High school is a place where many students feel like their voices are not heard. Because of the vast academic requirements placed on schools, and teachers in particular, many educators feel like they simply don't have the time to involve students deeply in their own learning, let alone in the broader issues of their school—like climate, governance, or policy.
The research, however, is clear. Education and education reform, to be as effective as possible, must have the direct involvement of students (Mitra & Gross, 2009; Sands, Guzman, Stephens, & Boggs, 2007). Effective implementation of school change requires participation by and buy-in from all those involved, students no less than teachers. As Oakland High School student Jamaul Thomas articulated in a study on student voice "we have the most to lose when our schools aren't working right, and the most to gain when they are" (Oakland Kids First, 2003, p. 3).
Student-Led Reforms in Michigan
From 2011–15, the Michigan Department of Education led efforts across the state to implement the Safe and Supportive Schools (S3) initiative. This federally funded reform effort targeted the 22 lowest-performing high schools in Michigan. The primary objective of the initiative was to implement interventions to increase levels of school safety and student support; department leaders theorized that such climate gains would lead to increased levels of student achievement.
Each S3 school implemented one or more school intervention models to improve the culture and climate for learning in their building. Student voice was required as part of each school's effort, no matter which school reform model they adopted. To support the student voice objective, 19 of the schools chose to work with Neutral Zone for between one and three years.
As the theoretical basis for their intervention, students from 19 of the S3 high schools used the youth-adult partnership framework (Zeldin, Christens, & Powers, 2012), which focuses on supporting positive youth development through authentic civic engagement. The students worked with Neutral Zone to create student teams or "advisories" to engage in projects to support school reform. The intervention was guided by four activities: (1) an intensive two-day Summer Residential Institute, (2) coaching site visits, (3) a one-day summit, and (4) reflections on the sustainability of their plans for reform.
One S3 project involved a joint team of students and staff from the Ypsilanti and Willow Run Community Schools, neighboring school districts both faced with mounting state debt, shrinking student enrollment, and some of the lowest student achievement scores in Michigan. These districts were preparing to consolidate, and the new school board wanted to ensure students were invested in the creation of a new district.
Neutral Zone helped assemble a team of students from across the two districts to discuss concerns, fears, and misconceptions and to form a student action team to support collaboration as the districts merged. The group identified several challenges and proposed recommendations to the new school board, including holding ongoing cross-school visits and activities before the merger, implementing strategies for creating a positive school culture, and involving students in generating a new district identity. Students developed murals, a photo display of students, and a new school spirit song to help shape the culture and physical environment of the new school district. Students also led the efforts to select a new mascot.
Invite Students to Be the Change
The S3 initiative was a success. All schools in the S3 cohort were identified as Priority schools, meaning they were in the bottom 5 percent of lowest performers on state benchmarks. By the conclusion of the project, 70 percent of the S3 schools moved off the Michigan School Priority List, as opposed to 37 percent of non-S3 schools. Additionally, 65 percent of the S3 schools had significant improvements in school safety, as measured by the Michigan Coordinated School Health and Safety Report. Among this group, graduation rates increased 18 percent (over 3 years), compared with a 3 percent gain for schools with a decrease or no change in school climate measures.
Although the evaluation wasn't designed to isolate the effects of a single intervention, school personnel and the Michigan Department of Education staff supporting the project widely agreed that "student voice and engagement" was one of the key program areas important to the project's success. Of the 14 schools that came off the failing schools list, all but one received Neutral Zone's support for student voice and engagement work.
Using an adaptation of the Youth Experiences Survey 2.0 (Hansen & Larson, 2005), we assessed students’ 21st century skills—such as goal setting, problem solving, leadership, group process skills, organizational skills, and communication skills—and found statistically significant gains across many areas, especially those focused on skill or experience, such as problem solving, time management, positive social behaviors, group process skills, organizational skills, and leadership skills.
Schools can empower and amplify students' voices in many ways. Improving school climate is the most obvious and the least restrictive because students have the most to gain when the school climate is safe and supportive and the most to lose when it is not. Students also make up the majority of a school's population and can easily hold the most influence over the climate. And working to change school climate is least restrictive because few state or locally mandated laws or policies define school climate, thereby providing the greatest latitude for student voice, buy-in, and leadership.
Maybe the most important lesson learned through this project is that students need "permission": permission to form a group, participate in training, have quality meeting time to conduct their work, and, most of all, act on their ideas about how to make positive school change. Once a school does grant permission for students to organize into a meaningful decision body, places like Up for Learning in Vermont offer online tools and resources to help guide student participation. Although permission is a simple thing for school leadership to provide, it might be one of the most transformative ways to genuinely empower students and amplify their voices.