The goal of the Students Speak website is to provide a platform for uplifting students’ voices and showcasing their actions and advocacy to influence educational decision making. Right now, this action and advocacy is focused in Massachusetts and involves a small number of students. Hopefully, the scope of the advocacy and the number of students involved will grow.
Take a moment to explore below the actions that students have already taken.
Released in the spring of 2019, the report Students’ Voices: Their Perspectives on How Schools Are and Should Be summarizes focus group interviews with a diverse group of Massachusetts secondary school students, including many quotes from students about what they need in order to do well in school and how they believe their schools should be assessed.
In February 2020, students from a number of Massachusetts high schools presented testimony to state legislators in support of creating Safe and Supportive Schools. Learn more about the students’ advocacy and read each student’s testimony about what they need in order to do well in school.
In a series of Zoom interviews during summer 2020, Massachusetts high school students shared their perspectives on remote learning during the pandemic, the urgent need for racial justice, and the importance of including student voice in educational decision making.
This website is dedicated to the valuable lessons we can learn from students’ own experiences about how to create better schools. Decisions about schooling are often made without listening deeply to students themselves. But students are in the best position to understand what they need in order to do well in school.
A collaboration of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI), Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC). LEARN MORE
