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Students have the greatest stake in their education but little to no say in how it is delivered. This lack of agency represents a lost opportunity to accelerate learning and prepare students for a world in which taking initiative and learning new skills are increasingly paramount to success.

When it comes to student engagement, there is a predictable and well-documented downward trajectory as students get older. According to a 2016 Gallup poll that measured student engagement, about three-quarters of fifth graders—an age at which students are full of joy and enthusiasm for school—report high engagement in school.¹ By middle school, slightly more than one-half of students report being engaged.² In high school, however, there is a precipitous drop in engagement, with just about one-third of students reporting being engaged.³ Similar to the drop in engagement, a recent poll from The New Teacher Project (TNTP) found that students see less value in their work and assignments with each subsequent year of school.⁴

There are limited studies that show a direct connection between student engagement and students valuing their education and opportunities to make their voices heard. Many advocates and researchers encourage schools to create opportunities for students to participate in decisions about their education as a means of increasing student engagement and investing students in their education.⁵

The authors of this report define “student voice” as student input in their education ranging from input into the instructional topics, the way students learn, the way schools are designed, and more. Increasing student voice is particularly important for historically marginalized populations, including students from Black, Latinx, Native American, and low-income communities as well as students with disabilities.

Given the assumption that student voice can increase student engagement, such efforts to give students more ownership of their education may be linked to improvements in student outcomes. ⁶ For example, a 2006 Civic Enterprises report, which surveyed a diverse group of 16- to 24-year-old adults who did not graduate high school, found that 47 percent of respondents indicated that “classes were not interesting” as the main reason they dropped out.⁷ Sixty-nine percent of participants said that they were not motivated to work hard.⁸ Interestingly, the percentage of students who did not feel inspired to work hard increased among students with lower GPAs; among high-, medium-, and low-GPA students, 56 percent, 74 percent, and 79 percent reported not feeling inspired to work hard, respectively. Surveyed students and focus groups emphasized the need for student voice in curricula development, improved instruction practices, and increased graduation rates.⁹

States, districts, schools, and teachers can solicit and incorporate student voice in many ways. Some of these strategies fundamentally change the way that schools and systems operate, and others are more marginal. This report provides an overview of eight approaches that teachers, school leaders, and district and state policymakers can use to incorporate student voice: student surveys; student perspectives on governing bodies such as school, local, state decision-makers; student government; student journalism; student-led conferences; democratic classroom practices; personalized learning; and youth participatory action research (YPAR).

Implementation of these strategies matters greatly. Efforts to incorporate student voice are stronger when they include the following elements: intentional efforts to incorporate multiple student voices, especially those that have been historically marginalized; a strong vision from educational leaders; clarity of purpose and areas of influence; time and structures for student-adult communication; and, most importantly, trust between students and educators.¹⁰ Policymakers and educators should also incorporate principles of universal design to ensure that these efforts are accessible to all students and recognize the voices of all students, including students with disabilities and students whose first language is not English.

This report concludes with policy recommendations for school, district, and state policymakers.

Youth activism has been in the spotlight of late due to several high-profile efforts, including the advocacy of youth who oppose the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program as well as the Parkland, Florida, students who galvanized around meaningful gun control.¹¹ Youth have also crafted public opposition letters to education officials to protest policies that perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline and its disproportionate criminalization of Black and Latinx students, LGBTQ students, and students with disabilities.¹² For instance, a group of youth activists called the Voices of Youth in Chicago Education were instrumental in driving the narrative and advocating for statewide change that resulted in the 2015 passage of SB 100 in Illinois, which addressed harsh, punitive discipline policies in school.¹³

This youth activism is remarkable and helps change the debate on key issues facing the United States. This report, however, focuses on incorporating student voice within existing educational institutions.

 The authors of this report define student voice as authentic student input or leadership in instruction, school structures, or education policies that can promote meaningful change in education systems, practice, and/or policy by empowering students as change agents, often working in partnership with adult educators.¹⁴

Experts on student voice, including Mitra and Toshalis, describe student voice as a spectrum or pyramid to illustrate that different forms of student engagement foster different levels of agency.¹⁷ On the one hand, adults gather and use student perspectives, feedback, and opinions to inform change. On the other hand, students participate in decision-making bodies that drive change.¹⁸ Student agency increases as students assume more leadership and have greater responsibility and accountability in instruction or policy changes.

All forms of student voice can be important and can meaningfully influence instruction, schools, and policies. But each approach has trade-offs, and one may be more appropriate to achieve certain goals than others. For example, schoolwide or districtwide surveys provide a snapshot in time with answers to a limited number of largely multiple-choice questions and often measure changes in the views of a large group of students over time. Student leadership through governing bodies or YPAR can allow for meaningful and extended conversations about complex topics and implementation; in most instances, however, this approach engages fewer students.

