Secondary School Age

Leaders generate public demand, support and innovative ideas when they have regular mechanisms for seeking youth and family input and support and have developed a process for maintaining youth and family influence on policy decisions, philanthropy, practice and entrepreneurship.

Healthy behavior, staying in school, problem-solving skills - these are among the outcomes we all want to see in our young people. It is always encouraging to be able to point to a new mentoring initiative, a great afterschool program or a really innovative school, but to achieve community- and state-wide impact, you need to do something bigger.

Balancing work and school can hinder a young person’s success in higher education. However, the opposite can also be true: Good jobs facilitate student persistence and completion. So what does it look like when working works for students? That’s what we need to understand in order to transform employment opportunities into drivers of student success.

Should young people be considered actors in school change, or simply the recipients of changed schools? Growing evidence and our own experience in the field suggest the former. Youth-led efforts to create change in schools, districts and education policy are on the rise. Youth Organizing for Educational Change features brief case studies of seven youth organizing efforts across the United States that we hope will inform, instruct and inspire.