This week, VOYCE’s work was highlighted in Edutopia, the national journal of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Youth leaders Denise Corral and Michael Jones were interviewed for the article appearing in the December 2008 issue, and Julian Alequin, Maria Degillo, Tianna Johnson and Justin Ramos appeared with Michael on Edutopia’s multimedia features. The work of these young people and our many other leaders continues to catch the attention of educators and policy-makers across the country!

The video and the audio clip are up on the Edutopia website, available online here.

The Edutopia article and the rest of our press coverage are also available on our “Press” page.

On Thursday, November 13, VOYCE launched the findings and recommendations from our student-led research process, alongside our new partnership with Chicago Public Schools. The event was a huge success, with more than 300 people coming out to learn more and get involved. Both the youth leaders from VOYCE and our guest speakers made a compelling case for the importance of youth-led, community-based educational reform. As one guest put it, “I have never seen anything like this before in my life!”

You can download and read our entire report here.

You can check out press coverage from the event here.

And be sure to take a look at our pictures from the event!

VOYCE has launched a landmark collaboration with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to create a youth-designed pilot project aimed at relieving the city’s high school dropout crisis. CPS CEO Arne Duncan announced the initiative before an audience of education experts and community leaders this morning at the Spertus Institute in downtown Chicago.

“CPS recognizes that students have an important role to play in their education,” said Duncan. “This pilot project is the first step in a potential series of innovative programs to engage students in transforming Chicago’s public high schools.”

At the gathering, VOYCE also released Student-Led Solutions to the Nation’s Dropout Crisis, a report with findings and recommendations from the perspective of CPS students.

The VOYCE collaborative believes the engagement of CPS students, themselves, is vital in helping resolve high dropout and low college-enrollment rates that continue to plague Chicago public high schools.

Supported with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Communities for Public Education Reform, the group’s student leaders undertook a year-long study of the reasons for these problems and potential solutions that included a statistically significant survey of 1,325 CPS students, in-depth interviews with 208 additional students, 110 teachers, and 65 parents, and site visits to successful schools in six states.

During the youth-led process, student leaders and researchers envisioned improved schools and learning environments, developed survey questions based on their own educational experiences, identified appropriate data collection methods, performed ethnographic mapping of school communities, made site visits to successful school in Illinois and across the country, reviewed relevant literature, and collated all data and responses to identify common themes and perspectives.

“This process of engaging youth in their own educational futures is what VOYCE is all about,” said Maria DeGillo, a CPS student at Truman Middle College. “Our goal is for CPS to eventually adopt the full spectrum of our student-led initiatives.”

Learn more about the pilot project and VOYCE’s findings and recommendations on the dropout crisis:

Participatory Action Research | Findings| Solutions | Pilot Projects | Publications | Download the Report (PDF) | Download the Press Release (PDF)

The VOYCE collaborative is first and foremost a student-led effort. Learn about the youth who are committed to helping improve their schools and fight the dropout crisis in Chicago and beyond on our bio page, Meet the Student Leaders. And be sure to check our Youth Voices blog for individual updates!