Too many teenagers are making part-time employment, not school, their highest priority. Work becomes a succession of short-term, minimum-wage jobs without ties to academic learning, school programs, or career paths. Schools must strengthen the school-work connection by communicating with employers and integrating work issues into courses. Sidebars…

Considers how teachers should explain assignments to students, and recommends providing a minimum of information so students have the responsibility to find out what is expected. Voice-mail systems or Web sites that act as homework hotlines are discouraged because they often transfer responsibility to the parents. (LRW)

A poorly managed alternative high school was turned around when a new, safety-minded administration envisioned and developed a set of values. The new learning-community contract requires students to treat other people respectfully, appreciate diversity, pursue their education diligently, obey school rules, and conduct themselves honorably. (MLH)

Addresses behavior problems commonly encountered in classroom management. Discusses concerns such as getting children to listen, making classroom rules, controlling an out-of-control child, getting children to share, using stickers, alleviating conflicts between parents and teachers' style and practice, solving transition time problems, addressing…

Evaluated an instructional model designed to promote responsibility among college students (n=197). Students were instructed with verbal presentation only, combined verbal and visual presentation, or verbal and visual presentation coupled with student self-monitoring in journal entries. Significantly higher test scores and fewer disruptive…

A correctional educator reflects on methods that improve instructional effectiveness. These include teacher-student collaboration, clear goals, student accountability, positive classroom atmosphere, high expectations, and mutual respect. (SK)

Holding teachers responsible for the behavior of students is an inappropriate policy that results in ineffective teaching, diminished enthusiasm for learning, and lower levels of achievement. The reasons this is so are discussed. Students must be responsible for their own learning. (Author/SLD)

Examines the implications of student judicial systems and policies regarding student life for the development of communities of justice and principle. Offers recommendations for the development of institutional strategies to address the goals of justice and principle both within and beyond the policies in question. (MKA)

Discusses establishing a new basis for discipline in U.S. high schools, and suggests making high school voluntary to increase the number of students who really want to be in school. Another suggestion is to find ways to introduce adults into the classrooms to boost the authority of classroom teachers. (SLD)

Creativity requires application and balancing of three abilities--the synthetic, the analytic, and the practical. Teachers should serve as creativity role models, encourage questioning of assumptions, allow mistakes, encourage sensible risk taking, design creative assignments and assessments, let students define problems, and reward creative ideas…

Asserts that tougher standards and better assessments are necessary for educational improvement. Once the standards have been defined, educators must hold students accountable for their achievement. High standards and high accountability must be based on the premise that all children are capable of learning. (SLD)

Analysis of data from 443 graduating college seniors found many students: (1) unaware of their total loan indebtedness and payment obligations (both over- and under-estimating debt payments); (2) borrowed to support "a better lifestyle," and (3) were unable to estimate realistically their post-graduation earnings and ability to meet repayment…

States that educators find themselves facing reduced resources and a body of students whose diversity is unprecedented. Suggests that an effective approach to education lies in regarding the "content" of courses not as a body of information to be imparted by the knowledgeable to those seeking it, but as an active, experiential "learning process."…

Discusses U.S. student rights under the First Amendment, explaining that many teachers lack understanding of the First Amendment, and many schools isolate civics to the classroom and do not practice what they teach. The First Amendment Schools Project seeks to develop schools that model and teach the rights and responsibilities undergirding the…

Assessment and evaluation of children's physical fitness should be an educational process. This process is described as the "personalized self-testing" approach. This approach is a form of self-assessment that teaches children to assess their personal level of health-related physical fitness, interpret the results, and use the information (with…