AJE Feature | Is Responsiveness to Student Voice Related to Academic Outcomes? Strengthening the Rationale for Student Voice in School Reform by Joseph Kahne, Benjamin Bowyer, Jessica Marshall and Erica Hodgin

The full-length American Journal of Education article by Kahne et al. can be accessed here.

In June of 2020, as protests broke out around the nation in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade, students at Burroughs High School on Chicago’s South Side were frustrated at the lack of discussions taking place in their classrooms. An ad hoc group of students, members of their school’s student voice committee, worked with a trusted teacher to craft a letter to all school staff that was signed by over 80 students. The letter expressed their disappointment that the mostly white staff had largely failed to address the events despite the centrality of these events to the lives of the young people they engaged with daily. Rather than seeking to minimize student concerns, the school administration met with students to discuss the letter and invited students to partner to develop a plan forward.  The Assistant Principal (AP) worked with students to develop a teach-in where staff could learn about these issues and how to address such relevant and critical topics in the classroom. The AP and students would go on to co-lead a workshop for school leaders at a district wide leadership conference on how to work collaboratively with students to design professional learning for adults.

This example shows the potential power and value of student voice – the variety of ways in which youth share or have input into their education, their school, and the decisions that impact their lives (Benner et al. 2019; Mitra et al. 2014).  Students had opportunities to develop leadership skills and an understanding of how to bring about change. The school community and the district benefited from students’ efforts to promote authentic discussion about a relevant societal issue. Moreover, research on student voice also suggests that the students at Burroughs High School may have developed their senses of agency, belonging, and competence as civic actors through their engagement in this work (see Mitra 2004).

Yet while advocates of school reform have long highlighted the value of student voice, student voice initiatives have rarely been part of systemic state- or district-level policy or reform efforts in the United States (Mitra et al. 2014).  Attempts to promote student voice as a systemic goal have often come into conflict with long established norms in schools that are characterized by sizable power distinctions between students, teachers, and school leaders (Mitra 2009).  Arguments that listening to and responding to youths’ concerns are fundamentally important in a democratic society have not been sufficient to spur systemic action.  Additionally, the student voice movement may also have been constrained by a lack of evidence that student voice positively impacts valued academic outcomes to which school leaders are often held accountable.

Our study was motivated by the need to fill this latter gap in empirical evidence.  Specifically, we ask, when schools are responsive to the concerns and critiques of their students, what is the impact on students’ academic achievement?  Based on our review of existing literature, we identify three primary pathways by which responsiveness to student voice could be beneficial to student outcomes.  As depicted in Figure 1, the first pathway occurs at the school level, where attentiveness to students’ concerns may improve the way the school is organized and run.  The second pathway is at the classroom level, where teachers can be responsive to students’ by adapting their curricula and instruction in response to students’ feedback. Finally, at the student level, an environment that is responsive to student voice may lead young people to develop a greater sense of agency, of belonging to the school community, and of competence.

Figure 1

Pathways Through Which Voice May Promote Academic Outcomes

It is important to note that we focus not only on whether students had opportunities to express their voice but also, when they did, on whether students felt teachers and administrators were responsive. Our emphasis on responsiveness reflects a view of students as critical members of the school community who should have agency in decisions and activities affecting their academic experience and the school overall. Thus, responsiveness to student voice, as we conceptualize it here, takes seriously the critiques forwarded by young people, particularly marginalized youth. 

To investigate the relationship between responsiveness to student voice and academic outcomes, we draw upon a unique dataset of 11,680 high school students in 86 Chicago public high schools.  The dataset matched the academic records of the cohort of students enrolled in 8^th grade in 2017-18 and 9^th grade in 2018-19 to survey data from the district’s 2019 5Essentials student survey.  Our measure of responsiveness to student voice was based on two survey questions that asked students to assess how well their school leaders and teachers responded to their concerns.  Because the dataset included students’ academic records in both 8^th and 9^th grades, we were able to control for their 8^th grade attendance and academic achievement, as well as demographic variables. This allowed us to isolate the relationship between perceptions of responsiveness to student voice and 9^th graders’ academic outcomes. 

