Youth Action for Educational Change

A Forum — May 17, 2002

Co-Sponsored with the Forum for Youth Investment and What Kids Can Do

"What these young activists want is not just a detailed list of specific demands or outcomes. What they also seek urgently is the opportunity to engage meaningfully as citizens in their schools and communities, to develop their power and use it meaningfully."

-- Barbara Cervone, May 2002

"All young people need a quality education and to get one students must be behind it. Youth involvement is the missing element in education reform."

-- Eric Braxton, Founder, Philadelphia Student Union

Joel Tolman and Merita Irby, both of the Forum for Youth Investment describe youth action as including organizing, service, advocacy, leadership, and governance. They also suggest that youth action and participation has positive impacts on youth development, young people have fewer problems and they are better prepared for adulthood and that communities are also in better shape. There are also outcomes for young people in the area of education, civic involvement, spirituality, social/associations, individual and health and human services. Their research into these issues has led to the question of whether youth action has led to actual changes in communities. One of the Forum's publications, "Youth Acts, Community Impacts: Stories of Youth Engagement with Real Results" directly addresses this question. At today's forum, Tolman provided several examples of effective youth action including:

• Students at Lubec High School in Maine conducted research on the declining local fishing industry resulting in the creation of an incubator for the creation and nurturing of new small businesses.
  
• In a Nairobi, Kenya neighborhood, young people who came together to form a youth soccer club, have started their own sanitation system, bought their own garbage trucks, and now involve thousands of 8-17 year olds. Young people also provide health information including HIV/AIDS education and prevention and they document their work with photos.
  
• In Boston, the Food Project provides thousands of pounds of organic, healthy food for the poor. They have also done lead abatement work in the Roxbury area of Boston.

Three panelists then provided examples of youth in action in three communities: the San Francisco Bay Area, Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

Barbara Cervone, Executive Director, What Kids Can Do, shared lessons from her recent report, published with the Forum, "Taking Democracy in Hand: Youth Action for Educational Change in the San Francisco Bay Area." This report was the result of an intensive case study of youth action in the Bay Area, part of What Kids Can Do's ongoing work of collecting compelling examples of young people working with adults in their schools and communities on the real-world issues that concern them most. Cervones' study included over 40 youth/adult partnerships in the Bay area involved in educational change. The sheer number of such partnerships is reflective of the growth of youth action in California and nationally. But far from just existing, these partnerships are creating real change in communities. For example, the Kids First Coalition organized young people and adults to demand additional funds for youth services resulting in an increase in youth program funding from $200,000 per year to $6 million and the creation of an oversight committee that is 50% young people. Bay area youth activists have also won increased access to healthcare services, won a campaign for health clinics in schools, advocated for a new pilot bus token program now assisting 33,000 of the area's poorest students, created a program to monitor police behavior towards students, and rallied 1000 youth in support of increasing multi-cultural education. Young people have also studied issues such as disproportionate school suspensions for minority youth and the relationship between such practices and the inevitability of some youth entering the juvenile justice system.

Cervones discussed what both youth and adults brought to the partnerships she studied. Youth provide fresh ideas to challenge systems and infuse youth culture-such as media, video and hip hop music. They remind the adults to see them for who they are and not practice "adultism." The adults bring experience and information that youth might not otherwise be able to access. Youth action also helps bridge income, geographic and racial differences that might otherwise divide communities. Cervones also emphasized that youth action is not just about the successes, but about young people wanting to be full-fledged citizens, wanting to take democracy into their own hands, finding their power and using it well to acquire skills. She warned that barriers to youth involvement include school reformers: (1) not having more than token positions for youth on school design committees, (2) not providing young people with the same information as adults, and (3) not seeing youth as potential partners in school reform.

The next panelist, Oona Chaterjee, was Co-Founder, Make the Road by Walking, a membership-led community organization in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. Bushwick is a low-income, predominately immigrant community where residents have very little power and many cannot vote. She described the Youth Power Project, operated under the auspices of Make the Road and gaining from that group's experience in organizing parents to support education reform. The Youth Power Project began about 2 ½ years ago with 7-8 young people, mostly out of school youth or youth with serious school attendance problems. The Youth Power Project now involves a group of about thirty 13-15 year olds who meet regularly once a week (with about 17-20 young people at any one meeting) and are assisted by seven adult staff members. The Youth Power Project is controlled by its young members. They feel confident to chose activities and make decisions around organizing themselves and other youth to improve their schools and neighborhood.

The Youth Power Project has organized several activities such as petitioning the mayor for more funding for after-school programs and providing training to police officers on how to work with truant youth, including having officers participate in role plays where they ask the young person why they are not in school and take students back to school rather than keeping them in "holding facilities." Representatives of the Youth Power Project feel their work has created a qualitative change in police attitudes, although truancy policies are unchanged. Among the other concerns of Bushwick residents and the Youth Power Project are problems with the zone high school including high teacher turnover, uncredentialed teachers, an unimaginative curriculum, a chronic lack of supplies, a lack of support services, and too few guidance counselors. In addition to organizing, young people in the Youth Power Project participate in poetry writing, performing arts, producing radio shows, computer skills training, mural-making and photography.

The third panelist was Eric Braxton, Director, Philadelphia Student Union (PSU). Braxton started the first chapter of this student-run organization at Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia seven years ago in response to student complaints about inadequate textbooks and dirty bathrooms. The PSU has now become a citywide student organizing effort that has successfully brought about changes in curriculum, staffing, and the basic physical infrastructure of Philadelphia's public schools.

When students at Gratz asked why there were no new textbooks, they were told it was their fault because "students tear them up." When students complained about the bathrooms, they were told "students mess them up." Students' first reaction was to agree with school administrators that they were themselves to blame. However, with Braxton's help, they learned to take partial responsibility for disrespecting school property but then to ask themselves these questions: "Why didn't they consider it their school and their property? Why did they deface their school as if they didn't respect it or own it? Why didn't they feel comfortable at school?" After years and years in a failing system, with teachers merely "doing crowd control," they were frustrated. Braxton believes that how students feel about educational reform can make or break a system. He sees student involvement as a key to education reform. Many concrete changes have resulted from PSU's student activism:

• At Gratz High School, a new student government was created that involved every student. Students were trained as representatives, were allowed to truly represent other students, and actually had power. They were involved in the school's improvement plan alongside with administrators, teachers and parents.
• At Bartram High School, harassment and abuse of students from school security officers was the big issue, to the point that one student suffered a broken arm. Student advocacy led to a student ombudsman in the school to protect the rights of students. Now students and staff are "on the same team." They know each other their names, their experiences. Young people now have a voice in talking about school policy. The climate of the school is changing.
• On a district level, Philadelphia students met to create a "student platform" on planned school reforms citing student concerns and laying out a long-term vision regarding every issue in the city's plan. Four hundred students from 27 Philadelphia schools ratified the platform. Students also demanded to be involved in the privatization debate, saying they needed a voice. Students staged a candle-light vigil at a school board meeting to delay a vote and 2500 students staged a rally in City Hall. As a result, no Philadelphia high school will be privatized.
• On a state level, the PSU launched a comprehensive campaign in which 1000 students traveled to the state capitol to meet with legislators regarding school funding. Among other demands, they requested the same educational resources as the suburbs.

There are other benefits to student activism. Some students who became involved as activists and leaders were on the verge of dropping out, but stayed in when it was clear they had a voice. Braxton indicated that teachers reported that some of these new youth leaders became "academic stars" in school.

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