Teachers at Lakeside School in Indiana State Prison must cope with students' discouragement, bureaucratic obstacles, disruptive prison routines, funding problems, overcrowding, tension, stress, and violence. Nevertheless, prisoners are receiving General Equivalency Diplomas and preparing for brighter futures in society. (PB)

School boards may permit incumbent teacher unions access to mailboxes while prohibiting rival unions such access. Dissenting justices argued that exclusive access is discrimination and amounts to censorship and infringement of the First Amendment. School boards should consider carefully before granting exclusive access to incumbent unions. (PB)

Familiar high school problems include unprepared and apathetic students, inadequate teachers' salaries and benefits, and outmoded grade-level systems. Improvement requires new schooling models including clearer goals, advancement linked to skills mastery, promotion of thinking skills, less fragmented school time, elimination of age-grading, less…

The Project on Alternatives in Education (1981) on North American alternative schools shows the movement's steady growth, high staff morale and control, and attendance. Factors contributing to success: smallness, choice, extended roles, relative autonomy, continuing evaluation, and teacher participation. Teacher/student relationship and positive…

The effective school's perspective for evaluating educational programs is not a scientific but rhetorical reform model. Definition of effective schooling must include school-wide and continuing achievement gains. Effective schooling research is geared toward educational policy. Effective schooling research should instruct administrators and…

Effective schools research problems (unreliable descriptions and definitions, over-dependency on tests, research limited primarily to elementary schools) result in narrow formulas leading to increased standardization, neglect of nonacademic areas, and failure to improve in schools with high test scores. Author urges using broader, more complex…

A preliminary analysis of three effective schools projects in Wisconsin and New York shows general improvement, especially in school climate and basic skills teaching. Administrative support included district, central office, and higher education personnel for staff development. Successful implementation can result in substantial immediate…

This study emphasizes the relationship of perception to thinking and explains direct teaching of thinking. Without clarity of seeing and creativity, perception is shown to become narrow patterning. The Cognitive Research Trust program is recommended for teaching thinking skills using transferable thinking "tools." Self-images of students are…

Sixty 15-minute television programs help students learn to reason and systematically solve problems. The goals are confident, flexible thinking; self-management; effective expression; and systematic reasoning. The cognitive skills emphasized include information collecting, classifying, and communicating effectively. A resource list is provided.…

A Public Broadcasting Service television series uses national and international current events to stimulate critical analysis in high school students. Among facets of critical analysis and supporting teaching strategies examined are determination of perspective, evaluation of logic, analysis of supplementary materials, projections into the future,…

Basic skills being taught are often unrelated to skills required by new technologies. Teaching obsolete skills in minimum competency programs is useless, even racist. The concept of basic skills changes with emergent technology. Sound instructional systems require meaningful philosophy, goals, and awareness of the findings of developmental…

In the proposed Master Teacher Program, training, experience, and performance determine pay. Four career stages are set up for teachers: apprentice, professional, senior, and master. An estimated 87 percent of all Tennessee teachers would be eligible for pay incentives ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 a year. (PB)

The plan undermines tenure and collective bargaining. Tenure law already provides for the identification of incompetents while higher certification standards would ensure master teachers. Administraters of merit pay systems discriminate against minorities and women. The proposed evaluation process is not clear. Teachers were excluded from…

Educators should recognize the distinction between education and propaganda. True education warns against the "apocalyptic premise" of utopians such as Jonathan Schell and teaches that the chief threat is neither the United States nor nuclear technology but the Soviet Union. Soviet involvement in peace movements is suggested. (PB)

This study objects to the "very specious statistical arguments" of Ernest Sternglass and Steven Bell in the April issue of this magazine, in which illogical and inconsistent statistical evidence suggested cognitive damage during infancy may be linked to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons from 1954 to 1963. (PB)