| Notes |
National News Magazine to Track Rochester Student’s Progress
January 9, 1988
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) _ Fourth-grader Dante Hooker is pretty much like the other kids in his class, except he’ll have America peering over his shoulder when he gets his report card or turns in his homework.
U.S. News and World Report plans to monitor Dante’s progress in school for several years and write periodic stories about him to gauge the success of the city school district’s reforms, which have attracted national attention.
The first story appears next week, the magazine said.
The Rochester district has dramatically increased salaries so that the average teacher will earn $40,000 a year and has made teachers more accountable for what goes on in classrooms.
The city has also been named the home of a think tank on education reforms, the National Center for Education and the Economy, which had been based in Washington.
Dante, 10, was chosen because he is representative of many of the children in the city school district, in which more than half the students are black and a majority of them are from low-income families, said Jerry Buckley, a senior editor at the magazine and author of the first article.
″This particular kid’s description fit what we were looking for,″ Buckley said recently.
Dante’s teacher, Barbara Nielander, said he was probably selected for another reason: Dante likes to talk.
The news magazine’s coverage of Dante could last for as long as seven years because the results of the measures taken this year may take that long to start appearing, Buckley said.
The editor said he hopes that Dante will offer some indications of whether the changes have made any difference.
When he was asked if was excited about the upcoming article, Dante offered a quick, ″Nope.″ He’s trying to take it all in stride, said his mother Nettie Lloyd, who calls her son a hero. |