Carla Duran Capellan. Photo source: Chad d’Entremont’s Twitter page

“…one voice that’s usually missing in discussions about how best to support student outcomes is the one that arguably matters the most: students themselves.”

– Condition of Education in the Commonwealth Report
“Student Voice: How Young People Can Shape the Future of Education”
The Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy
January 24, 2019

Adding more students’ voices to educational policy debates was the theme of the Rennie Center’s annual Condition of Education event, which was held last week in Boston. At the event Rennie released an accompanying report, “Student Voice: How Young People Can Shape the Future of Education.”

Building on this theme, Rennie’s event featured older students who reflected on their past academic experiences. This year’s Condition of Education report also looks at how Worcester has incorporated the voices of preschool aged children.

“Believe in your students,” Carla Duran Capellan said at the event. “Trust that they have the ability to make change and let them lead.” As a high school student, Capellan participated in Generation Citizen, a program that lifts students’ voices.

“If we’re going to do this right, (students) need to be an active voice in the vision we’re creating,” Chad d’Entremont, Rennie’s executive director, said in an article on the Wicked Local website. “We need to recognize that students have an active voice in demonstrating to adults what learning should look like and what they need.”

The report defines “student voice” as, “student participation and decision making in the structures and practices that shape their educational experiences.”

Students voices have grown stronger nationally, particularly since the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, but Rennie’s report points out that young people’s voices have “gotten little traction in discussions on systemic issues in education.”

Why does student voice matter?

It promotes “students’ investment in their long-term success and advancing core democratic values like participation and leadership.” When students have a say, “they build their sense of academic self-efficacy and are more likely to engage deeply in challenging academic work.” And “the exercise of student voice can develop skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration, all of which are essential civic—and workforce—attributes.”

Among the barriers that dampen these voices are:

• “large and impersonal schools that can lead to disengagement and alienation”

• “grade-level separation that limits repeated interaction with like-minded peers,” and

• educators and reformers who think “students are clients rather than participants in decision-making”

Some schools are already making progress. The report points to the Changemaker Academy at Waltham High School, a program for diverse groups of rising freshman who work on projects they have designed to solve social problems. One group studied the “bystander effect,” “documenting when students are likely to help their peers and when they are not.” And another group “developed cricket cookies as a resourceful way to aid global communities that may lack access to necessary protein.”

In Worcester, Mass., where more than a third of students “have no formal preschool education prior to kindergarten,” public officials sought to engage young children as well as families, service providers, and other community members.

“Aiming to help the city’s youngest learners feel invested in their learning, leaders from local business and civic groups launched the Worcester Reads Campaign on World Smile Day, hosting events across the city focused on reading, talking, playing, and singing.”

This event’s success “inspired a contest in which children from the community were invited to share what makes them smile about Worcester.” The contest entries from more than 1,500 children aged 3 to 13, “were compiled in The Smile Book, which was shared with an audience of business leaders, politicians, and families.”

There’s more work to do. The report calls for elevating student voice in classrooms, schools, and communities. It’s also important to measure levels of student engagement, and the report points to two “key indicators related to student voice:” chronic absenteeism and access to high-quality early education, which provides a foundation for success. The report also calls for leaders to take action at the district and state level. Examples include facilitating community wide conversations as well as ensuring that “student outcomes and data systems support effective school-community partnerships.”

Advocating for a future in which young voices have more say, the report concludes:

“Year after year, Massachusetts continues to grapple with clear and very real disparities across student subgroups in access to opportunities and educational outcomes. Looking forward, the Commonwealth should reconsider how to elevate student voice and harness student leadership in developing and improving education opportunities that address the needs, abilities, and interests of all students.”

To learn more, check out Rennie’s data dashboard. And Google the Twitter hashtag #COE2019.