Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) provide the information and tools needed to inform policies, practices and decisions at every level to improve student achievement and system performance. It is equally important that there are policies and practices to protect personally identifiable information and to ensure the confidentiality and…

Throughout history human subject research has been plagued by researchers whose studies were riddled with danger and/or risk to their subjects. Indeed, one may cite numerous situations where human subjects were injured and/or killed in experiments that were designed with no thought or anticipation of risk to the subjects. As a result, the federal…

For centuries, issues of civil discourse only arose concerning written and oral communication. But now, new technologies for communication and social interaction, particularly social media, have dramatically expanded the potential for human interaction. They generate significant challenges for institutional policies and practices to encourage and…

The recent events at Virginia Tech reinforce the idea that nothing is more fundamental for college leaders to address than campus security and safety. After the tears, the makeshift memorials, and the intensely painful series of funerals, higher education must come to grips with the fact that it has just had its own September 11. Assessing and…

Like the Lone Ranger's mask, a good information retention policy can safeguard personal identity information. Librarians want to be sure that patrons will return what they borrow, and they want statistics that quantify the library's value to its community. Librarians also want to protect customers' privacy; they usually don't keep personally…

The author discusses his book "Homeschool: An American History," and offers four primary impetuses for the current status of homeschooling as a political movement. First, he writes, social and political changes of the second half of the twentieth century partnered radical leftists who wanted nothing to do with conventional America and conventional…

This article describes a number of important issues to consider in play therapy with Japanese children. They include the waiting room and playroom decor, toys, and other materials, as well as terminology that are commonly used in Japan. The layout of the small and large playrooms, use of the "Wa-Shitsu" (a traditional Japanese room…

When it comes to anti-malware protection, today's university IT departments have their work cut out for them. Network managers must walk the fine line between enabling a highly collaborative, non-restrictive environment, and ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and computing resources. This is no easy task, especially…

The prevailing paradigm in Internet privacy literature, treating privacy within a context merely of rights and violations, is inadequate for studying the Internet as a social realm. Following Goffman on self-presentation and Altman's theorizing of privacy as an optimization between competing pressures for disclosure and withdrawal, the author…

This study explores the court system's treatment of students' Fourth Amendment rights in cases emerging from contrasting minority school settings and whether discrepancies exist in case outcomes between these extremes. From virtually every search and seizure case that occurred between the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court case in "New Jersey v.…

In fall 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado accused Colorado school officials of committing felonies and violating students' privacy rights. The controversy stemmed from allegations that a high school assistant principal read and transcribed text messages from a cell phone that school officials had taken away from a…

A software program that searches for offensive content on college athletes' social-networking sites has drawn skeptical reactions from legal experts, who say it could threaten students' constitutional rights. Billed as a "social-network monitoring service" and marketed exclusively to college athletics departments, YouDiligence was on display at…

This publication is intended for financial aid administrators and counselors who help students begin the aid process--filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), verifying information, and making corrections and other changes to the information reported on the FAFSA. The Federal Student Aid Handbook consists of the Application and…

Learning Analytics can provide powerful tools for teachers in order to support them in the iterative process of improving the effectiveness of their courses and to collaterally enhance their students' performance. In this paper, we present the theoretical background, design, implementation, and evaluation details of eLAT, a Learning Analytics…

Social media use has become so pervasive in the lives of American teens that having a presence on a social network site is almost synonymous with being online. Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites. The authors focused their attention in this research on social network sites…