Teachers, schools, and policymakers can use different strategies to incorporate student perspectives and empower students to lead. These strategies engage students at different points on the student voice spectrum and are not mutually exclusive. Schools and policymakers can adopt one or many of these strategies, as appropriate, to engage students and ensure that schools reflect the interests and needs of the populations they serve.

This section lists the most common student voice strategies based on CAP research; the pros and cons of each approach and suggestions for how to maximize the strategy’s effect; and one or more short descriptions of the strategies in practice. Student surveys are the first focus in this section because they can be a useful tool at all levels of education decision-making—state, district, school, and classroom. Next, the authors list strategies in the order of scale of reach, starting with those that can influence state policies and ending with those that affect individual learning. As discussed later in the report, implementation is critical to ensure that each strategy supports authentic student voice.¹⁹

Student surveys

Surveys efficiently collect many student perspectives. The content and purpose of student surveys vary. Districts, schools, or teachers may choose to design and administer surveys to collect baseline information on student interests, school climate, rigor or quality of instruction, student behaviors, and perception of their own power to establish goals and measure growth over time.

Some surveys are formative, meaning they are designed to shed light on strengths, weaknesses, and areas on which to focus improvement but not to inform high-stakes evaluations. Other surveys are designed to assess certain programs, classrooms, or schools. Formative tools, for example, are classroom surveys that give private feedback to a teacher. Other surveys may have higher stakes. For instance, a district may opt to use student surveys as a factor in school ratings or as a component of teacher evaluations. Some student surveys are administered statewide, and the summary results are made available to the public. For instance, the Illinois Youth Survey is administered to students in grades eight, 10, and 12 and includes questions about drug use, experiences with violence, attitudes and engagement in school, and mental and physical health.²⁰ Other places such as the CORE Districts in California use student climate surveys in their accountability systems.²¹

The level to which student surveys influence policies and the student experience depends on the purpose and design of the survey and how the results are used. Policymakers should use valid and reliable survey tools in high-stakes evaluations as a component of a school accountability framework. And while some survey data can provide meaningful, formative results, data can, in some instances, be unreliable due to reference bias—the effect of survey respondents’ reference points on their answers, among other concerns.²² For example, there is growing interest in collecting information about social and emotional learning, but survey data unfairly hurt high-performing schools.²³ That is because, in general, students in higher-performing schools with more rigorous expectations rate themselves lower in self-control and work ethic than students in lower-performing schools. Researchers have developed valid survey tools to measure school culture and climate.²⁴

The design, topics addressed, and intended use of the survey will also influence the need to protect students’ privacy and the confidentiality of survey information. Educators need to be mindful of federal privacy laws, specifically the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment and the Family and Educational Rights and Privacy Act, when developing surveys.

Pros

• Collects information from the entire target student population rather than a subset
• Provides a fair process for ascertaining student opinions in a way that students do not influence one another
• Can be designed, administered, and scored easily and at a relatively low cost
• Can be used to set goals and measure growth over time
• Can disaggregate data to determine if there are variations among racial and ethnic groups, students from families with low incomes, or students from other identity groups
• Can be used to compare schools when administered statewide or districtwide and can provide additional information and context beyond test scores to understand school quality

Cons

• Represents only a snapshot in time
• May not allow for nuanced responses from students
• May not get at core aspects of student experience in the school
• Risks being ineffectual if survey data are not acted upon
• Does not empower students to lead the change they desire
• Leaves open the possibility that teachers or administrators will seek to influence results to be seen in a more favorable light, particularly when consequences are attached to the results

How to maximize the strategy

• Use as part of a broader strategy to empower students as change agents
• Administer surveys with students as creators or even co-researchers who analyze data and provide recommendations to improve school climate and practices
• Be thoughtful around the use of survey results as an accountability measure for school quality, if at all
• Maximize response rates and find ways to increase investment among students and parents and be consistent in recruitment efforts
• Ensure that surveys are universally designed and accessible to all students through translation for students who are learning English, accommodations for students with disabilities, and access to necessary technology

Case study

Student surveys inform school ratings in New York City Public Schools

Since 2007, the New York City Public School District has conducted an annual survey that targets parents, teachers, and students in grades six through 12. The results are included in each school’s rating, and principals are encouraged to use the data to improve instruction, culture, professional development, and family engagement strategies. The student survey is anonymous and includes questions to examine academic rigor and supportive environment.²⁵ Over the past decade, about 80 percent of students in participating grades took the survey.²⁶

