Report Card

P:President Wilson H. Elkins of the University of Maryland announced that he was wasting no time in correcting the glaring faults found by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools (TIME, Jan. 31). By last week he had 1) formed a 20-man committee to find ways to increase faculty participation in university affairs, 2) appointed an eight-man committee to make a study of the needs of the medical school, 3) asked the legislature for $2,200,000 for a new college library, 4) requested another $150,000 for a new medical library, and 5) made plans to divert $10,000 in athletic scholarships to non-athletes next fall.

P:In 1954, reported the Automobile Manufacturers Association of Detroit, a record 8,900,000 school pupils rode to class in publicly owned or chartered school buses. Cost: $300 million, or 5% of the nation's school budget.

P:The University of Wisconsin recorded in cold statistics some of the symptoms of exam week: the light bills in the residence halls had gone up as much as 15% to $99 a day; coffee consumption was up an estimated 50%. One dormitory snack bar said that it sold 9,000 cups of coffee in a week--a jump of 3,000 over normal.

Just in case the New York City Board of Estimate might hesitate over the proposed salary raise for teachers, the New York Times dropped a couple of hints. Whether or not he can read or write, said the Times, the average car washer in a Manhattan garage makes $72 a week, the rookie street cleaner gets $84. The starting salary for a teacher with a bachelor's degree: $66.

P:In the wake of considerable parental protest, the Washington, D.C. school board was considering a move to abandon the school system's gradeless type of modern report card for elementary schoolchildren. If the move goes through, a pupil will no longer be competing only with himself for such vague comments as "satisfactory," "outstanding," or "needs much improvement." Instead, he will be expected to perform the work for the grade he is in--and get the old-fashioned A, B, C, D or U (for unsatisfactory).

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