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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 26, 1980)
by Jim £arl| |Foi ent Education: by ANN ARNOLD United Press International AUSTIN — Thousands of Spanish-speaking children and pupils who fail to meet academic expectations for their grade levels will find themselves in summer school if the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Education has its way. The committee’s blueprint for improving the quality of education also proposes eliminating non-essentials from school curricula and cur tailing public schools’ responsibility to hand icapped pupils. The 18-page report — adopted unanimously Tuesday after a year of study — outlines a num ber of certain-to-be controversial proposals for re-emphasizing basic academic programs in public education. “Education must focus primarily on intellec tual development of students,” the committee declared. Recommendations — which will be reviewed next week by Gov. Bill Clements — call for providing state funds for local districts to offer summer classes and to pay costs of services to the handicapped mandated by federal regula tions and court decisions. “Students with limited English-speaking ability would be required, mandated to go to summer school,” said Dr. Willis S. Tate of Dal las, SMU president and the committee’s chairman. The committee did not spell out how stu dents could be forced to attend summer classes, although some committee members suggested students who refuse could be held back a year along with any others who fail to perform at grade level. The committee considered but discarded language that, if approved by the Legislature, would have required every school district to offer summer classes. Critics said the expense would be too great in some rural districts. Bilingual education was endorsed as “appropriate” to help students make the transi tion from Spanish to English, but the commit tee said the emphasis should be on making students proficient in English as soon as pos sible. Other recommendations propose: — Repealing state laws requiring students to take certain subjects such as Texas history and giving the state Board of Education authority to establish and implement a basic curriculum for public schools. — Requiring 80 percent of the instructional time in kindergarten through third grade and 70 percent of the instruction time in grades four through six to be devoted to essential curricu lum elements — English language arts (includ ing reading and comprehension), mathematics and health. “I think I liked it better when registration was less personal. — Changing federal laws requiring public schools to provide an expensive array of ser vices to certain handicapped children under age 5 or above age 18. OH wow!! THIS /VEW buildxag IS great! you CA/'/ ALAOST 5 NEAREST 5TUPE/VT PARKING L FKOAA HERE... THE CAAPOS PARKING SPACE’. THE FI A/A L FROA/TlHR — Setting new criteria for “mainstreaming to preclude placing handicapped children in normal classrooms if their presence will cause “continual disruption or would otherwise nega tively affect the teaching-learning setting for nonhandicapped students in the class.” — Setting codes of conduct for students, with contracts for students and parents to sign in dicating their knowledge of rules and regula tions. Consultant short-term stresses planning — Giving teachers substantial pay raises to make their salaries competitive with profes sional positions in business and industry. — Designating exceptional educators as “Master Teachers” with extra pay and supervi sion duties over other teachers. — Competency testing for prospective teachers in general academic skills, knowledge of the subject they plan to teach and proficiency in teaching skills. — Systematic testing of students to assess their achievement and restricting so-called “so cial promotions.” — Expanding course offerings to 12th grad ers to allow any student to participate in a work- study program, vocational technical training and some classes for college credit. by LeROY POPE United Press Internationa] NEW YORK — If a company has a five-year plan in these troubled days the best thing to do with it is lock it up in the safe and start thinking in terms of six months or less, says David Hun- sicker, a Woodland Hills, Calif, management consultant. In three years Hunsicker has built a firm with 110 employees and $10 million revenues from blue chip clients, largely by pushing this philo sophy. But there’s another policy plank in his Institute for Management Resources program that he considers equally important: a consult ing firm should insist on being allowed to imple ment its own recommendations. For that reason you won’t find many of Hun- sicker’s employees around the Woodland Hills office — they’re all out working at clients’ offices or plants helping to put recommenda tions in force. Hunsicker, a native of Kansas, became a Goodyear plant manager at Topeka as a young Goodyear is one of his clients now — a rapid and disastrous dropii dactivity... results largely from tilled complacency and unsown tudes on the part of managemi workers, the politicians am public. ” United Prei NEW ORI right-hand i Louisiana Gov Wednesday pli charges in the tion and dema missed becau news leaks by rials. Charles E. served Edwarc of administrate nocent plea b (rate Ingard 0 set a tentative 28. Roemer $35,000 bond. But Roen Michael Fawe dismiss the eteering and cause of “egn tal misconduc tails of the ir press. If the court the charges, f persons who held in contei Roemer joi 5perce Rea \ United Pre AUSTIN — ieagan will dire aigning in Te: lemocrats, inde t-splitters” 1 inf lovember, Gov Clements, de leagan’s Texas i laid the indepi plitters” could i the president “Our polls shi f the voters ar cans, 35 percen 5 percent who plitters or inde ihere this elei “We’re not sure the 12th grade is getting anything done in Texas,” Tate said. The committee said too many high school seniors lack only one or two courses to graduate and can become disruptive without something to challenge them. On handicapped students, the committee complained some schools are having to spend $25,000 a year on a single child under federal regulations that force the local districts to pay costs of non-educational services. “The responsibility of schools for ‘education’ does not and, in a practical sense cannot, extend aroud the clock,” the committee said. The committee said local districts should pro vide special programs for all gifted and talented students. then joined a national consulting firm. He res igned after several years out of sheer frustration because too often the recommendations his firm made were filed away and forgotten by the client management. Lately he has added another target for his consultative arrows, an abiding concern with improving productivity or at least arresting the decline of American productivity. “We are experiencing a rapid and disastrous drop in productivity and it results largely from unjustified complacency and unsound attitudes on