Presents strategies that involve students in managing their own classrooms. The ideas include a teacher's mailbox for student suggestions, a classroom bill of rights and responsibilities, class jobs, an evaluation calendar, a bulletin board company, and an advice-to-the-teacher card. A student page offers an evaluation calendar. (SM)

A proposed change in federal student loan policy from providing loans through lending institutions to providing loans directly to students is of enormous importance to higher education, with major implications for colleges and universities. There are powerful arguments pro and con. Institutions must ensure they and policymakers understand the…

Examines issues relating to privacy in the electronic community. Highlights include digital information versus print products; the Bill of Rights and Responsibilities for Electronic Learners; electronically stored personal information; institutional versus individual ownership; the right of free speech versus the right of privacy; and the need for…

Describes alcohol discipline program developed as forced referral option to combat abusive drinking and encourage responsible drinking on a college campus. Program used small-group format, leaders of varying backgrounds, and highly flexible subject content with 172 college students referred by campus proceedings officer. Evaluations showed that…

University talent-search projects provide a viable model for schools' talent-development efforts. There are three critical elements: a flexible age-grade placement philosophy, a commitment to use tests to improve curriculum and instruction, and a strong support structure for teachers and administrators. Students must also develop appropriate…

Staff at a Sandy Hook, Connecticut high school agreed that content standards are fixed learning goals specifying what a student should know and accomplish; performance standards describe student work products (criteria) to meet these goals. Forthright expectations increased students' accountability for quality work, improved grading objectivity,…

Uses Zimmerman's model of academic self-regulation to identify six dimensions of behavior that influence learning: motivation, methods of learning, time use, control of one's physical and social environment, and performance. Discusses each self-regulatory dimension in terms of research supporting its effect on academic performance and…

Describes The Pottstown Homework Center Partnership, which initiated homework centers and trained volunteer tutors to support middle school "at risk" students. Describes tutor recruitment and training; identifies eligibility requirements for student participants; and reports tutor-child interactions. Includes outcomes, interpretations,…

Supplies instructional materials necessary to carry out a training session for educators and parents concerning the development of personal and interpersonal responsibilities for children with behavior difficulties. Participants learn to plan and implement strategies to help students with personal and interpersonal responsibilities and are given…

Discusses the Safe and Caring Schools Project, a Canadian program that encourages school practices that model and reinforce socially responsible and respectful behaviors so that learning and teaching can take place in a safe and caring environment. This holistic program stresses the importance of the role parents, teachers, and the community play…

Discusses the effect of computers and the World Wide Web on literacy, noting the need for teachers and students to be more accountable for learning of verbal and quantitative literacy. (JPB)

Explains that one way to overcome free riding (when some members of a group shirk their responsibilities, leaving others to complete the work) is the "Knickrehm Method", in which the professor grades the group project and students can gain or lose points based upon peer evaluations. Describes two trials of the Knickrehm Method. (CMK)

Too often, ideological debates, not scientific evidence and public-health concerns, influence decisions about sexuality education. Comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive sexuality education should be an important component of all grade levels. Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)…

Surveyed university personnel and undergraduate students using a newly constructed Retention Questionnaire designed to assess the relative levels of student and university responsibility for retention which they attribute to each other. Found that students and university personnel frequently differ in their perceptions of responsibility--and for…

More than eleven hundred university students were surveyed to determine attitudes toward learning and accountability. Apathy, absenteeism, and grade inflation emerged as contributing to the lack of student accountability. This article suggests institutional changes to reanimate college classrooms: explicit expectations; smaller, engaged classes;…