Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) is a youth-led organizing collaborative comprised of students from 7 community organizations and 12 Chicago Public High Schools working in concert with them, including:
Albany Park Neighborhood Council | Roosevelt, Mather, and Von Steuben High Schools
Brighton Park Neighborhood Council | Kelly High School
Organization of the NorthEast | Senn High School and Uplift Community High School
Kenwood Oakland Community Organization | Dyett Academy and Kenwood Academy High Schools
Logan Square Neighborhood Association | North Grand and Kelvyn Park High Schools
Target Area Development Corporation | Perspectives Tech High School
Southwest Organizing Project | Gage Park High School
VOYCE builds on these community based organizations’ histories of organizing both parents and students around school reform issues such as creating a policy change granting in-state tuition for undocumented students, securing the construction of new schools to relieve overcrowding, developing schools as community learning centers, and more.
As student and parent leaders from these organizations continued to be impacted first hand by the dropout rate, VOYCE was created with the goal of impacting teaching and learning at the high school level in order to keep students engaged in school, and increase graduation and college enrollment rates.
The heart of VOYCE’s work has been the development of a model of participatory action research in which young people examined the complex issues and multiple perspectives regarding students’ desire and ability to graduate and continue on to college. Supported with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Communities for Public Education Reform, student leaders undertook a year-long study of the dropout crisis and ways to address the problem.
On Thursday, November 13, 2008, VOYCE released a report on its findings and recommendations surrounding the dropout crisis. VOYCE is now working closely with Chicago Public Schools to implement its recommendations in pilot-project form at partner schools.
