Students Take Education Reform Into Their Own Hands

by Kristin Nisbet The Chicago Tribune reports that 13 high school students from the Chicago area are a part of the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) sponsored by World Vision.  These students confer, do research, and pick a public policy issue they wish to address–this year they choose education. These forward thinking students pitched their ideas to Chicago...

by Kristin Nisbet

The Chicago Tribune reports that 13 high school students from the Chicago area are a part of the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) sponsored by World Vision.  These students confer, do research, and pick a public policy issue they wish to address–this year they choose education. These forward thinking students pitched their ideas to Chicago leaders and are taking their message to Washington.  The students identified violence as a major issue in negatively affecting student’s experience in school.  They also recommended increased extracurricular activities and the importance of up to date resources to help even the educational playing field.

Feedback from students in the form of quarterly and annual surveys was another suggestion. Both could help identify problems such as inedible food and inadequate teachers, students said.

Access to information on post-secondary education . . .  is the final point. The teens want counselors who can provide students information on everything from the PSAT to how to fill out a job application.

This news is both uplifting in the sense that students are taking a proactive role in improving the education system, but also disheartening in the sense that the students in YEP felt so much improvement is needed.  Though the article does not go into specifics as to how the reforms the students have identified would be implemented, hopefully those with the power to make substantive changes are listening. Despite the many struggling schools in Illinois there are some successful reformer’s leading the way.  Collin Hitt, the Institute’s director of education policy outlined the success of one such school: Urban Prep.

Urban Prep is a new kind of school — a charter school — and its goal is simple: Send every student to college. Fewer than half of Chicago’s male public school students graduate from high school.  But at Urban Prep, “Our students know that they are going to college. They really feel confident about that,” says Kenneth Hutchinson, an Englewood native and administrator at the school.

Any student in the city can attend Urban Prep, regardless of his academic past — as long as there is space, that is. Charter schools like Urban Prep often have long waiting lists.

One would hope that schools like Urban Prep become less of the exception and more of the rule.  Students in Illinois deserve schools where they can feel safe, valued, and challenged and the Institute is dedicated to helping Illinois meet this challenge.