Giving Compass' Take:

• Mather High School in Chicago formed a student council that makes up the student voice committee.  This group works to improve their school climate by conducting surveys and getting student input. 

• Why is it successful to integrate student voice? How can other students replicate student voice committees?  

•  Read about the many reasons why students should be included in education decisions. 

The students at Mather High School in Chicago wanted to do something. Their peers said they didn’t feel comfortable coming to school, weren’t paying attention in class, and sometimes skipped lessons altogether.

So a small group of students tried to figure out what the root of the problem might be. They talked to their classmates, interviewed teachers, and researched what other schools were doing to help students feel connected. Finally, they decided they were going to improve the relationships between the school’s 100 teachers and 1,500 students.

If they could do this, “students would feel much more comfortable in class and teachers would feel more motivated to work and have a mutual respect between them so these problems would decrease,” senior Minaz Khatoon said.

Chicago’s student voice committees are not your grandma’s student council. Actually, they probably aren’t your student council.

They don’t plan prom, they don’t pick themed days for spirit week, they don’t run campaigns to get elected. Instead, these students conduct surveys and hold town halls and interview their peers and teachers to figure out how to make their schools better. And in the best-case scenarios, they get the adults in the building to pay attention.

“Our ultimate goal is that when teachers and administrators are making a decision that impacts students, they should be asking students,” said Cristina Salgado, the student voice specialist for Chicago Public Schools’ Department of Social Science and Civic Engagement.

The initiative is part of a larger effort to improve civics education — which also includes requiring civics or AP government classes and community service for graduation — and the district is close to achieving its goal of having a student voice committee in every high school. So far, 70 of the 90 district-run high schools have a committee, and 45 middle schools have one as well.

Read the full article about student council fighting for student voice by Kate Stringer at The 74