed new regulations.But in the day-to-day world of business outside the Washington beltway, the new limits on smog and on emissions of fine particles of soot are generating more anxiety than anger.

The Clinton administration's proposal to tighten national air quality standards for smog and soot may offer an opportunity for some regions of the country that have struggled for years to bring their cities into compliance with the existing clean-air goals.The hotly debated new standards, proposed Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, would set a new definition of healthful air and reduce the allowable levels of pollution from ozone and fine chemical particles, two of the main ingredients of smog.

New development standards that will allow farmers and other rural landowners to cluster the development of their land was passed by the Harford County Council last week and signed into law yesterday by County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann.The goal of the new standards, which are optional, is to prevent suburban sprawl while preserving rural land and open space. Landowners developing a small part of their property must place the remaining, undeveloped portion of their land in a permanent easement, preventing most future development.

SAN DIEGO -- The relationship between academic standards and opportunities for college athletes will become more complex today. Continuing a debate that has lasted a dozen years, delegates at the 89th NCAA convention will consider proposals that could tighten, relax or merely delay new standards.A year after college basketball coaches threatened a boycott to protest what they consider a decrease in opportunities for prospects, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, the membership will debate formulas that would determine eligibility for freshman athletes and define the length of an athlete's career and limitations on their participation.

New development standards that will allow farmers and other rural landowners to cluster the development of their land was passed by the Harford County Council last week and signed into law yesterday by County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann.The goal of the new standards, which are optional, is to prevent suburban sprawl while preserving rural land and open space. Landowners developing a small part of their property must place the remaining, undeveloped portion of their land in a permanent easement, preventing most future development.

Howard County has the highest overall percentage of students scoring at the satisfactory level on the state's new tests, but it has a long way to go to before all of its schools meet minimum performance standards, according to the latest statewide assessment.One-third of Howard's elementary schools passed some of the 12 categories on the new tests in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). The new standards don't formally count until next year."We're doing very well, and we might have the highest percentage in the state, but no one in the state is meeting [the new]

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.

TOPEKA, KAN. -- The state board of education yesterday approved science standards that question evolution and allow for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. "This is a great day for Kansas," board president Steve Abrams said. "This absolutely raises science standards." The board, in a 6-4 vote, directed schools to teach the "considerable scientific and public controversy" surrounding the origin of life - a controversy that most scientists contend exists only among creationists.

Facing charges of political bias and a threat to its funding from Congress, the Public Broadcasting Service yesterday adopted an updated set of editorial standards and announced that it would add an ombudsman who will report directly to PBS President Pat Mitchell. The action comes in the wake of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's hiring of two ombudsmen in April to give viewers a place to take their "complaints" about public broadcasting, according to CPB Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.

FOR FIVE YEARS nothing was done about a federal law that was supposed to herald an attack on smog. From 1997 until last Wednesday, that law was tied up in legal wrangling. Finally, the "preliminary" jousting has concluded and now the U.S. government can begin thinking about putting it into effect. It's great news, but don't hold your breath. Well, if you can hold your breath, that's not such a bad idea, because smog is a killer. But the next thing that happens is that the Environmental Protection Agency has until April 2004 to decide what areas of the nation fail to meet the new standards.

Amid promises to avert disasters at sea and remove dangerous rust traps from the oceans, a new standard of safety and training takes effect today onboard merchant ships throughout the world. Yet, despite nearly seven years of preparation and anticipation, the new regulations will have almost no effect - because none of the world's maritime powers plans to enforce them. Passed in 1995 by the International Maritime Organization, an arm of the United Nations, the new training standard was designed to ensure that every sailor at sea knows how to fight fires, avoid collisions and save lives.

In a decision offering hope to foreign investors seeking permanent U.S. residency, a federal judge has ordered the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to reconsider the impending expulsion of a Chinese national. U.S. District Judge George H. King, sitting in Los Angeles, upheld the right of the INS to set tougher standards for the investor visa program in a 23-page decision dated May 3. The judge also said the INS must consider whether retroactively imposing those new standards on people who had already signed up for the program would create an undue hardship.

OTHER states that rushed to follow misguided attacks on evolutionary theory in Kansas ought to study results of last Tuesday's Republican primary election there. Kansans turned out three conservative board members who had pushed to remove the study of human evolution from the state's science standards. Analysts believe the voters thought the board's action was embarrassing, making them seem "backward." The repudiation of this action, taken by the board last year, came after an unprecedented election campaign in which one of the defeated board members spent $35,000 on television advertisements trying to save her seat.

Environmental Elements Corp. said yesterday that it is preparing a plan to meet new standards for being listed on the New York Stock Exchange.The Baltimore provider of air-pollution-control systems is one of many companies that could be dropped from the Big Board unless they meet standards that became effective July 27.The NYSE would not disclose the number of companies affected by the new standards, which include:Market capitalization and stockholders equity...

It's crunch time for 17-year-old Becky Bieneman.She and thousands of other Maryland teen-agers are making a frantic dash to driving schools and Motor Vehicle Administration offices to get learner's permits before Thursday, when the state's tough new standards for teen drivers take effect. In recent days, MVA waiting lines have reached record lengths as teens scramble to avoid the new rules.The law is unquestionably a good idea, they agree. For somebody else."There's a lot of young, inexperienced drivers, and it's really dangerous out there," said Bieneman, fresh from her class at a North Baltimore driving school last week.

A proposal to require narrow, curved roads in new Howard County housing developments has angered some community activists, but it won solid support in the County Council last night.Administration officials have pushed the road standards as a way to slow speeding motorists and preserve natural features such as hills, trees and rocks.The proposal has angered some community activists, who contend that the new roads will be more dangerous, not less.In a work session last night, the County Council disagreed.