The research culminates in a competition with prizes. Schools with more than one classroom in the project must hold preliminary judging at the school and submit one final entry. The first notch on the Junior Benchmarks competition time line is the April 28 deadline for entries to be postmarked. Finalists will be notified by May 15. Prizes in the competition have students pushing to do their best, teachers said.
First place is a personal computer, which can be taken home, for each student in the winning class.
All prizes are donated. As for the daily work on Junior Benchmarks, there are triumphs and challenges, said teachers. It gives the students good directions, and then they can easily run with it on their own. Lizewski's students, however, have run into obstacles getting interviews and information from some government officials, she said. I'd like to work with this project again next year, and I would probably precede the student calls with a letter to officials who might be used as a source.