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The search for a new superintendent in Palm Beach County, Fla., took a strange turn when a member of the search committee posted the names of 39 candidates on a listserv of school administrators. Karen Brill, a Palm Beach mother appointed to the search committee by the school board, asked educators on the K12ADMIN listserv to post anything they knew about the candidates.
A few on-line administrators replied with disparaging remarks about a name or two on the list, and some wailed at the realization that their own (beloved) superintendent had applied for a new position. The most common response, though, was outrage that the names were published in the first place. Many educators questioned the ethics and even the legality of releasing the names. Jerry Taylor, an educational technology coordinator at Arcadia Middle School in Greece, N.Y., acknowledged the posting might have been legal, but deployed this critique, including the "emoticon" at the end: "Words like 'reprehensible,' 'distasteful,' and 'intrusive' come to mind! ;-("
Brill did not apologize for publishing the names. Calling herself the "sacrificial mom," she defended her action as necessary in a district where "test scores are dropping [and] our children are in kindergarten classrooms of 30 to 40 children." And she pointed out that, thanks to Florida's Sunshine Law, which requires release of all public documents, the names had been publicized through local newspapers and television stations. In fact, when the field narrowed to nine, she said, the Palm Beach Post advertised a phone number for readers who wanted to receive any of the finalists' resumes by fax.
S. James Rosenfeld, a Potomac, Md., education law expert, supported Brill's position. "Given the normally formal and constrictive nature of such search proceedings, it seems to me that Ms. Brill should be commended for the seriousness with which she carries out her responsibility and her resourcefulness in doing so," he told offended administrators.
In the end, the Palm Beach board picked Volusia County, Fla., Superintendent Joan Kowal for the top spot. Resentment lingered among administrators who still didn't like the idea of their future job searches being so widely publicized, but they were beginning to see the truth in Brill's words: "The Internet has changed the world. We have no secrets anymore."
WPHE is still in its first year of operation, but already it's landed something most other TV stations only dream about: an exclusive interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The crew at Pine Hall Elementary School's cable station near Walnut Cove, N.C., got the interview the old-fashioned way: They asked for it. Rep. Richard Burr, R-N.C., helped arrange for four kids and their teacher, Jayson Duncan, to attend the press conference that accompanied the presentation of a North Carolina Christmas tree at the White House. During the press conference, Mrs. Clinton accepted WPHE's invitation to grant an exclusive interview.
The fourth and fifth-graders asked Mrs. Clinton about her career. Nobody pressed her about Whitewater or the Rose Law Firm, but the kids did ask why she decided to be a lawyer. (Her answer? That she wanted to help children.)
The interviewers returned, as heroes, to Pine Hall. They were themselves interviewed on WPHE's morning program, which is broadcast from what was built as a mock space station--a 12-by-21-foot enclosure covered in sheeting where young astronauts conduct 30-hour "space missions" every spring.
Duncan, who supervises both the space missions and the in-school cable system for WPHE, says early exposure to journalism helps kids develop research skills, improve their writing, and boost self-confidence. Besides Mrs. Clinton, they've interviewed Tipper Gore, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and entertainer John Davidson.
WPHE correspondent Aaron Flinchum points to the educational value of hobnobbing with celebrities: "I've learned not to be nervous in front of the camera except when I'm interviewing the First Lady of the United States." He admits another test of confidence came when President Clinton put in a surprise visit and Aaron inadvertently bumped into his stomach.
But all's well that ends well. "I've been interviewed many times, and you did an excellent job," Mrs. Clinton told the students at the end of the four-minute taped session.
Now the young journalists want to go for something bigger. What could be bigger than an interview with Mrs. Clinton--and a stomach-bump with her husband? "Right now the goal is an interview with Michael Jordan," says Duncan. "We just have to write a letter that his publicist likes to read."
Why just learn about computers when you can build your own? That's the premise behind a new program in some high schools that has kids assembling from scratch computers they can keep.
Thomas Salazar, for example, a student at Vista East High School in Bakersfield, Calif., worked long and hard in his school's "Build Me, Keep Me" program. But at the end of four months, he had a computer with a 486 microprocessor to show for his efforts. Including the monitor and keyboard, his creation is worth about $700.
The program, in place in several schools around the country, is the brainchild of Henkels & McCoy, a Philadelphia company that created "Build Me, Keep Me" out of frustration with its inability to hire employees adequately trained on computers. The organization works with local agencies, such as Employers Training Resource in Bakersfield, to put its program in schools.
Vista East began offering the program five years ago, enrolling mostly those students at risk of dropping out of school, says Pete Parra, executive director of Employers Training Resource.
Vista East students have assembled more than 500 computers since the program began, says Parra, with many graduates taking the computers with them when they go on to college and vocational schools.
