ABC Coverage

Chronicle of lower education

Education is a subject that touches the heart and the pocketbook of millions of Americans. But it is usually spoken of, and written about, in the glutinous jargon of educators, guaranteed to obfuscate the issues and glaze the eye. This month, however, public discourse about education got a little affirmative action in the form of a new weekly newspaper called Education Week. The 24-page tabloid is published in Washington, D.C., by Editorial Projects in Education Inc., a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that founded and later sold the sprightly, respected Chronicle of Higher Education. At a yearly subscription rate of $39.94 (charter subscribers pay $19.97), Education Week claims to report the ABC's of primary and secondary education, the two areas where American pedagogy is most in need of dramatic improvement. Says Editor Ronald Wolk, a former magazine editor and educational administrator: "Our objective is to become American education's newspaper of record."

Education Week's first edition offered a splendid scoop: a series of excerpts from the 91-page secret memo written by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell telling how he plans to dismantle the Education Department and change the Government's role in education. Wolk's staff of 20 provides a weekly summary of education news in short takes, plus clear but comprehensive studies of major issues. One notable example: a detailed and trenchant analysis of the status and achievements of busing just as the policy is about to be abandoned. The paper's 19,000 charter subscribers are mostly educational policymakers--state officials, school superintendents and principals. So far. Education Week seems to deserve an A.--

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