The Year in Review.

The Year in Review. The education world saw some of its best and worst moments in1998--students across the country became part of history when theycommunicated from Earth with then-Sen. John Glenn, who became the oldesthuman in space, and four children and a teacher died in Jonesboro, Ark.,when a student opened fire on school grounds. Here's a look atthose highs and lows--and everything in between. News on the Wired A strong carryover from the year before, technology in schoolscontinued to be a hot topic in 1998. Still making headlines, theE-rate--federal subsidies to help the nation's schools andlibraries foot telecommunications bills. The Federal CommunicationsCommission Federal Communications Commission(FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest. fell short of filling the $2.02 billion in funding requestsit received last year, having collected only about $1.28 billion byDecember. The FCC (1) (Federal Communications Commission, Washington, DC, www.fcc.gov) The U.S. government agency that regulates interstate and international communications including wire, cable, radio, TV and satellite. The FCC was created under the U.S. had voted in June to cut the E-rate subsidies bynearly half to quell the program's congressional critics, whofeared companies would pass on the burden through consumer rate hikes.The E-rate application process is now in its second round ... The WorldWide Web continued to grow by leaps and bounds. By September more than13,000 schools had registered sites--more than 8,000 of those belongingto schools in the United States. Distance learning programs atpostsecondary institutions also expanded steadily, with 58 percent oftwo-year and 62 percent of four-year public colleges offering suchcourses, according to the Education Department ... Educators continuedto brush up to paint, or make clean or bright with a brush; to cleanse or improve; to renew.See also: Brush on technology, mostly by learning to use word processingprograms, Internet browsers and presentation software a la Bill Gates,the chair and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Microsoft. The billionaire was questioned by theJustice Department late last year as part of an antitrust suit againsthis company. An executive from IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , one of Microsoft's chief competitors,testified that "Microsoft Corp.'s market dominance andbusiness practices have hindered the creation of personal computeroperating systems that would compete" with its Windows programssuch as Microsoft Word and Excel, according to a Washington Post report. Arresting Developments 1998 also was a year of scandal and tragedy in education, startingin Seattle, Wash., with the second trial of elementary school teacherMary Kay LeTourneau Mary Fualaau (born January 30 1962 (1962--) (age45), formerly known as Mary Kay Letourneau and Mary Katherine Schmitz , 35, who was sentenced to seven and a half years inprison in 1997 for having an ongoing sexual affair with a 13-year-oldstudent in her sixth-grade class. Married with four children at the timeof her arrest, LeTourneau was charged with two counts of second-degreechild rape. She served six months of her sentence, during which she gavebirth to a daughter (fathered by the student), who remains in the careof the boy's mother. Last February, LeTourneau was sent back toprison for violating her parole. Police caught her in a car with thesame student, with whom she later had a second child. LeTourneau couldget out of prison as early as Aug. 15, 2000, when she is scheduled toappear in court again. An Assault on Schools Four students and a teacher died of gunshot wounds after twostudents opened fire at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., onMarch 24. The Jonesboro incident was among a string of shootings atschools across the nation, including schools in Pearl, Miss., WestPaducah, Ky., and Springfield, Ore. Under Arkansas law the shooters, now14 and 12, can be jailed only until they turn 21. Both were charged withfive counts of capital murder and 10 counts of battery, as nine otherstudents and another teacher also were injured that day. In response tothe rash of incidents, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Rileycalled for states to develop plans for preventing school violence. ByOctober, Louisiana and Maryland had devised such plans, according to theUSA Today. Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D-Md.) set up a hotline thatallows students to report gun crimes anonymously. Signed Into Law In May, President Clinton signed into law the reauthorization ofthe Higher Education Act The Higher Education Act may refer to an Act of either the Congress of the United States or of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Higher Education Act of 1965, an Act of the Congress of the United States which was supposed to strengthen the resources of colleges and after the House approved it by a vote of 414-4.Last revised in 1993, the HEA HEA Higher Education Academy (York, UK)HEA Higher Education Act of 1965HEA Higher Education AuthorityHEA Health Education AuthorityHEA High Energy AstrophysicsHEA Happily Ever AfterHEA Hockey East Association provides funds for teacher training andrecruitment programs and increases Pell grants for college students. Thereauthorized bill also reduces the interest rate on college loans from8.1 to 7.4 percent. Clinton also signed the Workforce Investment Act in1998, which made one-stop career centers the key vehicles for employmentand training programs funded by the Labor Department The Department of Labor (DOL) administers federal labor lawsfor the Executive Branch of the federal government. Its mission is "to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners of the United States, to improve their working . The new WIA WIAabbr.wounded in action alsocreated a separate section for youth activities funding and eliminatesJTPA JTPAn abbr (US) (= Job Training Partnership Act) → programa gubernamental de formaci��n profesionalJTPAn abbr (US) (= Job Training Partnership Act) → effective July 1, 2000 ... It went down to the wire, but House