Word: evens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Shortages of oil, food, and gasoline have been headlining the news for years. But there is one shortage that has received scant coverage in the Boston media--the drought of newsprint that has sent newspaper publishers around the country scurrying to the backwoods of Maine and even the hinterlands of Italy in search of the paper gold...
...where browsers can check out bestsellers and paperbacks. "I used to be a real elitist," says Librarian Howard Smith. "But we're trying to get people to read at no matter what level." The Dallas public library lends games and dress patterns in low-income neighborhoods. Some libraries even lend gerbils and hamsters, as well as hedge trimmers and posthole diggers-a development that often upsets traditionalists. Sniffs Mrs. Chebie Bateman, library director for Columbus, Miss.: "I believe in furnishing the books and letting the hardware store furnish the tools...
...headquarters in Washington, the air resounded with attacks on testing. Representatives of reform-minded organizations plus a smattering of professors, school administrators and test experts from 28 states gathered at a meeting organized by a cumbersomely titled group ("Project to DEmystify the Established Standardized Tests"). Some of the delegates even grumbled about the national turn toward required competency tests for promotion of elementary and high school students. P.T.A. Representative Ann Kahn said that due to testing, elementary school curriculums are now concentrating on test scores-to the exclusion of basics like good writing. Ralph Nader told the conferees: "Parents...
...overstatement, and a criticism of blind reliance upon tests rather than of the testing companies themselves. Most companies have long cautioned against overdependence on scores. They note, correctly, that national exams deserve credit for enhancing educational opportunities, especially in the case of talented students from lackluster schools. Even so, enough general suspicion of computerized testing organizations exists to spark the reform movement. "It used to be a little fringe group," trumpets Harvard Law Graduate Andrew Strenio, adding: "Now it is going mainstream...
...Peckham last month ruled that California could not use the common Stanford-Binet IQ test to screen pupils for placement in a special program for the "educable mentally retarded." California's EMR program is 25% black, although blacks make up only 10% of the statewide school population. Even under the improbable assumption that black children have 50% more mental retardation than white children, said Peckham, the EMR enrollment pattern had just one chance in 100,000 of occurring without racial bias...