Page S/The Battalion/Wednesday, March 12, 1986
Governor defends literacy tests on air
Associated Press
AUSTIN — Gov. Mark White’s
campaign committee paid to send
Texas television stations his defense
of the teacher literacy test, the presi
dent of Communications Carrier
Inc. said Tuesday.
Company president Saleem Tawil
said the “raw feed” was sent to 25
stations, which received it at no
charge for use on Monday news pro
grams.
He would not disclose how much
of White’s campaign would pay for
the satellite transmission of the 30-
minute footage, taped during the
governor’s Monday tour of a Moto
rola Inc. semiconductor plant.
White was accompanied on the
tour by 22 Austin high school stu
dents and officials from the Texas
Elementary Principals and Supervi
sors Association and the Texas Fed
eration of Teachers.
As more than 200,000 teachers
were taking the basic skills test,
White said at Motorola, “Today, ev
ery teacher in Texas is taking a test
as an important step in laying the ed
ucational groundwork for a new
Texas economy.”
He called the test part of an effort
to improve the public education sys
tem — an overall effort resulting in
higher teacher salaries, more state
funds for poorer school districts and
emphasis oh academic performance.
The governor held a news confer
ence before taking the tour, and Ta
wil said the conference and portions
of the tour were taped by his compa
ny’s crew, which then beamed it to
the 25 stations.
Communications Carrier Inc.
served as a conduit and the stations
taking the feed could use the footage
any way they saw fit, Tawil said.
“It’s unedited,” he said. “That’s
the key thing. When you edit, you
lose credibility.”
Dan Rogers, manager of public
relations and marketing services for
Motorola’s Austin semiconductor
section, said White’s staff requested
the tour last week.
Motorola officials knew about the
satellite arrangements and also knew
the visit would have political over
tones, but the company felt it was
well worth it, he said.
“That’s pretty political at this
time,” Rogers said of White’s com
ments on education issues. “But it’s
important to us. We feel high tech is
an important future for the state of
Texas. We do need education in
Texas.”
Asked Monday who would pay for
the satellite time, White said, “I am.”
Ann Arnold, White’s press secre
tary, later said that meant the bill
would be paid from the governor’s
fu
campaign funds.
U.S. oil imports put OPEC ‘bock in the saddle’
Associated Press
ABILENE — Americans face a
declining standard of living in the
future because the country is becom
ing more reliant on imported oil, an
oil company spokesman and former
television newsman says.
Robert Goralskj, director of com
munications for Gulf Oil Co., and a
former NBC-TV correspondent,
said the oil price situation has the
Organization of Petroleum Export
ing Countries “back in the saddle
again.”
Goralski on Monday warned the
53rd annual meeting of the West
Central Texas Oil and Gas Associa
tion last year’s balance of payments
reached a record deficit of $125 bil
lion.
The purchase of foreign oil ac
counted for $55 billion, or 44 per
cent of the deficit, he said.
In another speech Monday,
Goralski told an Abilene civic club
lower oil prices and dependency on
foreign oil eventually could hurt
consumers as much as oilmen.
Low pump prices mean higher
consumption and waste and greater
levels of imports in the future, he
said.
By 1995, he predicted, the nation
will be importing about 60 percent
of its oil.
Oil is already the single greatest
balance-of-payments problem,
Goralski said, accounting for more
of the trade deficit than cars and far
more than shoes or textiles.
America is in the same shape with
its oil supply Japan and Germany
were on the eve of World War II, he
said.
“Japan and Germany went to war
for lack of oil,” Goralski said.
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor
In Advance
CS Council to meet disc
location of branch
The College Station City Coun
cil will discuss where the city’s
branch library should be put in its
Workshop meeting today at 5
p.m.
The council’s regular meeting
will be held Thursday at 7 p.m.
The library committee has rec
ommended the facility be located
in the South wood Valley Athletic
Park.
Other proposed sites include
Bee Creek Park and the College
Station Community Center. Cur
rently, $194,000 is budgeted for
the operation of the branch li
brary.
The council also will designate
March as “Professional Social
Work Month.”
m inursday’s meetinf
council will hold d r '" W!fl “
council win noia a puDiic
on the proposed use of
sharing funds.
The council also will cot
two amendments to the tit] 1 !
ing ordinances establishing
zoning districts. The Pk
and Zoning Committee rs
mended creating a comm
planned unit development
which will encourageefficie
of commercial sites.