the part of management, workers, the politi cians and the public,” he told UPI. He is particularly concerned by manage ment’s failure to be sufficiently concerned with productivity. He says he has encountered some large companies in serious trouble because, in stead of being concerned with genuine produc tivity and efficiency, management was in ks terested primarily in producing ports that showed impressive bottom linepi gains which, on analysis by a qualified coil! tant, turned out to be J5^o*lute delusions. To get back to reality, Hunsicker said, corporate permissiveness must first bee! ated. “Many managers don’t seem tore that when there’s no follow-up checking, ployees naturally assume the boss doesn’trc care.” Next, he said, it’s necessary to stopconfe delegation and responsibility — that v been delegated will be done. “You can’ that, because you hired the people and think your judgment is good, everything'™ right.” Hunsicker also had some advice for fir® choosing a management consultant: —“If the fellow gives you double talkoii dulges in vagaries, he’s a flim-flammer. —“Insist that the consultant give you nite proposal based on his having invesl own time and money in your problem. —“Get a firm advance estimate ofthecoi! the services he is offering in money and in terms of what he expects to accomf! for your productivity, efficiency and per share. —“Insist on knowing what he intendsti 1 for this year, not five years hence.” “Governor R ious appeal to ’oters, and thei an extremely sampaign.” Clements a ’ou would be; lasm among 1 mor Reagan." The govemoi prepared to s Housl Battalion solicits United Fi HOUSTON buncil Tuesd; ‘Study to help d< ing Ellington / sip alleviate t ^ji Jlobby Airport The study w: ities, discover >e absorbed by London conference discusses origins of man letters, opinions by ROBERT MUSEL United Press International LONDON — When did human characteris tics first emerge among man’s predecessors? Anthropologist Mary Leakey believes the early hominids learned to walk erect between 3 and 4 million years ago. She discovered a trail of footprints in Tanzania which is believed to date from that time. Whoever or whatever made the footprints was walking in bipedal locomotion without the use of its arms. Leakey described her find at a meeting here, sponsored by the Royal Society and the Brtish Academy, to discuss the timing of the changes that led to humans and to speculate on the pressures that forced their development. Russel Tuttle of the University of Chicago said the earliest known hominid remains, from Afar in Ethiopia, show that 3 million-31/2 million years ago there already was evidence among the ape-like characteristics that the hands could have made tools — a shift in the human direc tion. The origin of verbal communication was another subject of discussion. Glyn Isaac of the University of California at Berkeley, who re ported on the meeting for the scientific maga zine, Nature, differed from the expressed view that speech had become part of the cultural evolution some 2 million years ago. Isaac said that in his opinion the early pri mates who inhabited the oldest known archaeological sites in Tanzania and elsewhere between l x /2 million-2 million years ago were nontalking, non-human hominids. He said, however, that artifacts and broken up bones found at these sites encouraged the hypothesis that they had a system of food shar ing which in turn could have created pressures towards the development of language. On diet, Alan Walker of Johns Hopkins Uni versity said electron microscope study of the teeth of early hominids showed wear and polish similar to that found on eaters of fruit and soft leaves. There was no indication they lived on grass or cracked bones in their teeth. Peter Jones of Oxford told the conference he made stone tools similar to those found at va rious ancient sites, in each case using the cor rect local material. He said he found the raw material had a strong influence on the finished form of the tool, a finding which may affect current theories on the progress of tool making. Another potentially important development came from J. Loewenstein of the University of California at San Francisco who has succeeded in measuring the immunological differences be tween fossil proteins and living organisms. Use of his process, said Isaac, could help settle the long standing controversy over the date apes and hominids went their separate ways up the evolutionary tree. The Battalion solicits guest opinions letters to the editor for the Viewpoint Letters or guest pieces will be maybe ten on anything of campus, local, state tional or world concern. To be accepted for publication, le should meet the following criteria: — They should be typed or printed!? ibly, and double-spaced. -— They should bear the author’s address and home and/or office number. The Battalion reserves the right to t« letters for style and length. Letters wil® be edited for content. Letters may be sent through the t mail, campus mail system, or they nia)’ delivered in person to The Battalion,! Reed McDonald Building, Texas A&Ml versity. The Battalion U S P S 045 360 MEMBER T LETTERS POLICY Southwest Journalism Congress Letters to the Editor should not exceed 300 words in length, and Editor Dillard Stone are su ^J ect to being cut if they are longer. The editorial staff City Editor'.'.'. '. '.'.Becky Swanson res ? rves the n g ht t0 edit letters L for st { ,e and lengt ^ b “ f wlU Sports Editor Richard Oliver make t e , ve 7 ^ 7 T"" !,/ Z * l 1 T xt t- j i. r r*i must also be signed, show the address and phone number ot the News Editor Lynn Blanco writer Staff Writers. . Uschi Michel-Howell, Debbie Nelson, Columns and guest editorials are also welcome, and are not Cathy Saathoff Scot K. Meyer, Jon Heidtke subject t0 the same iength constraints as letters. Address all Kurt Allen inquiries and correspondence to: Editor, The Battalion, 216 Cartoonist Scott McCullar Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX Photo Editor Lee Roy Leschper Jr. 77843. Photographer Marsha Hoehn The Battalion is published Tuesday through Thursday during EDITORIAL POLICY Texas A&M’s summer school schedule. Mail subscriptions are $16.75 per semester, $33.25 per school year and $35 per full The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper op- year. Advertising rates furnished on request. erated as a community service to Texas A&M University and Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald Building, Bryan-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843. those of the editor or the author, and do not necessarily repre sent the opinions of Texas A&M University administrators or United Press International is entitled exclusively to the use faculty members, or of the Board of Regents. for reproduction of all news dispatches credited to it. Rights of Questions or comments concerning any editorial matter reproduction of all other matter herein reserved. should be directed to the editor. 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