and Senate negotiators cut aseries of 11th-hour deals to make it possible for Congress to pass theCarl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act was first authorized by the federal government in 1984 and reauthorized in 1998. Named for Carl D. Perkins, the act aims to increase the quality of technical education within the United States in order to help the economy. before the end ofthe lawmakers' session in October. See "The New Perkins ...Finally" on page 40 of this issue. A Matter of Choice Vouchers continued to fuel the school choice issue. Vouchersprovide families the funds (private and public) to send their childrento a school of their choice, including religious and private schools.Voucher opponents argue that public money should be used to improve thenation's public school system, while voucher supporters say thecompetition vouchers create is a much-needed measure. Powers in Charge Stephanie Powers took over as director of the NationalSchool-to-Work Office in July. Previously with the LaborDepartment's Employment and Training Administration, Powers movedinto the position as many states began to look toward the expiration ofthe STW Opportunities Act and federal funding in 2001. One Union? After months of discussion, there was no merger for thenation's teachers' unions. Delegates to the National EducationAssociation voted in July to reject the "Principles of Unity"that would have merged the NEA NEAabbr.1. National Education Association2. National Endowment for the ArtsNEA(US) n abbr (= National Education Association) → Verband f��r das Erziehungswesen and the American Federation of Teachers American Federation of Teachers(AFT), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. It was formed (1916) out of the belief that the organizing of teachers should follow the model of a labor union, rather than that of a professional association. ,creating the largest union in the country. NEA President Bob Chase andAFT President Sandra Feldman made several appearances together tocampaign for the merger, but in the end the NEA (2.3 million members)and the AFT 9950,000 members) would remain autonomous. The NEA's reasons for nixing the merger included concernsabout the new governance structure and closer ties with the AFL-CIO AFL-CIO:see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. AFL-CIOin full American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial OrganizationsU.S. .However, the NEA vote did allow for state-level mergers. Ag Done Proud For the first time ever, a vocational-technical teacher wonOutstanding Teacher of the Year honors from the Walt Disney Company. RayChelewski, an agriculture teacher from Presque Isle Regional TechnologyCenter in northeast Maine, was recognized in June at a star-studdedevent in Los Angeles. A self-described "very rural guy,"Chelewski, 45, found himself getting whisked away to appearances on GoodMorning America Good Morning America is a weekday morning news show that is broadcast on the ABC television network. The show was adapted from The Morning Exchange, a morning show created by and airing on the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, and was launched nationally as and Fox News. As part of the award, Chelewski received a$25,000 honorarium HONORARIUM. A recompense for services rendered. It is usually applied only to the recompense given to persons whose business is connected with science; as the fee paid to counsel. 2. , his school received $25,000 and the Presque Isledistrict got $10,000 ... Vote Getter? Education again was a popular platform in the November elections inwhich there were 36 gubernatorial races, 469 House and Senate contestsand more than 6,000 state legislative elections, according to EducationWeek. In a survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882—August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. Early lifeBeginning as a cashier in a dry-goods shop in Utica, New York, Kaiser moved many times as he pursued the Family Foundation and HarvardUniversity, 47 percent of respondents said "education and publicschools" had the most influence on their vote. Gubernatorialwinners George Ryan (R-Ill.), John Rowland (R-Conn.) and Tommy Thompson(R-Wis.) were strong supporters of vocational-technical education andschool-to-work in their campaigns. Gov. Ryan, for example, has promisedto put 51 cents for every new dollar the state earns into education andworkforce training programs. Out of This World In October, then-Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), the first American toorbit the Earth 36 years ago, returned to space aboard the space shuttleDiscovery. Part of a seven-member crew, Glenn, 77, captured headlines ashe became the oldest person in space. He took part in an extensiveseries of tests to study the effects of weightlessness weightlessness,the absence of any observable effects of gravitation. This condition is experienced by an observer when he and his immediate surroundings are allowed to move freely in the local gravitational field. on the agingprocess. Along with mission commander Curtis Brown, Glenn hosted a liveaudio interview with students from the Washington, D.C., area' andhis home state of Ohio. Eight schools had scientific experiments aboardthe space shuttle, including Vero Beach (Calif.) High School. Studentssent radish radish,herbaceous plant (Raphanus sativus) belonging to the family Cruciferae (mustard family), with an edible, pungent root sliced in salads or used as a relish. seeds planted in drops of gibberellic acid, aplant-strengthening hormone, to test the seeds' absorption of thechemical in zero gravity. Twelve years after teacher Christa McAuliffeand six other crew members died in the space shuttle Challengerexplosion, NASA NASA:see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASAin full National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationIndependent U.S. announced last spring that it will continue itsteacher-in-space program. A third-grade teacher from McCall, Idaho,Barbara Morgan--who was McAuliffe's backup in 1986--will completeanother two-year training program and should be mission-capable by 2000.