The committee’s st;
amendment would provii
the establishment of a cot
cial Northgate zone. Noni
contains unique and hisc
significance, the committetj
was merely to protect it}> left flank
while its military machine went after
the oil fields of the East Indies,
Goralski said.
Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet
Union with a goal of seizing the Cau-
casion oil fields, he said.
American oil fueled Allied victory
in both World Wars and was again
the major source of supph
American and United Natwu
fighting in Korea, he said.
But m the war in Vietm:
supplied the great bulkofoii
the war effort, he said.
Iran is a source no longc
able, he said.
Teachers complain insufficient time allotted to take tes
19th century exam for teachers discoveie
Associated Press
AUSTIN — Educators who did
not have sufficient time to complete
the basic skills test might be allowed
to take a make-up exam, a Texas Ed
ucation Agency spokeswoman said
Tuesday.
June 30 to keep their state teaching
certificates. A June 28 test is planned
for those who failed Monday.
Spokeswoman Terri Anderson
said, “The main problem we are
hearing about is that some people
did have their tests taken up before
they finished.”
The Texas State Teachers Asso
ciation, which sued to stop the test,
collected complaints Tuesday from
monitors it assigned to test sites.
TSTA spokeswoman Annette
Cootes said the complaints included
insufficient time, confusing instruc
tions, bad air conditioning and a
test-caused car wreck.
going to take,” she said. “We don’t
think they took into consideration
that these people’s jobs were on the
line.”
State officials expected most test-
takers to complete the exam in about
two-and-a-half hours. Many took
much longer.
There was no time limit on the
210,000 people who took the Texas
Examination of Current Adminis
trators and Teachers on Monday.
The test was given in shifts at more
than 850 sites across the state. An
derson said there were some prob
lems on the late shift.
Educators must pass the exam by
Cootes said a Mission teacher said
“she was so upset she didn’t finish
the test that she had a car accident
on the way home.”
The most common problem was
time, she said.
“One recurring problem in almost
every district is that they underesti
mated the amount of time it was
In the North Forest school district
near Houston, 20-25 teachers were
told to write “quit under duress”
when they were forced to hand in
their exams before completion,
according to TSTA.
Anderson said March 22 had been
set as a tentative make-up test date
for teachers or administrators who
missed the test for health or any rea
sons. Teachers who did not com
plete the Monday test also might be
allowed to re-take it that day, she
said.
Associated Press
FORT WORTH — If today’s ed
ucators were bothered by the com
petency test, they should have seen
the questions Fort Worth public
school teachers were asked a cen
tury ago.
The Texas Examination of Cur
rent Administrators and Teachers
given Monday consisted of mul
tiple-choice questions designed to
gauge proficiency in reading and
writing.
Not so with the 19th Century
test. That one ran the gamut of En
glish, mathematics, history and the
sciences.
David Dunnett, a librarian at the
Central Library in Fort Worth, ran
across an exam given Fort Worth
teachers in 1887-88.
The exams were given as a condi
tion of employment when the
schools were under the city govern
ment, according to Joe Sherrod,
Fort Worth school district spokes
man.
“My recollection in reading the
minutes is that the exams were
given over a period of many years,”
he said. “What the significance was
I can’t say, but presumably they
were to test for competency to be a
teacher.”
Some sample questions include:
English:
1. Write sentences in which op
tics, mechanics and music shall be
the subject and the verba
some form of the present le
the verb “to be."
Geography:
3. Why are the polardii
tropics placed 23.5 degree
the poles and the equator?
Mathematics:
2. Hen’s eggs vary so ms
size that in an ordinarylotjw
select seven which will
pound, by taking the larges!;
by taking the smallest. Wte
largest are worth 15 cent
dozen, what are the smalleM
United States history:
1. Name five Union and
Confederate victories durim
Civil War.
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J> -MSC
Wilev Lecture Series
U.S. Interventionism:
Resolving
International Conflict
April 1, 1986
8:00 p.m. — 10:00 p.m.
Gerald R. Ford
Former President of the
United States
Jimmy Carter
Former President of the
United States
Dr. Stephen Ambrose
US Foreign Relations
Specialist. Author. Rise to
Globalism
George Will, Moderator
Pulitzer Prize Winning
Columnist
James Earl Rudder Auditorium, Texas A&M University
Tickets: MSC Box Office (409) 845-1234 • Ticketron
Student
Non-Student
Zone 1 Zone 2
$10 $ 8
$12 $10
MasterCard and VISA accepted.
Zone 3
$6
$8
propria
before;
He s
tions m
explosi<
$350 m