Inside Report (7)

Two major studies may shed new light on troubled US high schools. One group, headed by former Harvard dean Theodore Sizer, will study conditions within schools and move into the effect of outside pressures.

The other, led by former education secretary Ernest Boyer, will take the opposite approach. It will examine the effect of societal pressures and college needs on schools. Carnegie Corporation of New York, providing partial funding for both probes, says a report by James B. Conant in 1959 was the last to have a dramatic impact and that the time is ripe for an update.

Funding two studies, "we'll come up with at least two different points of view on a very important subject," a Carnegie spokesman sa ys.m