Soundout.org: A new kind of youth organization is springing up across the nation, in which issue-based organizing combines with youth leadership development, cultural enrichment, and academic and personal support. It often starts with a campaign to change school-related problems. But as participants learn the ropes, they go on to tackle community issues, create new partnerships with adults, and profoundly change how they view the political process. Two student organizing initiatives, Youth Organizing Communities in Los Angeles and Sistas and Brothas United in the Bronx, NY, are profiled as powerful models of student-led advocacy for education (What Kids Can Do, 2003c).

MSI in education advocacy happens when schools and communities engage students as education advocates within the education system and throughout the community. Students participate in many ways, including committees and protests, on special panels and in functions that help raise awareness or interest in education issues.

Education planning can involve students as planners by teaching students what, how, how well, why, where, and when they are learning, and engaging students as partners in the process. This includes students designing curriculum, planning the school day, participating in new school design, or other activities that build upon to their experience, education, ideas and opinions

Education research can actively engage students as researchers who explore the schools, practices, and systems that they are participants in. Students become critical thinkers and engaged participants in learning. Students can be engaged in research design, execution, analysis, and writing about schools, environments, the teaching and learning process, and more.

MSI in teaching engages students as teachers by providing students the opportunities to learn about the teaching process by participating in significant classroom teaching experiences. Students may serve as teaching assistants; partner with teachers or peers to deliver curriculum; teach peers or students in lower-levels; or teach adults in various settings. Includes student/adult team teaching, students teaching students, and students teaching adults.

Students in Education Decision-Making: these roles for students are often addressed as democratic practices. In this area, students partner with educators to make decisions about curricula, calendar year planning, building design, and many more issues. They join boards of education at all levels, including local, district, and state boards. Education agencies engage students as staff in their programs and engage students in grant making, school assessment, and other areas. In a growing number of local schools, educators are allowing students to take a governing role in enforcing discipline policies, and using them to educate students. Students are also participating in establishing and enforcing codes of conduct, and making decisions about teacher and administrator hiring and firing.

Student Activism for School Change on the East Coast

Philadelphia Students Union

Blending community organizing and leadership development, PSU organizes and trains students at five public high schools across the city, offering them an antidote to anonymity and alienation. Fights against declining school budgets, crumbling learning environments, school uniforms, and more.

Good Schools Pennsylvania

A statewide campaign that combines education policy, grassroots organizing, and a high profile communications strategy to create a movement for education justice.

Youth United for Change
YUC is a youth-led organization committed to organizing low-income teenagers through chapters in three Philadelphia high schools. The chapters provide students the opportunity to take on leadership roles and become stronger participants in the overall school community. For the past two years, for example, YUC has worked intensely with the principal at Kensington High School to increase the number of students prepared for college and help raise graduation rates. YUC members recently prepared and presented to Philadelphia's new mayor an education platform they called "Education is a right, not a privilege." It called for free transportation to and from school for students who cannot afford the $9 weekly bus pass; more co-ops, internships and after school programs; updating books and computer access in school and community libraries; improved security measures to secure student safety to, from, and in school; class-size reductions; and increasing academic standards in neighborhood high schools.

Sistas and Brothas United

(Bronx) - Sistas and Brothas United (SBU), a local affiliate of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, involves local teenagers in community action in the Northwest Bronx. Some of SBU's recent education initiatives include: school facilities campaigns that brought about substantial improvements in facilities and resources at several neighborhood high schools; teacher and student surveys and youth-initiated professional development aimed at improving teacher quality in area high schools; a proposal for a new small school called The Leadership Institute for Social Justice, partnering with Fordham University and with a community action theme.

Youth in Action

Founded in 1999 by a senior at Providence's innovative Met School, Youth in Action is a youth-driven organization aimed at empowering young people to develop and implement programs that improve the community, schools, and the lives of teens. Past campaigns have revolved around HIV education and environmental justice, as well as using the arts to express youth voice. Youth in Action's current agenda includes youth philanthropy and school reform. Several members sit on a youth advisory committee started by Providence's new mayor.

The Boston Youth Organizing Project

Organizes high school students across the Boston metropolitan area into a cross class and mutli-racial advocacy organization. The have units in some 22 high schools from suburbs to inner city and have taken on such issues as reopening recreational facilities, extending the hours of public transportation passes, cleaning up school facilities, student/teacher relations, and are now getting into quality of education. The recently held an accountability session attended by some 350 people with the superintendent of schools, members of the Boston school committee, and facilities director of the city school system in which they got public commitments on some of their issues. Suburban students are collaborating with urban students in support of their common and different concerns and much of the foundational work has been done through communities of faith - from Pentecostal Christian to Jewish. For more information contact Liz Steinhauser at cmsbyop@earthlink.net.

Revolt Against Terrible Schools

We say that the current school system doesn't work. From a young age kids should be encouraged to pursue whatever they prefer to pursue, and shouldn't have to take subjects they're not interested in. School reformists are always busy trying to fix little issues in schools, but frankly, reform just won't cut it. The only solution is to scrap the current school system and re-think a new one from scratch. Includes the RATS Protest Guide, information on organizing a walkout, a 'zine making guide, how to resist, and tales of protest.

Power to the Youth

A non-profit organization advocating increased student participation throughout schools. The website includes a discussion board, an online newsletter called Speak Up, and tools and resources for student involvement in reform efforts (e.g., downloadable flyers, surveys, school report card forms, petitions).

Students Against Testing

(New Jersey) - Students Against Testing was created to be a strong force against the score-obsessed education machine known as standardized testing. At the same time, SAT also exists as an advocate for bringing positive, creative and real-life learning activities into the schools. SAT believes that for the reasons stated below urgent action from the student body itself is the most direct way to counteract the boredom and petty competition that currently plagues the schools.

Make the Road by Walking

(Brooklyn) - Make the Road by Walking is a not-for-profit, membership-led organization based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, composed mostly of low-income Latino and African-American residents. Its Youth Power Project encourages community youth, aged 5-19, to become leaders in their neighborhood and activists in their schools. Make the Road by Walking youth have also written and read personal commentaries for the award winning "Radio Rookies" produced by NYC public radio.

The Community Collaborative to Improve District Nine Schools

(Bronx)- Created to build a base of community support and power to change schools. CC9 is comprised of students, parents, neighborhood residents and seven community-based organizations in the Bronx.

Human Links Foundation Resource Guide to Meaningful Student Involvement