Student Voice Matters
This national campaign, launched by Youth on Board, encourages schools to give students opportunities to provide feedback on teacher practice and classroom culture in order to improve teaching and build student-teacher relationships. The site includes a dynamic gallery of students sharing why they feel student voice matters in the classroom as well as a video… Read More ›
Meaningful Student Involvement: Guide to Students as Partners in School Change
This guide outlines how student involvement can be truly meaningful. SoundOut believes by engaging students as education planners, researchers, teachers, evaluators, decision-makers and advocates, they can become partners in the change process in the school and district. This guide begins by introducing the elements of meaningful involvement and key characteristics of schools with this authentic… Read More ›
Youth Involvement in Evaluation Research in Issues and Opportunities in Out-of-School Time Evaluations
This article examines what current youth as researchers projects really look like. It describes the findings from focus groups and interviews with the youth and adults at 14 youth serving organizations working to involve youth in research and evaluation projects. It details who and how youth are involved. It also describes five key elements needed… Read More ›
Student Voice Twitter Conversations
This Twitter feed created by a group of students in 2012: Student Voice (#stuvoice) hosts weekly conversations for students, teachers, policymakers, and key stakeholders to discuss current topics in conversation. Archives of selected Monday night twitter chats and video chats are available on the Student Voice website. The group and in-person education summits in dozens of countries… Read More ›
Youth Adult Partnership Rubric
This detailed rubric assesses the implementation level of several aspects of effective youth-adult partnerships. It can be used as a peer/self assessment, formative, or summative evaluation tool to assess and strengthen practice. It was designed for use in any setting that involves high school or older middle school students and adults working together towards a… Read More ›
Education Change and Youth Engagement: Strategies for Success
This clear, concise guide provides an overview of five strategies for engaging youth in education reform. It makes the case for involving youth as decision-makers and partners in problem solving, seeing youth engagement as a strategy rather than an outcome. It highlights the Youth Leadership Institute’s theory of change including, strategies, stake-holder actions, and the… Read More ›
Why Change Schools: Section One, Module B
This module was designed to promote discussion and build support for student-centered education reform. It explores topics that can help move the participants from an individualistic view of education to a mental model which treats education as a common endeavor. It strives to leave participants with several important takeaways including the common purpose of education,… Read More ›
Guide to Protocols that Support Dialogue
This guide catalogues protocols developed by the School Reform Initiative that can be used to stimulate productive public conversations. This list provides a brief overview of the purpose, description, time needed, number of participants, and possible question prompts to begin the activities. You can also find a link to the full protocol instructions which are… Read More ›
Public Engagement: A Primer from Public Agenda
This short guide provides an overview of public engagement. It describes the differences and advantages of a capacity-building versus an event-oriented approach to public engagement. It outlines ten core principals to effective public engagement such as attending to people’s main concerns, framing issues for dialogue, and providing the right amount of information at the right… Read More ›
Resource Guide on Public Engagement
This guide outlines key practices of effective public engagement. It provides an overview of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation’s approach to engagement, called the streams framework. This helpful visual categorizes engagement techniques into four “streams” based on the primary intention or purpose, and shows which methods have proven to be effective in each… Read More ›
Resources for Building Public Understanding of School Redesign in Vermont
This collection of resources provides examples to help schools, districts, or states increase public support for student-centered learning. It includes talking points, FAQs, an “Elevator Speech,” and sample brochures. It also includes an overview of protocols that can be used to facilitate public dialogues. The Shaping Our Future Together statewide campaign from the Agency of… Read More ›
Implementing Competency Education in K-12 Systems: Insights from Local Leaders
This report describes effective district implementation strategies to convert traditional, one-size-fits-all models of education into more personalized, competency-based learning environments to meet students’ needs. It highlights strategies to engage, motivate, and teach all students to proficiency and mastery, depicts shifts in instruction toward deeper learning and meaningful assessments for learning, while exploring models of distributed leadership and… Read More ›