NITE School

The program was launched last January by the Jefferson County Public Schools--the 93,000student district that encompasses Louisville--with the help of a $500,000, threeyear grant from the U.S. Education Secretary's Fund for Innovation in Education. The evening classes, which are free and meet twice a week for six weeks, are the initiative's key component. The classes are offered at eight public middle schools--up from five last year--and are taught by district teachers. Any Jefferson County middle school student--public, private, or parochial--is eligible for the course, which covers word processing, data bases, spreadsheets, and programming. If a student's parent can't take part, a volunteer from the business community fills in as his or her partner.

NITE school teachers lead the parent-student pairs through the basics first, and then they help them design instructional materials on their own. Participants all use Linkway, a software similar to Apple Computer's Hypercard, which lets users integrate text, graphics, sound, and animation. Officials hope that middle school classrooms will eventually be able to use some of the programs designed by parents and students. One studentparent team in teacher Julie Koch's class at Lassiter Middle School recently produced an instructional program on karate; another produced a "joke book'' program. One parent's end product was a program to teach her children how to do laundry.

Koch and the other NITE school teachers volunteered for the job. All were required to attend 18 hours of inservice training, for which they were paid $8 an hour, to learn about Linkway software and hardware. They earn $12 an hour teaching the parent-student classes. So far, the district has trained 33 NITE teachers, and hopes to raise...