Our findings suggest that responsiveness to student voice is positively related to students’ academic outcomes.  Students in schools where their teachers and school leaders were seen as being responsive to students’ concerns tended to have better academic outcomes than their peers in schools that were seen as being less responsive.  Specifically, a school’s responsiveness to student voice has a statistically significant association with higher GPAs, higher attendance rates, and less chronic absenteeism.  We estimate that a typical student’s 9^th grade GPA would be about 0.2 points higher if they attended a highly-responsive school than if they attended a less-responsive school.  Likewise, a student’s probability of being chronically absent is more than 2 percentage points lower if they attend a highly-responsive school compared to a less-responsive school.

Though relatively modest, these differences in 9^th grade GPAs and attendance could have lasting effects on these students’ academic trajectories, as previous research demonstrates the importance of 9^th grade to students’ future academic achievement (Allensworth & Easton 2007; Neild et al. 2008).  Additionally, research indicates that enhancing students’ senses of agency, belonging, and competence may be especially important for marginalized populations (Benner et al. 2019; Gray et al. 2018; Toshalis & Nakkula 2012). Consequently, the benefits of responsiveness to student voice may be particularly important for students from marginalized groups and districts like Chicago that serve students of color and students from low-income households.  

Perhaps most clearly, our findings underscore that the goals of promoting more democratic schools and of improving students’ academic achievement are not in tension with one another.  Student voice is a reform priority that has the potential to better integrate these educational aims.  If educators instead ignore students’ voices, the impact of that “lesson” may well be democratic and educational disengagement. Unfortunately, all too often, school reform efforts ignore student voice or only consult students in superficial ways. Even when responding to crises in education—such as the debates over how to reopen schools amidst the COVID-19 pandemic—students’ voices and, perhaps especially, their critiques are often not given due weight. Further, policy and reform efforts focusing on student voice are particularly salient during a period in which there is increased recognition of the need for educational institutions to respond to the needs and concerns of youth from marginalized backgrounds. We are hopeful that indications of academic benefits from school environments where students feel their concerns are attended to will prompt additional study of these practices and help pave the way for integrating student voice in more frequent and significant ways into school reform efforts.

References

Allensworth, Elaine M., and John Q. Easton. 2007. What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools: A Close Look at Course Grades, Failures, and Attendance in the Freshman Year. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of Chicago. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service no. ED 498350). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498350.pdf.

Benner, Meg, Catherine Brown, and Ashley Jeffrey. 2019. Elevating Student Voice in Education. Washington, DC: Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2019/08/14/473197/elevating-student-voice-education/.

Gray, DeLeon L., Elan C. Hope, and Jamaal S. Matthews. 2018. “Black and Belonging at School: A Case for Interpersonal, Instructional, and Institutional Opportunity Structures.” Educational Psychologist 53 (2): 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2017.1421466.

Mitra, Dana L. 2004. “The Significance of Students: Can Increasing Student Voice in Schools Lead to Gains in Youth Development? Teachers College Record 106 (4): 651–688. https://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=11531.

Mitra, Dana L. 2009. “Strengthening Student Voice Initiatives in High Schools: An Examination of the Supports Needed for School-Based Youth-Adult Partnerships.” Youth & Society 40 (3): 311–335. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X08316211.

Mitra, Dana, Stephanie Serriere, and Ben Kirshner. 2014. “Youth Participation in U.S. Contexts: Student Voice Without a National Mandate.” Children & Society 28 (4): 292–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12005.

Neild, Ruth Curran, Scott Stoner-Eby, and Frank Furstenberg. 2008. “Connecting Entrance and Departure: The Transition to Ninth Grade and High School Dropout.” Education and Urban Society 40 (5): 543–569. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124508316438.

Toshalis, Eric, and Michael J. Nakkula. 2012. “Motivation, Engagement, and Student Voice.” The Students at the Center Series, Jobs for the Future, April 2012. https://studentsatthecenterhub.org/wp-content/uploads/Motivation-Engagement-Student-Voice-Students-at-the-Center-1.pdf.