Following the rigorous 15-week program, students gain more than just new computers, says Vista East's principal, Fuchsia Ward. They become thoroughly acquainted with how the computers work, and they learn how to fix the machines when they run into trouble.
For some students, such as Jessica Diaz, the experience is the first step on a career path. Diaz enrolled in the program, she says, simply to earn credits. But along the way, she discovered a talent for computers, and now she plans to continue studying electronics at a technical school in Arizona.
"I wasn't even interested in this when I started," she says.
New technologies are helping science education in New Mexico take a giant step forward into our final frontier: space.
Students in classrooms around New Mexico will soon be operating a telescope by remote control to view stars on their computer screens under a program that also seeks to build an astronomy theme park to entertain and educate space enthusiasts.
The LodeStar project begins this spring, when school computers will be linked with a 14-inch telescope at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. Elementary and secondary school students throughout the state will maneuver the telescope with their computers.
"I think it will have a dramatic effect on science education," says John McGraw, executive director of LodeStar. "It's a huge step forward."
Project workers plan eventually to supplement the Socorro telescope with a larger, 30-inch telescope atop South Baldy Mountain in the Cibola National Forest, according to McGraw. And LodeStar's second phase--a facility for teacher training and hands-on education programs for children--will open in 1998 near Albuquerque. The facility will operate in conjunction with the Albuquerque Children's Museum and the Explora! Science Center.
The final phase of the LodeStar project will be called Enchanted Skies Park, a tourist attraction incorporating astronomy, education, and entertainment. Scheduled to be completed in 1999, Enchanted Skies will be the first outdoor park in the nation dedicated solely to public exploration of the night sky.
LodeStar is managed by a consortium of science, education, and government agencies, including the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Acoma Pueblo, the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. The project is funded partly by a $15.8 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and $12 million from the New Mexico Legislature.
The bond vote has passed, and you're preparing to sink millions of dollars into new technologies for your schools. What should you do first? In Mississippi, school officials in two districts created teacher training programs they believe go beyond the usual superficial, one-day training events.
In Meridian and Columbus, school officials set up free-standing computer training labs that teachers use every Wednesday, when students are dismissed early. Columbus and Meridian are only two of a handful of districts in Mississippi that give teachers the time to learn how to use computers, according to teacher unions in the state.
Thanks to a successful bond vote, Columbus schools this year added five computers to every classroom and created a full-time training center at one school. But district officials did not believe it would be enough simply to place the computers in classrooms without offering teachers regular, ongoing training.
"We took the approach that training is a process, not an event," says Bob Hudson, assistant superintendent for instruction in Columbus. "[With] any kind of program this massive . . . training is not going to be overnight. We'll have a lab set up the rest of this year and probably next year as well."
School officials say the Wednesday workshops work well because they give teachers time to experiment without the pressure of supervising students or worrying that they're not covering enough material or not using the technology most efficiently. "The very best way to do it is to teach somebody for a couple of hours and then let them go use it," says Rebecca Taylor, a Columbus elementary principal and technology trainer. "Then . . . next week show them something else."
Meridian requires every new teacher hired to be trained in the technology department. Hargie Crenshaw, the district's assistant superintendent for staff development and secondary education, says, "Our goal is ultimately to get everyone trained."
All schools and libraries should be on the information highway by the year 2000, with their communities picking up the $11 billion price tag, recommends a panel appointed by President Clinton.
"We know it's going to happen anyway in 15 to 20 years," says Ed McCracken, cochairman of the United States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure. "What we decided was, why not do it earlier? The benefits to the country would be great," says McCracken, head of Silicon Graphics Inc.
But schools often remain leery of making big computer purchases, worried they will buy the wrong thing or spend thousands on quickly obsolete equipment, the panel noted. Poorer school districts and those in rural areas face special problems. Often, schools must do expensive renovations simply to get modern phone lines into old buildings.
Community leaders are key because federal grants pay for only a few pilot projects, says Carol Fukunaga, a Hawaii state senator on the panel. Parents with technical knowledge are often a school's best resource, the panel found. But it encouraged schools to seek help anywhere: from corporations, state agencies, or colleges and universities. McCracken suggested schools scraping for money consider lower-cost, used equipment for starters. "Even fairly low-powered computers can be fairly good Internet access points," he says.
The panel cited these success stories, among others:
Connecting each public school to the Internet would cost from 1.5 percent to 2 percent of the total budget for schools nationwide, or about $11 billion, the panel estimated. That figure assumes putting about 25 computers per school into a special classroom, or lab, where teachers can take classes once a day.
But computers are more useful if they're integrated into lessons, researchers say. Such a setup, providing one computer for every five students by 2005, would require at least 4 percent of total school spending, or $47 billion, the panel says. About 1.3 percent of public school spending is now devoted to technology.
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