Student Empowerment through Student-Led Conferences.

The parent-teacher conference is a time-honored medium for formal com munication between the middle school faculty and the home. These traditional conferences serve such var ied purposes as sharing report card information, providing parents with opportunities for involvement, assuring student progress, reducing dis cipline problems, and involving students in their edu cational program (Bernick, Rutherford, & Elliott, 1991; McLoughlin, 1987). While the typical conference includes these elements to varied degrees, in most instances students are not encouraged to participate, and frequently they are totally excluded from this com munications process. Faculties who have embraced the "student as worker" and "teacher as coach" principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools (Sizer, 1986) may ques tion the effectiveness of a conferencing model that excludes students. Fortunately, some models have been developed in which students participate as equal partners at the elementary school level (Guyton & Fielstein, 1989; Little & Allan, 1989) or at the middle level (Bernick, Rutherford, & Elliott, 1991). Since stu dents have firsthand knowledge concerning their aca demic performance, they should not only attend but also lead the conference discussions.