Education: Try Harder

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Carnegie stresses writing skills

Hardly a week goes by without a new study of the nation's public schools. The latest such report, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, may be the most thoughtful and specific of the lot. Titled High School: a Report on Secondary Education in America, it was produced over a period of 30 months by a team of 23 educators and trained observers who spent 2,000 hours examining 15 representative high schools and interviewing teachers, principals and students. Carnegie President Ernest Boyer, former U.S. Commissioner of Education under President Jimmy Carter, collected their journals and wrote the final account, which is being published this month by Harper & Row. Says Boyer: "This report on the American high school begins with the conviction that the time for renewing education has arrived. If we do not seize this special moment, we will fail the coming generation and the nation."

High School ticks off a crisp, twelve-point "agenda for action" with four main priorities:

> All students should master oral and written English and should be tested before they enter high school to make sure they are proficient in the subject.

> All students should take a core curriculum. In addition to strengthening traditional courses in literature, history, mathematics and science, schools should require classes in a foreign language, the arts, civics, non-Western studies, health and technology.

>The lot of the nation's beleaguered teachers should be improved, not only by higher pay and greater recognition but by allowing them more time to concentrate on professional tasks.

> Students should be trained to be responsible citizens by being required to spend at least 30 hours a year (evenings, weekends or summers) doing volunteer work on projects in their communities.

The Carnegie Foundation also calls for federal funds and participation in setting up a network of residential math and science academies for gifted students and establishing a National Teacher Service that would provide scholarships for top students who want to become teachers themselves. Although President Reagan remains steadfast in his argument that schooling is a local responsibility, Secretary of Education Terrel Bell has already praised the Carnegie report for its "breadth and creativity."