Student perspectives on governing bodies

Decision-making bodies at the school, district, and state levels can give students an active role or consider student perspectives. This approach can take different forms: Policymakers can allow students to serve on decision-making bodies such as state or district school boards or in a voting or advisory capacity on school committees; form a group of students to serve on a parallel, student-only body akin to a student school board; or create student advisory committees—similar to the way that many states and districts convene teacher advisory committees—to weigh in on important policy debates.³⁰

Including students or their perspectives in governing bodies actively engages students in the education system and provides a point of view that is often underrepresented.³¹ As consumers and beneficiaries of the education system, students have a different perspective than teachers, administrators, and parents—and that unique insight can shed light on new approaches or solutions.³² Engaging student perspectives generates important feedback and creates a sense of ownership that can lead to higher student performance.³³

For school-level governing bodies, partnering with students can help develop culturally sustaining educational practices and select curricula and instructional materials that are most relevant and engaging to their various communities. While teachers should be proactive in incorporating culturally responsive instruction, students can help highlight practices and instructional materials that align to student interests and values to help educators avoid blind spots.³⁴

Various districts and states include students on their boards of education. A 2014 analysis of student participation on state boards of education (SBOE) by SoundOut, a nonprofit organization that partners with educators, districts, and district officials to implement student voice initiatives, found that 19 states included at least one student member on their SBOE.³⁵ For example, the Pennsylvania SBOE changed its bylaws in 2008 to require one high school junior and one high school senior to sit on both the Council for Basic Education and Council of Higher Education for their SBOE, but the students have no voting power.³⁶ The Pennsylvania Association of Student Councils, a statewide student leadership organization that works with administrators and students alike, recommends high school students for the Council of Basic Education.³⁷ Vermont has two student members on their SBOE, one of whom has voting power upon the second year of their service.³⁸ The Maryland State Department of Education sponsors the Maryland Association of Student Councils, which nominates one student for the SBOE to serve alongside another governor-appointed student.³⁹

Some states have explicit laws to encourage or prohibit youth participation. According to a 2014 SoundOut analysis, 14 states have laws that explicitly prohibit students from serving on district school boards.⁴⁰ Twenty-five states permit students to sit on district school boards, but that does not mean that all districts within the state choose to include student members.⁴¹

Pros

• Gives student representatives real power over state and district policies, including hiring and budgeting
• Gives voting student members equal power to adult members
• Allows students to gain experience with governing bodies
• Fosters open conversation between students and adult decision-makers

Cons

• Engages only a few select students
• Often includes students for whom the current education structure is already working
• May not influence change if the student is not a voting member
• Dependent on the structure, risks student representatives not feeling empowered to voice their opinions or to disagree with adult authority figures
• Is less appropriate for younger students

How to maximize the strategy

• Give student representatives voting power
• Recruit and seek out diverse candidates to run or be appointed to governing bodies
• Create two or more slots for students
• Schedule meetings at times and locations that are accessible and convenient for students
• Offer training to both youth and adults to foster and build toward a concrete and authentic youth-adult partnership

Case studies

Pittsfield Middle High School Site Council, Pittsfield, New Hampshire

Started in 2010, the Pittsfield Middle High School Site Council is a majority-student school governance body with 10 student members, six faculty members, and three community members⁴⁸ who are responsible for deciding school policies such as dress codes and class schedules. Students work with teachers and community members to discuss policy changes to address long-standing academic and school climate issues. Pittsfield Middle High School has also implemented other strategies that promote student choice, including shifting to competency-based learning. Since the school adopted some of these approaches, Pittsfield Middle High School’s dropout rate has decreased by more than half, from 3.9 percent in the 2010-2011 school year to just 0.6 percent in the 2016-2017 school year.⁴⁹

Montgomery County Public School Board of Education, Maryland

In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools’ Board of Education is made up of eight members, one of which is an elected student member with full voting rights. The board addresses a variety of issues, including operating budgets and school building closings. Additionally, the current student board member plans to discuss topics such as affirmative consent and high school dress codes.⁵⁰

Boston Student Advisory Committee

In Massachusetts, two representatives from most Boston high schools serve on the Boston Student Advisory Committee (BSAC), which Boston Public Schools (BPS) created to make recommendations to the BPS system’s Boston School Committee. In addition, BPS asks the student representatives to share their work with their peers to make sure that all students are more informed about current district policy debates. According to BPS, the BSAC is “primary vehicle for student voice and youth engagement across the Boston Public Schools.” Participating students receive public-speaking training, learn about community organizing, and are taught how to navigate political situations. At weekly meetings, the BSAC discusses several important issues such as school discipline and climate, BPS budget, student-to-teacher feedback, and school equity.⁵¹

Student governments or