Among their many projects promoting youth voice and involvement throughout communities, students taking action to change schools takes a special place. They have conducted several outreach programs, created vital networks, and compiled a growing number of publications dedicated to students as partners in school improvement.

Recommended Webpages

Students as Allies in Improving their Schools In Chicago, Houston, Oakland, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, WKCD has collaborated with teams of students and teachers organized by a local non-profit intermediary. The efforts in each city include several parts: helping students conduct survey research about their own schools, then supporting dialogue and constructive action around the research results, while nurturing youth leadership all along the way. Here WKCD summarizes the results of these student-designed surveys, plus an array of reports, tools, resources, and links.

Tough Talk About Student Responsibility: Growing Student Leaders in Oakland, CA WKCD had the chance to work with an extraordinary teacher and group of students at Oakland Tech High School to raise nontraditional student leaders, in a community where poverty and violence have a hard grip. Students, teachers, district administrators, and community organizations aim to walk the talk when it comes to supporting students as activists in their schools. In this story students speak about what makes the program special, what they've learned, and their determination to change—or at least, defy—the low expectations of teachers, classmates, and the "system."

Seven Students' Stories Where are the youth voices in current educational debates? WKCD gathered seven students for two days to draft essays suitable for use as a newspaper column, radio commentary or college admissions essay. They have lessons for us all.

Students Push for Equity in School Funding This collection features the stories of three groups of high school students from diverse communities in different parts of the nation who are fighting for healthier education budgets. Their stories include reports, surveys, and other useful tools.

Equal Educational Opportunity? Students at inner-city and suburban high schools want equally to go to college, but do they get the same preparation and academic opportunities?

Outside is Our School: Youth Embrace Subsistence Education and Renew Survival for a Yupik Eskimo Community “Cutting fish, building cabins, cutting wood, checking nets, shooting guns, ice fishing, eel fishing, trapping beaver with a snare, making a snow shelter, skinning moose, skiing, canoeing, gathering berries, starting fires....I think we are learning everything,” says 15-year-old Bupsie Kazevnikoff.

Recommended Publications

Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students. (2003) A challenging, affirming and poignant examination of today’s schools that brings students’ insights and tips to teachers in a powerful book.  This book will help educators and administrators help students co-create learning environments where respect and success go hand-in-hand, for students and teachers alike.

The Schools We Need: Creating Small High Schools That Work For Us. (2003) Two dozen students in Bronx, NY talk about their experiences planning and attending small schools and breaking down large high schools. Includes Sistas & Bruthas United's proposal for a school in NYC.

Young Organizers Mobilize to Change Their World, Starting with School. (2003) This web-based collection features two experienced youth organizing groups working to improve their schools, an interview with a veteran youth organizer, an annotated directory, and new research on the power of youth organizing.

Moving youth participation into the classroom: Students as allies. (2002).  New Directions for Youth Development 2002 (96) 83-100. The experiences of urban public high school students, told in their own words, offer new and veteran teachers guidance on how to reach adolescent learners and illustrate what youth-adult partnerships in the classroom might look like.

More Than Service: Philadelphia Students Join a Union to Improve Their Schools. (2002) [PDF] Providence, RI: Author. A profile of the Philadelphia Students Union, an 1990s pioneer of student-led community organizing focusing on education reform.

Taking Democracy In Hand: Youth Action For Educational Change in the San Francisco Bay Area. (2002). This report highlights the accomplishments and growing wisdom of ten Bay Area youth organizing groups. It also sketches how their work builds, step by step, capital and capacity among participants; why youth-adult partnerships are important; where dots are being connected (between issues, between strategies, across races) and where they need connection (between youth and adult school reformers).

Learning Outside the Lines: Six Innovative Programs That Reach Youth.  (2002). This report details distinctive learning environments, in and outside school, that garner from young people deep engagement and high achievement: the Llano Grande Center in Edcouch-Elsa, TX; the Educational Video Center in New York City; Best Practice High School in Chicago; the Algebra Project in Jackson, MS; The Food Project in Boston; and The Met in Providence, RI.

Moving to the Head of the Class. (2002). High-school aged teachers at Providence’s Summerbridge, the Algebra Project, and a summer camp in Warren, North Carolina provide powerful role models for younger kids—and a potential teacher corps for the future.