ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE GROUP PLANS RALLY IN JEFFERSON CITY WEDNESDAY

Three Republican state senators, including Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau, will meet on the Capitol steps in Jefferson City Wednesday with a group called Missourians for Academic Excellence.

The group's president, Lynette Holt of Blue Springs, a Kansas City suburb, said her group is a coalition of parents and educators dedicated to restoring an academic emphasis to Missouri's schools.

She said the group thinks reforms instituted by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education following passage of Senate Bill 380 in 1993 are moving the educational system away from an academic emphasis.

Senate Minority Leader Franc Flotron of St. Louis and Sen. David Klarich of Ballwin will join Kinder at the 1 p.m. rally.

Alan Klaus of Kansas City, who co-wrote a dissenting report on proposed academic performance standards last year, also will be at the rally.

Holt said the group has been monitoring what the department has done to set academic performance standards in the school curriculum.

The draft standards and curricula advanced by the department propose to replace academic standards and curriculum with non-academic performance standards, she said.

Holt hopes a large crowd attends the rally and supports the group's proposed constitutional amendment and four new laws. "We want to encourage the General Assembly to restore public education to parents, taxpayers and locally elected school boards," she said.

Southeast Missouri residents wanting to participate may contact Ray Rowland at Dexter, 314-624-7888. He is planning a bus trip from the area with pick-ups in Dexter, Sikeston and Cape Girardeau.