The South Carolina Department of Education has received a $50,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to hold a “curriculum congress” this summer.
The grant, which will be matched with money from the state, will allow South Carolina to be the first state to bring together educators from across all disciplines, parents, and community leaders to determine what students need to know.
The state hopes that the first “frameworks” for several major subject areas will be completed by next year, and wants all subjects to be covered by 1994.
Last summer, the Collaboratives for Humanities and Arts Teaching, a Rockefeller-funded coalition of 13 projects, was a sponsor of the first national curriculum congress.
A second national curriculum congress will be held this summer.
The West Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to rule in a case testing whether school employees can be held liable for incidents that take place on school property.
The five-judge high court said it would hear the case involving the Boone County schools and the family of an elementary-school student who was injured on school playground equipment. The girl broke both arms while playing on school equipment during the school day, said Manuel Arvon, the Boone school superintendent, who is named as a defendant in the suit.
Mr. Arvon contends that state law protects him from a lawsuit unless he acts maliciously or outside of his authority as a superintendent.
But lawyers for the girl’s family claim that Mr. Arvon is covered by state and local government liability insurance and, thus, is not immune from being sued.
A lower court agreed with the family on that point but asked the supreme court to render an opinion.
California should overhaul its statewide assessment program to make the tests more useful to educators, stus, and potential employers, a state advisory committee says.
A blue-ribbon advisory committee established by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig late last month recommended that the state implement a new assessment system that would include statewide standards and mechanisms for guiding the improvement of individual students.
Thomas Payzant, superintendent of the San Diego City Unified School District and the committee’s chairman, said the new assessment system proposed by his panel would be more reliable and more like systems used by other industrialized countries.
